...raillery and sarcasm with some of the audience. 1 To this absurd custom Hamlet alludes when he says, " And let those that play your clowns speak no more...some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too." Several specimens, probably genuine, are related in the following pages. Doggrel verse was generally...

...raillery and sarcasm with some of the audience.1 To this absurd custom Hamlet alludes when he says, " And let those that play your clowns speak no more...some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too." 1 See Malone's Shakespeare, ed. 1821, iii., 131, for several curious quotations on this subject. Several...

...attribute the following professional rebuke ?—" And let those who play your clowns (ie low comedians), speak no more than is set down for them ; for there...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 shews...

...humanity so abominably. I Play. I hope , we have reformed that indifferently with us. Ham. O! reform it altogether. And let those, that play your clowns,...speak no more than is set down for them : for there • tifthom, that will themselves laugh , to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too...

...of Nature's journeymen had made men, and uot made them well ; they imitated humanity so abominably. And let those that play your clowns, speak no more...of barren spectators to laugh too : though, in the meantime, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered : — that's villanous : and...

...judicious grieve; the censure of one of which, must in your allowance overweigh a whole theatre of others. "And let those that play your clowns speak no more...of barren spectators to laugh too ; though in the meantime, some necessary part of the play be then to be considered. That's villainous, and shows a...

...reflection shew each man All his deformities both of soul and body, And cure 'em both. III. 2. HAMLET. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them. It is well shewn in the notes that in the infancy of the the English drama, that is, before the time...

...Come, more — another stanza.' ('As You Like It.') Why the devil did you speak to the audience? ' Let those that play your clowns, speak no more than is set down for them: a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.' " " I wath compelled to thay thomthing to the fellow...

...imputed by Shakespeare, in a well known passage of his " Hamlet," to actors of Kemp's description : " Let those that play your clowns speak no more than...the mean time some necessary question of the play bo then to be considered : that's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses...

...grieve; the censure of one of which, must in your allowance overweigh a whole theatre of others. " And let those that play your clowns speak no more...of barren spectators to laugh too ; though in the meantime, some necessary part of the play be then to be considered. That's villainous, and shows a...