Show me thy thought.
Even passages in a play which look very unpromising should not be finally judged till a flexible, well-trained voice has done its best to bring out any emotion latent in the words. If they were originally chosen by an author writing in full sympathetic understanding of his figures, they will, properly spoken, reveal unexpected emotional values. Here is a passage from Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy at which many a critic has poked fun. At first sight it undoubtedly seems merely “words, words, words.”
Hieronimo. O eyes! no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears:
O life! no life but lively form of death:
O world! no world but mass of public wrongs,
Confus’d and fill’d with murder and misdeeds:
O sacred heav’ns! if this unhallow’d deed,
If this inhuman and barbarous attempt;
If this incomparable murder thus,
Of mine, but now no more my son,