A TALEIWhat a pretty tale you told meOnce upon a time—Said you found it somewhere (scold me!)Was it prose or was it rhyme,Greek or Latin? Greek, you said,While your shoulder propped my head.IIAnyhow there's no forgettingThis much if no more,That a poet (pray, no petting!)Yes, a bard, sir, famed of yore,Went where such like used to go,Singing for a prize, you know.IIIWell, he had to sing, nor merelySing but play the lyre;Playing was important clearlyQuite as singing: I desire,Sir, you keep the fact in mindFor a purpose that's behind.IVThere stood he, while deep attentionHeld the judges round,—Judges able, I should mention,To detect the slightest soundSung or played amiss: such earsHad old judges, it appears!VNone the less he sang out boldly,Played in time and tune,Till the judges, weighing coldlyEach note's worth, seemed, late or soon,Sure to smile 'In vain one triesPicking faults out: take the prize!'VIWhen, a mischief! Were they sevenStrings the lyre possessed?Oh, and afterward eleven,Thank you! Well, sir—who had guessedSuch ill luck in store?—it happedOne of those same seven strings snapped.VIIAll was lost, then! No! a cricket(What 'cicada'? Pooh!)—Some mad thing that left its thicketFor mere love of music—flewWith its little heart on fire,Lighted on the crippled lyre.VIIISo that when (Ah, joy!) our singerFor his truant stringFeels with disconcerted finger,What does cricket else but flingFiery heart forth, sound the noteWanted by the throbbing throat?IXAy and, ever to the ending,Cricket chirps at need,Executes the hands intending,Promptly, perfectly,—indeedSaves the singer from defeatWith her chirrup low and sweet.XTill, at ending, all the judgesCry with one assent'Take the prize—a prize who grudgesSuch a voice and instrument?Why, we took your lyre for harp,So it shrilled us forth F sharp!'XIDid the conqueror spurn the creature,Once its service done?That's no such uncommon featureIn the case when Music's sonFinds his Lotte's power too spentFor aiding soul-development.XIINo! This other, on returningHomeward, prize in hand,Satisfied his bosom's yearning:(Sir, I hope you understand!)—Said 'Some record there must beOf this cricket's help to me!'XIIISo, he made himself a statue:Marble stood, life-size;On the lyre, he pointed at you,Perched his partner in the prize;Never more apart you foundHer, he throned, from him, she crowned.XIVThat's the tale: its application?Somebody I knowHopes one day for reputationThro' his poetry that's—oh,All so learned and so wiseAnd deserving of a prize!XVIf he gains one, will some ticket,When his statue's built,Tell the gazer ''Twas a cricketHelped my crippled lyre, whose liltSweet and low, when strength usurpedSoftness' place i' the scale, she chirped?XVIFor as victory was nighest,While I sang and played—With my lyre at lowest, highest,Right alike,—one string that made"Love" sound soft was snapt in twain,Never to be heard again,—XVIIHad not a kind cricket fluttered,Perched upon the placeVacant left, and duly uttered"Love, Love, Love," whene'er the bassAsked the treble to atoneFor its somewhat somber drone.'XVIIIBut you don't know music! WhereforeKeep on casting pearlsTo a—poet? All I care forIs—to tell him that a girl's'Love' comes aptly in when gruffGrows his singing. (There, enough!)INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMPIYou know, we French stormed Ratisbon:A mile or so away,On a little mound, NapoleonStood on our storming-day;With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,Legs wide, arms locked behind,As if to balance the prone browOppressive with its mind.IIJust as perhaps he mused 'My plansThat soar, to earth may fall,Let once my army-leader LannesWaver at yonder wall,'—Out 'twixt the battery smokes there flewA rider, bound on boundFull-galloping; nor bridle drewUntil he reached the mound.IIIThen off there flung in smiling joy,And held himself erectBy just his horse's mane, a boy:You hardly could suspect—(So tight he kept his lips compressed,Scarce any blood came through)You looked twice ere you saw his breastWas all but shot in two.IV'Well,' cried he, 'Emperor, by God's graceWe've got you Ratisbon!The Marshal's in the market-place,And you'll be there anonTo see your flag-bird flap his vansWhere I, to heart's desire,Perched him!' The chief's eye flashed; his plansSoared up again like fire.VThe chief's eye flashed; but presentlySoftened itself, as sheathesA film the mother-eagle's eyeWhen her bruised eaglet breathes;'You're wounded!' 'Nay,' the soldier's prideTouched to the quick, he said:'I'm killed, Sire!' And his chief beside,Smiling the boy fell dead.MY LAST DUCHESSFERRARAThat's my last Duchess painted on the wall,Looking as if she were alive. I callThat piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's handsWorked busily a day, and there she stands.Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said'Frà Pandolf' by design; for never readStrangers like you that pictured countenance,The depth and passion of its earnest glance,But to myself they turned (since none puts byThe curtain I have drawn for you, but I)And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,How such a glance came there; so, not the firstAre you to turn and ask thus. Sir, t'was notHer husband's presence only, called that spotOf joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhapsFrà Pandolf chanced to say 'Her mantle lapsOver my lady's wrist too much,' or 'PaintMust never hope to reproduce the faintHalf-flush that dies along her throat': such stuffWas courtesy, she thought, and cause enoughFor calling up that spot of joy. She hadA heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,Too easily impressed; she liked whate'erShe looked on, and her looks went everywhere.Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,The dropping of the daylight in the West,The bough of cherries some officious foolBroke in the orchard for her, the white muleShe rode with round the terrace—all and eachWould draw from her alike the approving speech,Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thankedSomehow—I know not how—as if she rankedMy gift of a nine-hundred-years-old nameWith anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blameThis sort of trifling? Even had you skillIn speech—(which I have not)—to make your willQuite clear to such an one, and say, 'Just thisOr that in you disgusts me; here you miss,Or there exceed the mark'—and if she letHerself be lessoned so, nor plainly setHer wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,—E'en then would be some stooping; and I chooseNever to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,Whene'er I passed her; but who passed withoutMuch the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;Then all smiles stopped together. There she standsAs if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meetThe company below, then. I repeat,The Count your master's known munificenceIs ample warrant that no just pretenseOf mine for dowry will be disallowed;Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowedAt starting, is my object. Nay, we'll goTogether down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!—Browning.Our last form for interpretative vocal study is the play. We shall discover that the presentation of the play makes the same demands upon the interpreter as the monologue with the new element oftransition. We are still studying the monologue, because we are to read, not act, the play. It is still suggestive, not actualized impersonation. But instead of one character to suggestively set forth we have two, three, a dozen to present. The transition from character to character becomes our one new problem. As we have said before, in making the transition from character to character, voice, mind, and body must be so volatile that the action of the play shall not be interrupted. I know of nobetter way to enter upon the study of a play for reading (or acting) than to treat each character as the speaker in a monologue of the Browning type. The danger in transition from character to character centers in the instant's pause when one speaker yields to another. The unskilful reader loses both characters at this point and becomes conscious of himself; the action of the play stops; and the illusion of scene and situation is lost. The great reader of the play (in thatinstant's pause), as he utters the last word of one character, becomes the interlocutor listening to the words which he as the other character has just uttered. In that instant he must show the effect of the speech he has just uttered upon the character he has just become. Which is the greater art: to read a play, or to act in it?Use for your study of the play the Shakespearian drama. Begin with scenes fromAs You Like ItandThe Merchant of Venice; but begin with actualized impersonation of the characters. No discussion more! No analysis more! The play—the "play's thething" through which to complete this evolution in Vocal Expression.A FINAL WORD ON INTERPRETATIONLooking back over these studies in interpretation, let us review in true scholastic fashion the main points thus far discovered. We say looking back, but as far as the arrangement of our text goes this review involves looking forward too. The division of the book into three parts is purely a matter of a necessary separation in discussing the three activities involved in vocal expression. If your use of this book has been intelligent, each study in interpretation has revealed your need to strengthen your vocal vocabulary or to perfect your vocal technique, and you have turned at once for the required help to the studies inPart IIand the exercises inPart III.Omitting a