I Play.
What speech, my lord?
Ham.
I heard thee speak me a speech once,but it was never acted;
or if it was, not above once; for the play, I remember, pleased
not the million, 'twas caviare to the general; but it was,as I
received it, and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in
the top of mine,an excellent play, well digested in the scenes,
set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember, one said
there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury,
nor no matter in the phrase that might indite the author of
affectation; but called it an honest method, as wholesome as
sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in it
I chiefly loved: 'twas AEneas' tale to Dido, and thereabout of it
especially where he speaks of Priam's slaughter: if it live in
your memory, begin at this line;let me see, let me see:
The rugged Pyrrhus, like th' Hyrcanian beast,
it is not so: it begins with Pyrrhus:
'The rugged Pyrrhus,he whose sable arms,
Black as his purpose,did the night resemble
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd
With heraldry more dismal; head to foot
Now is be total gules; horridly trick'd
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,
Bak'd and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and a damned light
To their vile murders: roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o'ersized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks.'
So, proceed you.
Pol.
'Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good
discretion.
I Play.
Anon he finds him,
Striking too short at Greeks: his antique sword,