Hamlet

groundlings, who for the most part are capable of10 nothing

but inexplicable dumb shows11 and noise: I could have such a

fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant12: it out-Herods

Herod13. Pray you avoid it.

A PLAYER I warrant14 your honour.

HAMLET Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion15

be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the

action, with this special observance: that you o'erstep not

the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from18 the

purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now,

was and is to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature, to show

virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very

age and body of the time his form and pressure22. Now this

overdone or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful23

laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure24 of

the which one must in your allowance25 o'erweigh a whole

theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play,

and heard others praise, and that highly -- not to speak it

profanely -- that, neither having the accent of Christians

nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor no man, have so

strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's

journeymen31 had made men and not made them well, they

imitated humanity so abominably32.

A PLAYER I hope we have reformed that indifferently33 with us,

sir.

HAMLET O, reform it altogether. And let those that play your

clowns speak no more than is set down for them, for there be

of37 them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity

of barren38 spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime

some necessary question39 of the play be then to be