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  • Title: Hamlet (Quarto 1, 1603)
  • Textual editor: Eric Rasmussen
  • ISBN: 978-1-55058-434-9

    Copyright Internet Shakespeare Editions. This text may be freely used for educational, non-proift purposes; for all other uses contact the Coordinating Editor.
    Author: William Shakespeare
    Not Peer Reviewed

    Hamlet (Quarto 1, 1603)

    Prince of Denmarke.
    Enter Hamlet and the Players.
    Ham. Pronounce me this speech trippingly a the tongue
    as I taught thee,
    1850Mary and you mouth it, as a many of your players do
    I'de rather heare a towne bull bellow,
    Then such a fellow speake my lines.
    Nor do not saw the aire thus with your hands,
    But giue euery thing his action with temperance.
    O it offends mee to the soule, to heare a rebustious periwig (fellow,
    To teare a passion in totters, into very ragges,
    To split the eares of the ignoraut, who for the
    Most parte are capable of nothing but dumbe shewes and (noises,
    1860I would haue such a fellow whipt, for o're doing, tarmagant
    It out, Herodes Herod.
    players My Lorde, wee haue indifferently reformed that
    1885among vs.
    Ham. The better, the better, mend it all together:
    There be fellowes that I haue seene play,
    And heard others commend them, and that highly too,
    That hauing neither the gate of Christian, Pagan,
    1880Nor Turke, haue so strutted and bellowed,
    That you would a thought, some of Natures journeymen
    Had made men, and not made them well,
    They imitated humanitie, so abhominable:
    Take heede, auoyde it.
    players I warrant you my Lord.
    Ham. And doe you heare? let not your Clowne speake
    More then is set downe, there be of them I can tell you
    That will laugh themselues, to set on some
    Quantitie of barren spectators to laugh with them,
    1890Albeit there is some necessary point in the Play
    Then to be obserued: O t'is vile, and shewes
    A pittifull ambition in the foole the vseth it.
    1892.1And then you haue some agen, that keepes one sute
    Os ieasts, as a man is knowne by one sute of
    Apparell, and Gentlemen quotes his ieasts downe
    F2 In