To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold—
For this the tragic Muse first trod the stage.
Prologue to Addison's Cato. A. POPE.
As in a theatre, the eyes of men,
After a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
Thinking his prattle to be tedious.
Richard II., Act v. Sc. 2. SHAKESPEARE.
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wanned?
Hamlet, Act ii. Sc. 2. SHAKESPEARE.
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears.
Hamlet, Act ii. Sc. 2. SHAKESPEARE.
I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;
A stage, where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.
Merchant of Venice, Act i. Sc. 1. SHAKESPEARE.
I have heard
That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul, that presently
They have proclaimed their malefactions.
* * * * *
The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.
Hamlet, Act ii. Sc. 2. SHAKESPEARE.
Lo, where the stage, the poor, degraded stage,
Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age.
Curiosity. C. SPRAGUE.
A veteran see! whose last act on the stage
Entreats your smiles for sickness and for age;
Their cause I plead,—plead it in heart and mind;
A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind.
Prologue on Quitting the Stage in 1776. D. GARRICK.