_Ham._ Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced[1128] it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as[1129] many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke[1130] my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your[1131] hand, thus; but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, 5 and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you[1132] must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious[1133] periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very[1134] rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who, for the most[1135] 10 part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'er-doing[1136] Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it. _First Play._ I warrant your honour.[1137] _Ham._ Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion 15 be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word[1138] to the action; with this special observance, that you o'er-step[1139] not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone[1140] is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first[1141] and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to 20 nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own[1142] image, and the very age and body of the time his form and[1143] pressure. Now this overdone or come tardy off, though[1144][1145] it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious[1145] grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance[1146] 25 o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be[1147] players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and[1148] that highly, not to speak it profanely, that neither having[1149] the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan,[1150] nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought[1150][1151] 30 some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made[1152] them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. _First Play._ I hope we have reformed that indifferently[1137] with us, sir.[1153] _Ham._ O, reform it altogether. And let those that play 35 your clowns speak no more than is set down for them: for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some[1154] quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the[1155] mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition 40 in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready. [_Exeunt Players._ _Enter_ POLONIUS, ROSENCRANTZ, _and_ GUILDENSTERN.[1156] How now, my lord! will the king hear this piece of work?[1157] _Pol._ And the queen too, and that presently.[1158]