William Shakespeare quotes about acting

If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue.

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting

Like a dull actor now,Even to a full disgrace.

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting

Out, out, brief candle!it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting

As in a theatre, the eyes of men,Thinking his prattle to be tedious.

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting

I can counterfeit the deep tragedian;Intending deep suspicion.

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting

A beggarly account of empty boxes.

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting

And, like a strutting player, whose conceit'Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage.

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting

Good, my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting

Is it not monstrous that this player here,That from her working all his visage wann'd.

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,That I have? He would drown the stage with tears.

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting

I have heardWith most miraculous organ.

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting

The play's the thingWherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. 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, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature.

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting

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.

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting

Come, sit down, every mother's son, and rehearse your parts.

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting

Is there no play,To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting

A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,Which makes it tedious.

— William Shakespeare quotes about acting