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THE THEATRE

THE PLAYER

OOD my lord, will you see the players well bestow'd? Do you hear? Let them be well us'd, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time; after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you lived. Hamlet. Act II, Sc. 2.

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FOR my sake do you with Fortune
chide,

The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,

That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds.

Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,

And almost thence my nature is subdu'd

The
Player's
Strength

His
Plight

To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.
Pity me then, and wish I were renew'd.

Sonnet CXI.

Unjustly Censured

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O, oft it chances in particular men,
That for some vicious mole of nature in
them,

As, in their birth-wherein they are not
guilty,

Since nature cannot choose his origin—
By their o'ergrowth of some complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of

reason,

Or by some habit that too much o'er-leavens
The form of plausive manners, that these

men,

Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,—
Their virtues else-be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo—

Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault.

Hamlet. Act I, Sc. 4.

PLAYS

THE

HE best in this kind are but shadows;
and the worst are no worse,

tion amend them.

if imagina

A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act V, Sc. 1.

E shall much disgrace

WE

With four and five most vile and
ragged foils,

Right ill-dispos'd in brawl ridiculous,
The name of Agincourt. Yet sit and see,
Minding true things by what their mockeries
be. King Henry V. Act IV, Prologue.

THE play, I rem caviare to the general;

HE play, I remember, pleas'd not the

but it was as I receiv'd it, and others, whose judgement in such matters cried in the top of mine—an excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning.

Hamlet. Act II, Sc. 1.

An Estimate

An
Apology

Style

The Dramatic

Unities

IMPUTE it not a crime

IMPUT

To me or my swift passage, that I slide O'er sixteen years and leave the growth untri'd

Of that wide gap, since it is in my power
To o'erthrow law and in one self-born hour
To plant and o'erwhelm custom.

A Winter's Tale. Act IV, Sc. I.

Its

Worst and

Best

The
Weight

of Pre-
cedent

CUSTOM

'HAT monster, custom, who all sense doth

THAT

eat,

Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery,
That aptly is put on.

Hamlet. Act III, Sc. 4.

IMPOSSIBLE be strange attempts to those
That weigh their pains in sense, and do

suppose

What hath been cannot be.

All's Well That Ends Well. Act I, Sc. 1.

WHAT custom wills, in all things should

W we do't,

The dust on antique time would lie unswept,
And mountainous error be too highly heap'd

For truth to overpeer.

Coriolanus. Act II, Sc. 3.

Free

dom for

Truth

THE PIT

N habitation giddy and unsure

AN

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Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar
heart.

King Henry IV. Part II, Act I, Sc. 3.

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But do not like to stage me to their eyes. Though it do well, I do not relish well Their loud applause and Aves vehement; Nor do I think the man of safe discretion That does affect it.

Measure for Measure. Act I, Sc. I.

THE PLAYERS' ART

Sound' it to you, trippingly on the
PEAK the speech, I pray you, as I pro-

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