- State Library of Victoria
- > Mirror of the World
- Home >
- Imagination >
- Literary Greats >
- Shakespeare
Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories and Tragedies
William Shakespeare
1632
This is the Second Folio of Shakespeare's plays, printed nine years after his works were first published as Mr William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies Published According to the True Original Copies. The original printing, known as the First Folio, was compiled from unauthorised versions by two actors of the King's Company of Players, John Heminge and Henry Condell. For many of Shakespeare's plays, it remains the only source.
The Second Folio also included John Milton's first published poem 'An Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare', which appeared anonymously. The well-known portrait of Shakespeare, included as a frontispiece, was made by artist Martin Droeshout.
A Third Folio of Shakespeare's plays appeared in 1663. The Library also holds a copy of the final Fourth Folio, published in 1685.
Listen
This is a reading (length 01:19) from Shakespeare’s Act 3, Scene 2. A transcript of the reading is also available below.
Read Transcript
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our 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) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious, periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose 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.
This extract is from Hamlet. Act 3, Scene 2.
Read by David Greagg
Recorded on 29 March 2007
