Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Hamlet, a dramatic prelude, in five acts / by James Rush. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![The people must have Leaders; being that their wills are sovereign and uncontrollable. Ham. Then must the leading-strings be like the hairs that move Punch and his company, in the show : so invisible, that even the puppets might think, if they could think, that they moved of themselves.—But look you! There's one who seems to have had his eyes from different parcels ; and a mouth to suit neither. His enmity never sits in the shadow of his brow: and his smile answers not at the nick of time, when his fawning calls upon it. Where all the children of the face, Marcellus, thus disagree at play, 'tis a sign their father, the soul, is a bad fellow himself. Having so little favor from God, can he hope any from the people. Mar. There are some who have an emptiness of sense, that yet will hold their cup, and drink the stream of it in others. But this fellow has a double lack in vacancy :—neither brain, nor the borrowing of it. Yet he too, asks a place, and will get one. Ham. I'll make a memorandum here, Marcellus.— The difference with ambition is, that,—the world puts weak and thanking vanity in honor: whilst greatness puts, and therefore thanks, himself. Mar. Which dost thou count the harder task, my lord,—to receive honor, or—to take it? Ham. To take honor, as we call the success of him who deserves it, requires you—to suffer much from yourself. To receive honor,—you must bear more from others: so choose between penance and a packsad- dle. Now there's a leader striving to fill his panniers with good opinions, by showing a ready-made acquaint- ance with every one on the ground. Mar. Ah ! he has seen them once at least before; and that's enough. For he always carries about him, the some-day-or-other purpose of a knave's memory:— he never forgets a face. [A leader appears in the rostrum, and goes through a dumb show of mouthing and gesticulation.'] Ham. See that orator: he mouths it as if he had](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21152081_0075.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
