The Stage: Or, Recollections of Actors and Acting from an Experience of Fifty Years; a Series of Dramatic Sketches

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J.M. Stoddart & Company, 1880 - Actors - 510 pages

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Page 37 - 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...
Page 325 - This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill ; cannot be good : — If ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success, Commencing in a truth ? I am thane of Cawdor : If good, why do I yield to that suggestion, Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair, And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, Against the use of nature...
Page 131 - Stain my man's cheeks !— No, you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both, That all the world shall — I will do such things — What they are yet I know not ; but they shall be The terrors of the earth.
Page 352 - But here's a parchment with the seal of Caesar ; I found it in his closet ; 'tis his will : Let but the Commons hear this testament, (Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read,) And they would go and kiss dead Caesar's wounds, And dip their napkins in his sacred blood...
Page 133 - Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings ! ye ! With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul To make these felt and feeling, well may be Things that have made me watchful; the far roll Of your departing voices, is the knoll Of what in me is sleepless, — if I rest. But where of ye, oh tempests ! is the goal ? Are ye like those within the human breast ? Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest ? XCVII.
Page 131 - If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts Against their father, fool me not so much To bear it tamely ; touch me with noble anger ! O, let not women's weapons, water-drops, Stain my man's cheeks! — No, you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both, That all the world...
Page 66 - As a wit, if not first, in the very first line: Yet, with talents like these, and an excellent heart, The man had his failings, a dupe to his art. Like an ill-judging beauty, his colours he spread, And beplaster'd with rouge his own natural red. On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting; Twas only that when he was off he was acting.
Page 353 - And dip their napkins in his sacred blood, Yea, beg a hair of him for memory, And, dying, mention it within their wills, Bequeathing it as a rich legacy Unto their issue.
Page 126 - O my love! my wife! Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty. Thou art not conquered ; beauty's ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, And death's pale flag is not advanced there.
Page 36 - 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. 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...

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