torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind, of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. Oh! it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious, periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb show, and noise; I would have such a fellow whipped, for overdoing termagant; it out-herods Herod; pray you, avoid it.

Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor ; 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 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. Now this, overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. * Oh, there be players that I have seen play, and heard 'others praise

-and that highly, too-not to speak it profanely, that neither having the accent of a christian, 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 had not made them well; they imitated humanity so abominably.

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 mean time, 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.

SHAKSPERE.

MACBETH TO THE DAGGER.

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee
I have thee not; and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind? a false creation
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.

Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest.—I see thee still;
And on the blade and dudgeon, gouts of blood,
Which was not so before.-There's no such thing!
It is the bloody business, which informs

Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one-half world,
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep: now witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings; and wither'd Murder,
(Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl's his watch) thus with his stealthy pace,

Towards his design

Moves like a ghost.

Thou sure and firm-set earth,

Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear

The very stones prate of my whereabout;

And take the present horror from the time,

Which now suits with it. While I threat, he lives

I

go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell

That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.

SHAKSPERE.

SPEECH OF HENRY V. AT HARFLEUR.

ONCE more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;

Or close the wall up with our English dead.

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness and humility:

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;

Let it pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it,
As fearfully as doth a galled rock

O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,

Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.

Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
To his full height. Now on, you noblest English,
Whose blood is fetch'd from fathers of war-proof;
Fathers, that like so many Alexanders,

Have in these parts from morn till even fought,
And sheath'd their swords for lack of argument:
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,

And teach them how to war: and you, good yeomen,
Whose limbs are made in England, shew us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear

That you are worth your breeding, which I doubt not:
For there is none of you so mean and base
That hath not noble lustre in your eye;

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's a-foot;
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge,
Cry, Heav'n for Harry, England, and St. George!

SHAKSPERE.

SEVEN AGES OF MAN.

ALL the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then, the whining school-boy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like a snail
Unwillingly to school. And then, the lover,
Sighing like a furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then, a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like a pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then, the justice,
In fair round belly, with good capon lined,

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances:
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness, and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

SHAKSPERE.

POETRY.

SATAN, SIN, AND DEATH, AT THE GATES OF HELL.

MEANWHILE, the adversary of God and man,
Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design,
Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of hell
Explores his solitary flight: sometimes

He scours the right-hand coast, sometimes the left;
Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars
Up to the fiery concave towering high.

At last appear

Hell-bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof,
And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass,
Three iron, three of adamantine rock,

Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,

Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat
On either side a formidable shape;

The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair;
But ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast; a serpent arm'd
With mortal sting: about her middle round

A cry of hell-hounds never-ceasing bark'd,
With wide Cerberean mouths, full loud, and rung
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturb’d their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there; yet there still bark'd and howl'd,
Within unseen.

The other shape,

If shape it might be call'd that shape had none