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I.-PROSE SELECTIONS.

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70.-Shakespeare on Good Elocution.

This selection is Hamlet's address to the players in the tragedy of 'Hamlet" (Act III. Scene 2), the most sublime and profound of all the plays of Shakespeare (1564-1616). It is a perfect epitome of the art of elocutionary delivery, and should be committed to memory by every pupil who wishes to learn to read well.

S

PEAK 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-crier1 spoke my lines.

2

Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus: 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. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a

1 town-crier: in Old England | negative so frequent in Shakespeare the person whose business it was and other older English writers. to make public announcements of Point out other examples in this every kind, and whose delivery piece. was likely to be in a bawling and monotonous tone.

2 nor do not: observe the double

8 torrent. . . whirlwind: what figure of speech is this? (See Def. 6.) 4 temperance, moderation.

robustious1 periwig-pated2 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.1 I pray you, avoid it.

6

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'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as it were, 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 off, though it make the unskillful laugh, can not but make the judicious

1 robustious, fat and bluster- | judgment in regard to acting was ing. notably very bad.

2 periwig-pated; i.e., his pate or head covered with a periwig or wig. Periwigs (from French perruque), in Shakespeare's time, were worn by actors only, and not, as later, by others. In relation to this and other allusions to the stage, it is interesting to bear in mind that Shakespeare was himself an actor, and the manager of the Globe Theater in London.

3 groundlings: those who stood on the ground in the pit, or lower part of the theater, and whose

4 Termagant... Herod: Termagant (corruption of Terragant, a Saracen deity) and Herod were characters in the old "miracleplays," remarkable for their boisterous demeanor.

5 word... word. What is the figure of speech? (See Def. 5.) 6 from, contrary to.

7 his = its; the latter form being scarcely introduced into our language in Shakespeare's time.

8 pressure, impress, character. 9 come tardy off, too feebly represented.

2

grieve; the censure1 of the which one, must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theater of others. O, there be players, that I have seen play,- and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the 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.

71.-Washington's Sword and Franklin's Staff.

This eloquent speech was delivered by John Quincy Adams on the occasion of the presentation of Washington's sword and Franklin's staff to the United States government.

The Sword of Washington! The Staff of Franklin! O, sir, what associations are linked in adamant with these names! Washington, whose sword was never drawn but in the cause of his country, and never sheathed when wielded in his country's cause! Franklin, the philosopher of the thunderbolt and the printing press! What names are these in the scanty catalogue of the benefactors of human kind!

1 censure, judgment, opinion. 2 the which one; i.e., one of whom, namely, the judicious.

3 linked in adamant: not to be severed. "Adamant" is a Greek derivative, meaning not to be broken.

4 thunderbolt

press. 'Thunderbolt" (i.e., lightning), in allusion to Franklin's invention of the lightning rod. "Printing press," in allusion to Franklin's improvement of the old printing press, in the form of what is still known as the Frank

printing lin press.

Washington and Franklin! What other two men whose lives belong to the eighteenth century of Christendom, have left a deeper impression of themselves upon the age in which they lived, and upon all after time?

WASHINGTON! the warrior and the legislator. In war, contending by the wager of battle, for the independence of his country, and for the freedom of the human race, ever manifesting amidst its horrors, by precept and by example, his reverence for the laws of peace and for the tenderest sympathies of humanity; in peace, soothing the ferocious spirit of discord among his own countrymen into harmony and union, and giving to that very sword, now presented to his country, a charm more potent than that attributed in ancient times to the lyre. of Orpheus.

FRANKLIN! the mechanic of his own fortune; teaching, in early youth, under the shackles of indigence, the way to wealth, and, in the shade of obscurity, the path to greatness; in the maturity of manhood, disarming the thunder of its terrors, the lightning of its fatal blast; and wresting from the tyrant's hand the still more afflictive scepter of oppression: while descending the vale of years, traversing the Atlantic Ocean, braving, in the dead of winter, "the battle and the breeze," bearing in his hand the Charter of Independence1 which he had contributed to form, and tendering, from the self-created nation to the mightiest monarchs of Europe, the olive branch of peace,

1 traversing... Independence. | of that government in favor of the In the fall of 1776, Franklin was Americans. He carried with him sent as a diplomatic agent to the Declaration (Charter) of IndeFrance, in order to secure the voice pendence.

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