Bella and I are starting Shakespeare Saturday because he is awesome and Tumblr needs something cool to do on Saturdays!
This passage is from Hamlet, Act III, scene 2, lines 39-46. This play is so meta, which amuses me. Not only is Hamlet offering advice to the players who are to put on a play (within a play,) but Shakespeare is giving advice on how to perform his plays. It’s also a foreshadowing of events to come. Overall, great use of a monologue.
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; though, in the mean time, some necessary
question of the play be then to be considered:
that’s villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition
in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.
