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