Peddling information on the “How-To” of public speaking is an almost ludicrously profitable endeavor. It seems like everyone is looking for a way to bring people around to their point of view, whether it’s with the intent of selling them their latest gadget or inspiring them to go out and start the next multi-billion dollar corporation.  These speakers can be heard on the radio, read on the Internet and their books and pamphlets purchased at your nearest neighborhood bookstore.

These men and women aren’t by any means the first to teach the art of public speaking, no matter what they would have you believe. Some of the best speaking advice in history was penned by the infamous William Shakespeare as far back as the 1600s, and although his words were intended for his performers they apply to any student of speaking.  The ability to deliver a line clearly and concisely, with the proper emotion, is an essential part of both acting and public speaking. Hamlet himself said it best when he said,

“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, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh, 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 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 't were, 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. 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 theater of others. Oh, 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.”

“Oh, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready.”

Shakespeare’s words are an invaluable asset to the student of public speaking. After all, if “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players”, where better to learn the fine art of public speaking than from the master of the stage himself?     

My Name Is Christopher Carlin And I Want To Give You Twenty Free Public Speaking Tips