1
And Tragedy should blush as much to stoop
To the low mimic follies of a farce,
As a grave matron would to dance with girls.
Horace—
Of the Art of Poetry. L. 272.
Wentworth Dillon's trans.
2
The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give.
For we that live to please, must please to live.
Samuel Johnson—
Prologue. Spoken by Mr. Garrick on Opening Drury Lane Theatre (1747) L. 53.
3
Who teach the mind its proper face to scan,
And hold the faithful mirror up to man.
See also Sprague
4
This many-headed monster.
5
A long, exact, and serious comedy;
In every scene some moral let it teach,
And, if it can, at once both please and preach.
Pope—
Epistle to Miss Blount. With the Works of Voiture. L. 22.
6
This is the Jew that Shakespeare drew.
Attributed to
Pope when Macklin was performing the character of Shylock, Feb. 14, 1741.
7
There still remains to mortify a wit
The many-headed monster of the pit.
Pope—
Horace. Ep. I. Bk. II. L. 30.
See also Massinger. Also Coriolanus, Scott, under Public
8
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold—
For this the tragic Muse first trod the stage.
Pope—
Prologue to Addison's Cato. L. 1.
9
Your scene precariously subsists too long,
On French translation and Italian song.
Dare to have sense yourselves; assert the stage;
Be justly warm'd with your own native rage.
Pope—
Prologue to Addison's Cato. L. 42.
10
Tom Goodwin was an actor-man,
Old Drury's pride and boast,
In all the light and spritely parts,
Especially the ghost.
J. G. Saxe—The Ghost Player.
11
The play bill which is said to have announced the tragedy of Hamlet, the character of the Prince of Denmark being left out.
Scott—The Talisman. Introduction.
12
If it be true that good wine needs no bush,
'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue.
As You Like It. Epilogue. L. 3.
13
Like a dull actor now,
I have forgot my part, and I am out,
Even to a full disgrace.
Coriolanus. Act V. Sc. 3. L. 40.
14
Good, my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.
Hamlet. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 545.
15
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd.
Hamlet. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 577.
16
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do.
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears.
Hamlet. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 585.
17
I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play,
Have, by the very cunning of the scene,
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak.
With most miraculous organ.
Hamlet. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 617.
18
The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
Hamlet. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 633.
19
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, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 1.
20
Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature.
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 19.
21
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.
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 32.
22
A hit, a very palpable hit.
Hamlet. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 294.
23
Come, sit down, every mother's son, and rehearse your parts.
Midsummer Night's Dream. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 74.
