fancies, as if to strengthen his own failing resolution?- For who would bear the whips and scorns of time- That patient merit of the unworthy takes- With a bare bodkin?- -Who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, Now more slowly-in an altered, lower, fuller tone, expressive of deeper feeling, and even of awe: But that the dread of SOMETHING after death- Now change your tone again, for there is another strain of thought. He is half ashamed of his own fears and the conjurings of his own imagination, and he thus chides himself: Thus CONSCIENCE does make COWARDS of us all And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought— There is so much good practice in this exercise, that you should read it again and again until you are perfect in it. LETTER XX. ILLUSTRATIONS CONTINUED. FROM the same storehouse of illustration I present with another, in prose. you Observe that, unlike the last, which was a soliloquy, this is addressed to others, and demands therefore quite a different tone, more rapid utterance, more firmness and decision in the entire expression of it. The last was a meditation merely, requiring long pauses between different trains of thought, and tones accommodated to the changing moods of the mind. The following address to the players is purely didactic, or, I should rather say, exhortative. The danger to be avoided here is dogmatism or sermonising. Hamlet is not laying down the law, like a judge, but advising, as a friend. He is not a pedagogue, but a gentleman, and you must assume the most gentlemanly, polite and polished manner of expression that you can command. If not satisfied with your reading of it at first, repeat it many times, until you feel that you read with ease and grace. Better still if you can find an intelligent friend to hear you read it, and tell you what you read well and where you are defective. I adopt Observe, that this passage It is not "a speech." You but to talk it with spirit and the same notation as before. Speak the speech-I pray you-as I pronounced it to youtrippingly on the tongue- -But if you MOUTH it—as many of -THUS tempest · -you must our players do—I had as lief the town-crier spoke my linesNor do not saw the air too much with your handsbut use all gently· -for in the very torrent · and-as I may say- ——WHIRLWIND of your passionacquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. -Oh! it OFFENDS me to the soul to hear a robustiousperiwig-pated FELLOW tear a passion to tatters—to very RAGSto split the ears of the GROUNDLINGS who-for the most part—are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb show and noise TUTOR I could have such a fellow WHIPPED for o'erdoing Termagant -it out-Herod's HEROD- -Pray You avoid it- -Be not too tame-neither—but let your own DISCRETION be your - suit the ACTION to the WORD the WORD to the ACTION- -with this SPECIAL observance- -that you o'erstep not the modesty of NATUREfrom the purpose of PLAYING-and NOW- was and mirror up to NATURE -SCORN―her own image to -for anything so over-done is -whose end- -both at the first Isto hold-as 'twere-the show VIRTUE-her own feature -and the very age and body of the -Now THIS over-done- —or time his form and pressurecome tardy of—though it make the unskilful laugh—cannot but make the JUDICIOUS-grieve—the censure of ONE of which must- -in your allowance- -o'erweigh a whole THEATRE of others -Oh! 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 MAN- -have so STRUTTED and BELLOWED that I have thought some of Nature's JOURNEYMEN had made men—and not made them WELLthey imitated humanity so ABOMINABLY And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for -for there be of them that will themselves LAUGHto set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too them though-in the meantimebe then to be considered -some necessary question of the play that's VILLAINOUS- -and shows a most pitiful ambition in the FOOL that uses it. The next is also familiar to you, although, it may be, you never attempted to depart from the fashion of reading it acquired in your schoolboy days. Macbeth, contemplating an atrocious murder, is haunted by a whisper of conscience and by some "compunctious visitings of nature." His state is that of dreamy horror -his speech accords with it. There must be long pauses and deep tones, with an expression almost of pain in them. Observe also, that it is a soliloquy, and therefore to be uttered in a manner more distrait than was required in the last illustration. Is this a dagger that I see before me The handle toward my HAND?-Come- -let me clutch A dagger of the MIND- -a false creation Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?- As that which now I draw Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going And such an instrument I was to use Mine eyes are made the FOOLS of th' other senses→ Or else worth all the rest -I see thee STILL Here, with increasing terror in his tone, and with the growing rapidity of utterance that always accompanies terror. And on thy blade-and dudgeon- -gouts of BLOOD Which was not so before Here, a long pause, and an entire change of tone. Το this point Macbeth has believed in the vision, and is profoundly awed by it; and the tones should express the horror and dread of the situation. But now he recovers his self-command; his reason triumphs over his fancy; he speaks in a lighter tone, and resuming a natural manner, he proceeds: -There's no such thing— It is the bloody business which informs Then another change; his fancy flies to the tragedy he is about to enact; the mention of the bloody business sends him out of himself; he plays, as it were, with the thought, and conjures up all the images suggested by the occasion, for still he lingers and cannot quite make up his mind. "I dare not," even at this moment, is waiting upon "I would," and in the pause that attends his endeavour to "screw his courage to the sticking point," he says again, in a reflective, dreamy tone: Now o'er the one-half world Nature seems dead The curtain'd sleep -and wicked dreams abuse Pale Hecate's offerings -now witchcraft celebrates -and withered MURDER Alarum'd by his sentinel-the wolf Whose howl's his watch- THUS with his stealthy pace— Again a change; his resolve is somewhat strengthened now; he has made up his mind to do it; but not without still betraying his infirmity of purpose. In his agony of conflicting emotions he addresses the earth. The voice must be deep and sepulchral, but slightly tremulous: Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps-which way they walk-for fear Thy very STONES prate of my whereabout And take the present horror from the time |