A Player is a representatif by his calling, a person of all qualities; and though his profession be to counterfeit, and he never means what he says, yet he endeavours to make his words and actions always agree. His labour is to play, and his bus'nes to turn passion into action – The more he dissembles, the more he is in earnest, and the less he appears himself, the truer he is to his professions. … He assumes a body like an apparition, and he can turn himself into as many shapes as a witch. … When he is off the stage he acts a gentleman, and in that only makes his own part himself. … He is like a Motion made by clockwork, the Poet winds him up, and he walks and moves till his part run down, and then he is quiet. … His profession is a kind of metamorphosis, to transform himself out of one shape into another, like a taylors sheet of paper, which he folds into figures.

I am not that I play.