commentary:

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, (_that is
impossible!_) trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of
our players do, (_laughter_,) I had as lief the town-crier spoke my
lines. * * * Oh, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious,
periwig-pated fellow (_like yourself_) tear a passion to tatters, &c.--I
would have such a fellow whipped (_give it him, he deserves it_) for
o'erdoing Termagant. * * * Oh, there be players that I have seen play,
(_no, we see him,_) and heard others praise, and that highly, (_oh! oh!
oh!_) not to speak it profanely, that, having neither the accent of
Christians, (_ha! ha! ha!_) nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, nor man,
have so strutted (_bravo! little 'un!_) and bellowed, (_hit him again!_)
that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, (_who made
you?_) and not made them well, (_no, you are a bad fit_,) they imitated
humanity so abominably." (_Roars of laughter_.)

It was thus Mr. Henry Augustus Constantine Stubbs enacted Hamlet; and it
was not till the end of the fourth act that he suffered a single
observation to escape him, which indicated he thought any thing was
amiss. Then, indeed, while sitting in the green-room, and as if the idea
had just struck him, he said to Mr. Peaess, "Do you know, I begin to
think I have some enemies in the house, for when, in the scene with
Ophelia, I said, 'What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth
and heaven?' somebody called out, loud enough for me to hear him, 'Ay!
what, indeed?' It's very odd. Did you notice it, ma'am?" he continued
addressing the lady who performed Ophelia. "I can't say I did," replied
the lady, biting her lips most unmercifully, to preserve her gravity of
countenance.