No Fear Shakespeare: Hamlet: Act 3, scene ii

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Enter HAMLET and PLAYERS

HAMLET and the PLAYERS enter.

	HAMLET
	Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,
	trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of
	your players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines.
	Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus, but
5	use all gently, for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may
	say) whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a
	temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me
	to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a
	passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the
10	groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing
	but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise. I would have such
	a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant. It out-Herods
	Herod. Pray you, avoid it.

HAMLET

Perform the speech just as I taught you, musically and smoothly. If you exaggerate the words the way some actors do, I might as well have some newscaster read the lines. Don't use too many hand gestures; just do a few, gently, like this. When you get into a whirlwind of passion on stage, remember to keep the emotion moderate and smooth. I hate it when I hear a blustery actor in a wig tear a passion to shreds, bursting everyone's eardrums so as to impress the audience on the lower levels of the playhouse, who for the most part can only appreciate loud noises and pantomime shows. I would whip a guy for making a tyrant sound too tyrannical. That's as bad as those old plays in which King Herod ranted. Please avoid doing that.

	FIRST PLAYER
	I warrant your honor.

FIRST PLAYER

I will, sir.

	HAMLET
15	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 anything so overdone is from the
	purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now,
20	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 pressure. Now
	this overdone or come tardy off, though it make the
	unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the
25	censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh
	a whole theatre of others.

HAMLET

But don't be too tame, either—let your good sense guide you. Fit the action to the word and the word to the action. Act natural at all costs. Exaggeration has no place in the theater, where the purpose is to represent reality, holding a mirror up to virtue, to vice, and to the spirit of the times. If you handle this badly, it just makes ignorant people laugh while regular theater-goers are miserable—and they're the ones you should be keeping happy.


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