The Scottish Play Murder Read Online Free PDF

one of the two young women in the troupe, was caught staring by Matthew, who appeared to dislike her interest in Ramsay.
    Matthew had made it plain he was attracted to Liza from the moment she’d arrived in the summer and impressed everyone with her perfect memory for speech, and he seemed to have developed a claim on her. Liza neither acknowledged nor denied their friendship publicly, but Matthew was making it plain they had an understanding of some sort, particularly now, with her attention wandering to Ramsay. Matthew sidled toward her, and without touching her, appeared to be standing guard. Liza pretended not to notice him, and Suzanne wondered whether that understanding was all on one side.
    Arturo and some others stole glances, but Suzanne didn’t think it was for attraction. Ramsay gave no sign of noticing Liza or Matthew, nor any of the other dozen or so who stared at him, but he gazed up into the gallery at Suzanne, who in her turn pretended to ignore him but kept him in the corner of her eye as she watched Horatio. Ramsay then attended to Horatio as the troupe master opened his mouth and drew a deep breath to speak.
    “We begin today in our practice for the presentation of Shakespeare’s Scottish play.” Here he crossed himself in a quick, nervous gesture. “And though it goes against my better judgment to have aught to do with it, we shall make every effort to present the play as Shakespeare would have it. I beseech you all to play the play as it was meant by the bard.
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.
” Here he leaned in and peered into each face before him, as if accusing each player of having no more acting talent or skill than a town crier. “
Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus
”—he demonstrated with the very gesticulating arms that were his habit offstage but never when onstage—“
but use all gently
.” Now he stopped waving and made smaller, gentler gestures. “
For in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temprance 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 Termagent; it out-Herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.
” Horatio then paused for breath.
    Ramsay at this juncture lifted his head and said in a voice that reverberated from the rafters, “
I warrant your honor!
” The group all turned to him and stared. It was the speech from the play, given at that moment by the First Player. Nobody had ever dared interrupt Horatio before, particularly since the line expressed frustration that Hamlet was, as it were, preaching to the choir and his words were unnecessary. The troupe were each professionals, most of them well experienced, and shouldn’t need to be told these things. Ramsay, in his newness and unfamiliarity with their eccentric master, was the first to say so.
    Horatio paused briefly, staring at the Scot, and muttered, “Indeed,” then continued with Hamlet’s speech in a pointed tone.
“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 any thing 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.
”
    There usually was more, but Horatio seemed to sense a tension in his audience today, and at that point he segued away from Hamlet and marshaled his own