Burton's Amateur Actor: A Complete Guide to Private Theatricals ...

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Dick & Fitzgerald, 1876 - 150 pages
 

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Page 58 - Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor : suit the action to the word, and the word to the action...
Page 64 - ... 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.
Page 63 - 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.
Page 63 - O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious, periwigpated 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. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it.
Page 64 - ... 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.
Page 63 - Oh, it offends me to the soul to see a robustious periwig-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.
Page 64 - 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 villainous; and . shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.
Page 74 - Tis gone — but remembrance will often retrace The indulgent applause which rewarded each theme, And the heart-cheering smiles that enlivened each face. We thank you ! — Our gratitude words cannot tell, But deeply we feel it — to you it belongs; With heartfelt emotion we bid you farewell, And our feelings now thank you much more than our tongues.
Page 81 - You have made bitter earnest of it. [Cries,.] Not a quarter of an hour ago you said you would never change, and now there you stand as cold and indifferent as if we had been married for twenty years. HEN. Now, now, don't cry — you know how that irritates me. JES.

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