m in;
Imagination to give them shape,
Or time to act them in.
What should such fellows as I do
Crawling between heaven and earth?
We are arrant knaves all, believe none of us--
Go thy ways to a nunnery!
If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry.--
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow!
Thou shall not escape calumny!
If thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool;
For wise men know well enough what monsters women make of them!
Go! get thee to a nunnery!"_

Hamlet thus plays the madman to the eye and mind of Ophelia, that she may
report his lunacy; and believing her former lover deranged, after his exit
utters this wail of grief:

_"O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That sucked the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatched form and feature of blown youth,
Blasted with ecstacy: O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see."_

The instruction of Hamlet to the players is the most conclusive evidence
that William Shakspere was not only the greatest dramatic author, but an
actor and orator of matchless mould.

There was no character that his soul conceived in any of his plays, fool or
philosopher, that he could not act better than any man in his company.

In the first rehearsal of his plays he usually read the lines to his men
and gave them the cue and philosophy of the character to be enacted.

A few days before the play of Hamlet I heard him deliver this speech for
the edification of the whole troupe, that they might know how to render
their lines in an effective and oratorical manner:

_"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced
It to you, trippingly on the tongue;
But if you mouth it, as many of your
Players do, I had as lief the town-crier,
Spoke my lines. Now 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 sou