Contaminate our fingers with base bribes ? Cas. Brutus, bay not me: I'll not endure it. You forget yourselfTM Bru. Go to! You are not, Cassius, Bru I say you are not. Cas Urge me no more: I shall forget myself s Have mind upon your health: tempt me no farther. Bu. -Away slight man! Cas. Is't possible! Bru Hear me. for I will speak. Must I give way and room to your rash choler P Cas. Must I endure all this! Bru. All this! Ay, more. Fret till your proud heart break; Go, show your slaves how choleric you are, You shall digest the venom of your spleen, Eas. Is it come to this? Bru. You say you are a better soldier ; I shall be glad to learn of noblemen. Cas. You wrong me every way; you wrong me Brutuss I said an elder soldier, not a better. Did I say better? Bru. If you did I care not. Cas. When Cesar liv'd he durst not thus have mov'd me Bru. Peace peace; you durst not so have tempted him Cas. I durst not! Bru. No. Cas. What! durst not tempt him! Cas. Do not presume too much upon my love. Bru. You have done that you should be sorry For certain sums of gold, which you denied me; for's And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring To you for gold to pay my legions; Which denied me. you Was that done like Cassius Should I have answer'd Caius Cassius so? When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous, To lock such rascal counters from his friends, Cas. I denied you not. Bru. You did. Cas. I did not; he was but a fool That brought my answer back. Brutus hath riv'd my heart. A friend should bear a friend's infirmities; But Brutus makes mine greater than they are. Bru. I do not like your faults. Cas. A friendly eye could never see such faults. As huge as high Olympus. Cas. Come Anthony! And young Octavius, come! Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius: For Cassius is weary of the world Hated by one he loves; brav'd by his brother; When thou didst hate him worst, thou lov'st him better Than ever thou lov'st Cassius. Bru. Sheath your dagger, Be angry when you will, it shall have scope, Cas. Hath Cassius lived To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus, Cas. O Brutus ! Bru. What's the matter? Cas. Have you not love enough to bear with me, When the rash humor which my mother gave me, Makes me forgetful P Bru. Yes, Cassius; and from henceforth, When you are over earnest with your Brutus, He'll think your mother chides, and leave you so. 11-SPEECHES AND SOLILOQUIES. TRAGEDY OF HAMLET. SPEAK the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you; trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town crer had spoken my lines. And do not saw the air too. much with your hands; but use all gently: For in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh! it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious, perriwig 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. 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'er step not the modesty of nature; for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing; whose end is-to hold as 'twere, 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 of, though it make the unskil ul laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of one of which must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh! There be play ers that I have seen play and heard others praise, and that highly, that, neither having the accent of Christian, 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. II.-Douglas' Account of himself. TRAGEDY OF DOUGLAS. For I had heard of battles, and I long'd To follow to the field some warlike lord; And heaven soon granted what my sire denied. With bended bow, and quiver full of arrows, Hover'd about the enemy, and mark'd Till we o'ertook the spoil encumber'd foe. We fought-and conquer'd. Ere a sword was drawn, The shepherd's slothful life; and having heard III.-Douglas' Account of the Hermit.—IB. Did they report him; the cold earth his bed, For he had been a soldier in his youth; His speech struck from me, the old man would shake His years away, and act his young encounters: Then, having show'd his wounds, he'd sit him down, |