FIRST PLAY.
I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us, sir.
HAM.
Oh, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then to be considered; that’s villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.
In this passage the whole art of the actor is set down for all time. Only a practised and enthusiastic actor, who in reality was in love with his profession, and who saw the educating force and dignity of his calling, could have drawn up such an ennobling picture of the responsibility entrusted to the impersonators of the characters, who embodied the abstract and brief chronicles of the time. Voice, gesture, deportment, the actor’s indispensable gifts, are all in due proportion given prominence, nothing is forgotten, so that the mimic representative shall be as perfect as the exigencies of the stage will allow.
A copy of these rules should be hung up in every theatre of the land, so that the actor should be impressed with the dignity and elevating powers of his profession. There be players that I have seen who would have well profited by reading this passage before setting foot on the stage. It was not only in Shakespeare’s days that reformation was needed: how often in our days is a well-written part mangled out of recognition by the slovenliness and stupidity of the impersonator. Study this speech, and, if you are in danger of forgetting it, study it again; it is the very alpha and omega of your great art. Shakespeare’s motive in assigning this speech to Hamlet may be for the better instruction of the actor in delivering the dozen or sixteen lines, which Hamlet inserted in the play of Gonzago’s murder. “But if you mouth, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines.” Considering that Hamlet was collaborating in the play, which was to be played before the King and Queen he was naturally interested in its production. On the other hand, it seems rather presumptuous for an amateur to dictate to a professional how a play should be acted, especially in this instance, when Hamlet had already tested the quality of the actor by hearing his recital of a scene out of Æneas’ tale of Dido, which he afterwards criticised, eulogising the admirable manner in which the player had acquitted himself. When witnessed on the stage these trifling discrepancies pass unnoticed, but in the study, when the plays are submitted to a microscopical examination, the inexactitudes make us reflect, and in the cold light of reason accuse Shakespeare of being a careless writer.
THE MURDER OF GONZAGO.
III, 2.
HAM.
Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the “Murder of Gonzago?”