that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a
robtustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags,
to split the ears of the groundlings, we 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. I 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'erstep 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 it were, 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'erweigh 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.
Shakespeare.


CXXXIV.

FALSTAFF'S DESCRIPTION OF HIS SOLDIERS.

If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet. I have misused
the king's press outrageously. I have got, in exchange of an hundred and
fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I press me none but good