But if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. III, 2, 4.
These lines refer to the delivery of the speech, inserted by Hamlet in the play scene. Apparently Shakespeare did not appreciate this boisterous school of acting, which was of a pompous oratorical style, uttering the words with great distinctness of articulation, amounting almost to affectation; in brief, a species of ranting. In poetry, verses are termed lines. Milton, in his ode to Shakespeare, prefixed to the Second Folio, 1632, writes:
“... and that each part Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued Book Those Delphic lines with deep impression took.”
“Unvalued” in the above quotation is here used for our modern word “invaluable.” Shakespeare uses the word in both its ancient and modern definitions, namely, “Inestimable stones, unvalued Jewels,” in “Richard III,” and once in “Hamlet,” “He may not as unvalued persons do Carve for himself.”
An actor of to-day still refers to the words of his part as his lines. A further instance of ranting occurs in Churchill’s “Roliad,” where he speaks disparagingly of an actor in the following couplet:
He mouths a sentence As a cur mouths a bone.
Shakespeare himself refers to his “untutored lines” in the dedication of “Lucrece” to the Earl of Southampton.
The humourous-man shall end his part in peace. II, 2, 336.
In this passage the “humourous man” has no connection with the funny or comical character in our present day melodramas. The meaning in this latter sense is first used at the end of the seventeenth century. The Shakesperean sense was moody, peevish, or capricious, ever ready in entering into a quarrel, and represented by such characters as Mercutio, Jacques, and Faulconbridge.
He that plays the King shall be welcome. II, 2, 332.
The play I remember pleased not the million. II, 2, 456.
An excellent play well digested in the scenes. II, 2, 46.
We’ll hear a play to-morrow. Dost thou hear me? Old friend, can you play the murder of Gonzago? II, 2, 56.
I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play Have, by the very cunning of the scene, Been struck so to the soul, that presently They have proclaimed their malefactions. II, 2, 618.