“He was a delightful Proteus, so wholly transforming himself into his part, and putting off himself with his clothes, as he never (not so much as in the ’tiring house) assumed himself again until the play was done....  He had all the parts of an excellent orator, animating his words with speaking, and speech with acting, his auditors being never more delighted than when he spake, nor more sorry than when he held his peace.  Yet even then he was an excellent actor still, never failing in his part when he had done speaking, but with his looks and gestures maintaining it still to the height.”

It is not my intention, even if time permitted, to go much into the private life of the four actors of whom I propose to speak.  Very little is known of Burbage’s private life, except that he was married; perhaps Shakespeare and he may have been drawn nearer together by the tie of a common sorrow; for, as the poet lost his beloved son Hamlet when quite a child, so did Burbage lose his eldest son Richard.  Burbage died on March 13th, 1617, being then about 50 years of age:  Camden, in his Annals of James I., records his death, and calls him a second Roscius.  He was sincerely mourned by all those who loved the dramatic art; and he numbered among his friends Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher, and other “common players,” whose names were destined to become the most honored in the annals of English literature.  Burbage was the first great actor that England ever saw, the original representative of many of Shakespeare’s noblest creations, among others, of Shylock, Richard, Romeo, Hamlet, Lear, Othello, and Macbeth.  We may fairly conclude Burbage’s acting to have had all the best characteristics of Natural, as opposed to Artificial acting.  The principles of the former are so clearly laid down by Shakespeare, in Hamlet’s advice to the players, that, perhaps, I cannot do better than to repeat them:—­

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.  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-show 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,