Charles and Mary Lamb: Tales from Shakespeare (1901) - Hamlet and the players
... also known as: Hamlet's Little Acting Handbook; or, A Playwright's Pains.
For there is absolutely no question who is speaking here: This is Shakespeare himself, venting every last little concern he has ever wanted to share with his fellow actors. And he even tells us so expressly up front: "[I]f you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as live the town crier spoke my lines." "My lines." – Now, certainly, Hamlet has written that "speech of some dozen or sixteen lines" that he wants the Players to insert into their piece. But what he actually says far exceeds that one little speech in its scope of reference. (Besides, he's speaking in prose here – not in pentameters.) And can't you just picture those Players, trying to maintain an even face throughout our Prince's lecture ...?
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you, trippingly on the tongue.
Enunciate, enunciate, enunciate.
But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as live the town crier spoke my lines.
Don't chew your lines – or bellow them out.
Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.
Don't gesticulate wildly and without any purpose. Remember that acting is (as the very word implies) about what you do as much as about what you say. Even moments of extreme passion are hardly ever expressed adequately by crude and exaggerated motions.
O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the cars of the groundlings, who (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise.
To the playwright, there is nothing more painful than seeing a play's most pivotal moments annihilated by coarse and uninformed acting.
I would have such a fellow whipp'd for o'erdoing Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.
This is worse than even the most abominable stock characters we're used to seeing portrayed as ranters, such as Muslim villains (Termagant) and Herod.
Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor.
Trust your instincts.
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, 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.
Perform naturally. Avoid stilted or forced behaviour – act on stage as you would in real life.
Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve;
Otherwise, you might come off as unintentionally funny; but only persons without any proper taste at all would laugh at such a performance.
the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others.
And your target audience aren't those uneducated fools, however many of them there may be; your target audience are those who can actually appreciate a good performance.
O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly (not to speak it profanely), that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.
Because good acting isn't a function of widespread public acclaim; it's solely a function of talent and taste. One has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the other.
And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them.
No ad-libbing! (You hear me, Will Kempe?!)
For there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too,
Self-indulgence is a vice, and the worst part about it is its infectuous effect on those in the audience who don't know any better.
though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered.
Not to mention that it gets in the way of the play's intended progress and diverts the audience's attention from other, just as (or even more) essential scenes.
That's villanous and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.
That's egotistical and countermands a truly great actor's attitude – actors need to be team players.
Copyright 2002 – 2009: Ulrike Böhm, all rights reserved.