Thursday, August 15, 2019


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 Cristian, 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.
-Hamlet

Hamlet                                    Act III scene ii line 34

This is the last sentence of the ‘Speak the speech’ speech that Hamlet gives to the players. It’s a couple of paragraphs long where he’s telling the players, who are going to be putting on a play for the court, how to act. In this last sentence, above, he’s going on about some of the bad actors that he has seen. Strutted and bellowed! Those are good words.

So I guess there are a lot of different ways to go about discussing the ‘Speak the speech’ speech, or even just this one sentence in the last paragraph. But I have work to do right now, so I’m going to leave it to you. It’s a good sentence, albeit a bit long. So do what you will with it. Strut and bellow if you like!

This is WP's one hand performance at the roman amphitheater in Merida, Spain. It's wonderfully understated, don't you agree? And not one bit of strutting or bellowing.

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