Will Hines Dot Net

I don’t remember seeing this since I’ve started improvising. Hamlet’s advice to actors. Here’s his comments for comedians (I believe saying to avoid laughing at yourself on stage):

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.

VILLANOUS! Also, the opening comments speak against over-acting, methinks:

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.

So bad acting out-Herods Herod? It’s worse than the man who asked for the head of Jesus? Hyperbole much, son? This guy sounds like Delaney!

Fun, though.