Private Theatricals Etc

Front Cover
various publishers, 1875 - Acting
 

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Page 60 - ... 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.
Page 60 - O reform it altogether, 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, 40 though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered.
Page 60 - 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 60 - 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'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you avoid it.
Page 60 - 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. 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.
Page 68 - ... book, the copyright shall, in that case, endure for such period of forty-two years; and that the copyright in every book which shall be published after the death of its author, shall endure for the term of forty-t^o years from the first publication thereof, and shall be the property of the proprietor of the author's manuscript from which such book shall be first published, and his assigns.
Page 60 - 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 meantime, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.
Page 68 - ... or his assignee shall be subject to such right or authority. 2. And be it further enacted, that if any person shall, during the continuance of such sole liberty as aforesaid, contrary to the intent of this act, or right of the author or his assignee...
Page 68 - Act be published in the lifetime of its author shall endure for the natural life of such author, and for the further term of seven years, commencing at the time of his death, and shall be the property of such author and his assigns...
Page 60 - ... 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 the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others.

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