dvice is
addressed to actors, there is scarcely a line which the young
orator can afford to ignore. He would do well to commit the
entire piece to memory.

[Side note: Shakespere's advice to speakers]

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,
trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our
players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. 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. 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 ears of the groundlings; who, for the
most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and
noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'er-doing
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'er-step 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. 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'er-weigh a whole
theatre of others. 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."

[Side note: Avoid extremes]

It will be well to observe that throughout this advice the poet
is careful to warn us against extremes--neither to tear a passion
to rags nor to be too tame--he insists on moderation. Even in the
very tempest of passion one must not lose self-control nor make
extravagant use of the hands. The "overdone" and the "come tardy
off" are the two poles to be shunned.

"Speak the speech as I pronounced it." By placing the two words
"speak" and "pronounce" in c