Original: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc’d it to you, trippingly on the tongue.
Modern: Please deliver the lines exactly as I showed you, smoothly and naturally.

Original: But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as live the town crier spoke my lines.
Modern: But if you over-pronounce it like many actors do, I’d rather have the town announcer say my lines.

Original: 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.
Modern: Don’t wave your hands around wildly like this, but keep your gestures gentle; even when you’re expressing intense emotions, you need to maintain control to keep your performance smooth.

Original: 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 cars of the groundlings, who (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise.
Modern: It deeply bothers me to hear some loud, wig-wearing actor destroy an emotional scene with over-acting, just to get cheap applause from the audience members who only appreciate mindless spectacle and noise.

Original: I would have such a fellow whipp’d for o’erdoing Termagant.
Modern: I’d like to see such an actor punished for over-acting worse than the most extreme stage villain.

Original: It out-herods Herod.
Modern: It’s more over-the-top than the most exaggerated theatrical tyrant.

Original: Pray you avoid it.
Modern: Please don’t do that.

Original: Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor.
Modern: But don’t be too restrained either; use your own good judgment as your guide.

Original: 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.
Modern: Match your movements to your words and your words to your movements, but be careful not to go beyond what feels natural, because anything overdone defeats the purpose of acting, which has always been to reflect real life back to the audience; to show people what virtue and vice actually look like, and to capture the true spirit of our times.

Original: 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.
Modern: When acting is either overdone or underdone, it might make ignorant people laugh, but it will definitely disappoint thoughtful audience members; and you should value the opinion of one intelligent person more than a whole theater full of fools.

Original: 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.
Modern: I’ve seen actors that others praise highly who speak and move so unnaturally that I wonder if God’s apprentices made them instead of God himself, because they imitate human behavior so badly.

Original: O, reform it altogether!
Modern: Change this completely!

Original: And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them.
Modern: And make sure the comic actors stick to their written lines.

Original: For there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered.
Modern: Some of them laugh at their own jokes to get the shallow audience members to laugh too, even when an important part of the plot should be getting attention.

Original: That’s villanous and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.
Modern: That’s terrible and shows pathetic attention-seeking by the comedian who does it.

Original: Go make you ready.
Modern: Go get ready now.

In Act III, Scene 2 of Hamlet, the Prince meets with the players who have arrived at Elsinore and delivers specific instructions on how they should perform the play he has prepared for the court that evening. Hamlet advises the actors to speak their lines naturally and avoid excessive gesturing or shouting, emphasizing that the purpose of playing is to hold a mirror up to nature and show the true form of the times. He warns them against overacting, as it offends him when actors tear passion to shreds, and he also cautions against being too tame, insisting they must suit the action to the word and the word to the action. After the players exit to prepare, Hamlet speaks privately with Horatio, praising his friend’s balanced nature and revealing his plan to watch Claudius closely during the performance of a scene that resembles the murder of King Hamlet.

The court assembles for the play, and Hamlet positions himself near Ophelia while asking Horatio to observe the King’s reaction. Before the main performance begins, a dumb show presents a silent version of the murder: a king and queen display affection, the king sleeps, a villain pours poison in his ear, the queen discovers the body and grieves, and the poisoner woos and wins her. The Player King and Player Queen then perform a spoken scene in which they discuss their long marriage, and the Queen vows never to remarry if her husband dies. When the character Lucianus enters and pours poison into the sleeping king’s ear, Claudius abruptly rises and calls for light, effectively ending the performance. The King exits in apparent distress, followed by the rest of the court, leaving Hamlet and Horatio to confirm that Claudius’s reaction has proven his guilt.

Hamlet tells the story of Prince Hamlet of Denmark, who is visited by the ghost of his recently deceased father. The ghost reveals that he was murdered by Hamlet’s uncle Claudius, who has now married Hamlet’s mother Gertrude and assumed the throne. Commanded by his father’s spirit to seek revenge, Hamlet struggles with doubt, melancholy, and the moral complexity of his task. To investigate the ghost’s claims and plan his revenge, he feigns madness, which creates tension throughout the Danish court.

As Hamlet deliberates, his erratic behavior affects everyone around him, particularly his love interest Ophelia, daughter of the king’s advisor Polonius. To test Claudius’s guilt, Hamlet stages a play mirroring his father’s murder, which confirms the king’s culpability. However, Hamlet’s actions become increasingly destructive—he accidentally kills Polonius while the old man spies on him, and his rejection of Ophelia contributes to her descent into genuine madness and eventual drowning.

The play reaches its climax when Ophelia’s brother Laertes returns to avenge his father’s death. Claudius manipulates Laertes into challenging Hamlet to a duel, secretly poisoning Laertes’s sword and preparing poisoned wine as backup. The final scene erupts in tragedy: during the duel, both Hamlet and Laertes are wounded by the poisoned blade, Gertrude accidentally drinks the poisoned wine, and Hamlet finally kills Claudius. As Hamlet dies, he names Prince Fortinbras of Norway as Denmark’s next ruler, bringing the cycle of revenge and political instability to a close. The play ends with Fortinbras restoring order to the Danish court as bodies are carried off in a funeral march.