Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke. Actus Primus, Scena Prima • Paragraph 798
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_Ham._ Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion 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 any thing so overdone is from 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 its form and pressure.[48] Now, this overdone, or come tardy off,[49] though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one[50] must, in your allowance,[51] 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,[52] that, neither having the accent of christians, nor the gait of christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.