of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as ’twere 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 unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o’erweigh a whole theatre 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. 

 FIRST PLAYER. I hope we have reform’d that indifferently with us, sir. 

 HAMLET. O reform it altogether. 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 meantime 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. Go make you ready. 

 [Exeunt Players.] 

Players

 Enter Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 

Polonius, Rosencrantz

Guildenstern

 How now, my lord? Will the King hear this piece of work? 

 POLONIUS. And the Queen too, and that presently. 

 HAMLET. Bid the players make haste. 

 [Exit Polonius.] 

Polonius

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