Know mortals, that the men the gods moft love, In hard and dang'rous arts they always prove; When men live brave at first, then fall to crimes, Their bad is chronicle to future times :
For who begins good arts, and not proceeds; He but goes backward in all noble deeds.
Goffe's Couragious Turk. Not to promote what we do once commence,. Argues a weakness, and a diffidence.
When great ones, for great actions are bound, And failed far i'th' voyage, they will not Turn for their honour, but be rather drown'd; Nor can, perhaps: as thofe the gulph have shot: Or not begin, or finish, is a rule,
As well in Mars's, as in Venus' school.
Nerves would be cramp'd, the lazy blood would freeze, Limbs be unactive, fhould they longer lie; And if they ftill fhould facrifice to ease, Valour would fall into a lethargy:
Dull lakes are choak'd with melancholick mud; Motions do clear, and christallize a flood.
Revolt is recreant, when purfuit is brave ; Never to faint, doth purchase what we crave.
Machen's Dumb Knight.
Attempt the end, and never ftand to doubt ; Nothing's fo hard, but fearch will find it out.
You hurt your innocence, fuing for the guilty. Johnson's Volpone.
Virtue is either lame, or not at all; And love a facrilege, and not a faint, When it bars up the way to mens petitions.
Beaumont and Fletcher's Valentinian.
How wretched is that fuppliant, who must Make fuit to obtain that, which he fears to take? Richard Brome's Mad couple well match’d.
Of all means to prefer my juft complaints With any promifing hope to gain a hearing; Much lefs redress: Petitions not fweetned
With gold, are but unfav'ry; oft refus'd: Or if receiv'd, are pocketted, not read. A fuitor's fwelling tears by the glowing beams Of chol❜rick authority are dry'd up,
Before they fall; or if feen, never pity'd.
Maffinger's Emperor of the Eaft.
Petitions fhall be drawn,
Humble in form; but fuch for matter
As the bold Macedonian youth would fend To men he did despise for luxury:
The first begets opinion of the world,
Which looks not far, but on the outfide dwells: Th' other enforces courage in our own;
For bold demands must boldly be maintain'd.
Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of paffion, Could force his foul fo to his own conceit, That, from her working, all his visage warm'd: Tears in his eyes, diftraction in his afpect, A broken voice, and his whole function futing With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing? For Hecuba?
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba
That he fhould weep for her? what would he do, Had he the motive, and the cue for paffion,
That I have? he would drown the ftage with tears, And cleave the gen'ral ear with horrid speech; Make mad the guilty, and appall the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed, The very faculty of eyes and ears.
Shakespear's Hamlet.
1. Speech
1. Speak the fpeech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd It to you, trippingly on the tongue. But If you mouth it, as many of our players Do, I had as liefe, the town crier had Spoke my lines and do not faw the air too Much with your hand thus, but use all gently; For in the very torrent, tempeft, and, As I may fay, whirl-wind of your paffion, You must acquire, and beget a temp'rance That may give it fmoothness. Oh, it offends Me to the foul, to hear a robuftious Periwig-pated fellow tear a paffion
To tatters, to very rags, to split the
Ears of the groundlings: who, for the most part, Are capable of nothing, but inexplicable
Dumb fhews, and noife: I could have fuch a fellow Whip'd for o'erdoing termagant; it
Out-Herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it.
1. Be not too tame neither; but let your own Difcretion be your tutor, fute the action
To the word, the word to the action; With this special obfervance, that you o'erftep Not the modefty of nature; for any Thing fo overdone is from the purpose Of playing; whofe end, both at the first and Now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror Up to nature; to fhew virtue her own Feature, fcorn her own image, and the very Age and body of the time, his form and Preffure. Now this o'erdone, or come tardy Of, tho' it makes th' unskilful laugh, cannot But make the judicious grieve: the cenfure Of which one, muft in your allowance o'er weigh A whole theatre of others. Oh, there be Players that I've seen play, and heard others Praise, and that highly, not to fpeak it prophanely, That neither having the accent of chriftian,
Nor the gait of christian, pagan, nor man, Have fo ftrutted, and bellow'd, that I have Thought fome of nature's journeymen had made Men, and not made them well; they imitated Humanity fo abominably!
2. I hope, we have reform'd that indiff'rently With us,
1. Oh! reform it altogether.
And let those that play your clowns, speak no more Than is fet down for them: for there be of
Them, that will themselves laugh, to fet on fome Quantity of barren fpectators to
Laugh too; though, in the mean time, fome Neceffary queftion of the play be
Then to be confider'd: that's villainous;
And fhews a moft pitiful ambition
In the fool that uses it.
Were never more uncertain in their lives:
They know not when to play, where to play, nor What to play; not when to play, for fearful fools; Where to play, for puritan fools ; nor what
To play, for critical fools.
Middleton's Mad World my Mafters. They abuse our scene,
And fay we live by vice, indeed 'tis true ;
As the phyficians by diseases do,
Only to cure them: they do live we fee Like cooks by pamp'ring prodigality; Which are our fond accufers.
We fet an ufurer to tell this age How ugly looks his foul; a prodigal, Is taught by us how far from liberal His folly bears him. Boldly I dare fay, There has been more by us in fome one play Laugh'd into wit, and virtue, than hath been By twenty tedious lectures drawn from fin,
And foppifh humours: hence the caufe doth rife, Men are not won by th' ears, fo well as eyes. Randolph's Mufes Looking-Glafs. "Tis better in a play
Be Agamemnon, than himfelf indeed; How oft with danger of the field befet, Or with home mutinies, would he unbe Himself? or over cruel altars weeping, Wish, that with putting off a vizard, he Might his true inward forrow lay afide? The fhews of things are better than themselves : How doth it stir this aiery part of us,
To hear our poets tell imagin'd fights, And the strange blows that feigned courage gives? When I'd Achilles hear upon the stage
Speak honour, and the greatness of his foul, Methinks, I too could on a Phrygian spear Run boldly, and make tales for after times: But when we come to act it in the deed, Death mars, this bravery, and th' ugly fears Of the other world, fit on the proudest brow; And boating valour lofeth it's red cheek.
PLEASURE. Eafe dulls the fp'rit; each drop of fond delight Allays the thirst, which glory doth excite.
All these fond pleafures, if fond things
Deferve fo good a name,
Should not feduce a noble mind,
To stain itself with fhame.
The time fhall come, when all these fame,
Which feem fo rich with joy :
Like tyrants, shall torment thy mind,
Brandon's Octavia to Antonius.
Pleasure is like a building, the more high,
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