We know not how our play may pass this stage,
But by the best of poets in that age
THE MALTA-JEW had being and was made;
And he then by the best of actors play’d:
In HERO AND LEANDER one did gain
A lasting memory; in Tamburlaine,
This Jew, with others many, th’ other wan
The attribute of peerless, being a man
Whom we may rank with (doing no one wrong)
Proteus for shapes, and Roscius for a tongue, –
So could he speak, so vary; nor is’t hate
To merit in him who doth personate
Our Jew this day; nor is it his ambition
To exceed or equal, being of condition
More modest: this is all that he intends,
(And that too at the urgence of some friends, )
To prove his best, and, if none here gainsay it,
The part he hath studied, and intends to play it.