review of thepreliminary plunge, which was intended to "show up" all your peculiar powers and all your especial needs at once, and so furnish a basis for the main work, let us see what happened in thefive following studies. It will simplify our statement in each case to base the analysis of our discoveries on the form of literature employed in each study.You found then (or ought to have found) in Study One: that the essay and didactic poem make a fundamental appeal to the mind; that the demand upon the interpreter of this form is for clear, concise thinking; that your need is for a command of unerring emphasis and purposeful inflection. You turned to the studies inpause,change of pitch, andinflectionto meet that need. Returning to the main study, you tested your vocal skill on the essay to find the essay so read might persuade an auditor to some readjustment of his ideas, values, discriminations, or strengthen him in convictions already held.Study Two revealed that in lyric poetry the primary appeal is to emotion; that its vocal demand upon the interpreter is for a mastery oftone-color, a sense of rhythm, and the power to suggest a background of musical sound. Having supplied as far as possibleany lack in your vocabulary or technique by supplementary work in Parts II and III, returning you found that a lyric rightly read could release in the auditor pity, forgiveness, forbearance, endurance, understanding, love.The Third Study should have convinced you that a sense ofgoodhumor is a safe and desirable thing to cultivate; that the whimsical tone in interpretation will leaven almost any lump of sheer learning and counteract a serious overdose of sentiment; that fable, fairy tale, and nonsense rhyme depend too for successful interpretation upon this element of whimsicality in the reader; that the secret of the whimsical element in vocal expression lies in a use ofpauseandinflection.Study Four should have discovered to you that the three elements of the short story can only be realized through imagination; that imaginative vigor dealing with action requires sustained vitality of tone. Such discovery should have resulted in many hours of work on the exercises forsupportandfreedomoftone.When you reached the Fifth and last Study, the work in monologue and drama should have easily awakened your dramatic instinct and quickly released your histrionic power. You should have learned through monologue and drama to understand various types of persons; to see more clearly the relations of men and events; to more intelligently comprehend life itself.Finally, we have discovered that to become a true interpreter of literature means to become a lucid channel for the message of an author to the mind of an auditor,—nay, that it means more than that. In final evolution the interpreter of literature becomes a revealer of life. The final effect of literature worth interpreting is to enlarge the world's knowledge of life's beauty, truth, or power. Your final concern as an interpreter is to let life find through you uninterrupted revelation on one of these planes; to become a pure medium between the beauty, truth, and power of life and the seeking soul. The author need not be considered in this final analysis, because you, the interpreter, firstbecame identified with the author, and then both of you are lost in the vision, save only as either personality may enlarge or clarify the revelation.A personal experience may help you to realize this ideal of the interpreter's art.With a sense of protest, I had presented a play I loved to an audience with which I felt little sympathy. By chance there was in that audience one of our best teachers and critics. After my recital I sought his criticism. Beginning, as the true critic always should, with a noting of some point of power, he said, "I congratulate you upon yourillumined moments, but—they are too infrequent. You must multiply them." "What do you mean by my illumined moments?" I asked. "The moments when you do not get between your audience and the thought you are uttering—the moments when you become a revealer of life to them. Your attitude toward your audience is not sustained in the simplicity and clearness of some of its moments. You suddenly ring down the curtain in the middle of the scene. Thatspoils the scene, you know. You seem to feel a revolt against the giving of your confidence to the audience, and thereupon you immediately shut them away. You become conscious of yourself, and we, the audience, lose the vision and become conscious of you and the way you are reading or reciting or acting." Then he added, "Adelaide Neilson, at first, had illumined moments in her playing of Juliet, but finally her impersonation became one piece of illumination." That delightful teacher, reader, and critic, the late Mr. Howard Ticknor, suggested the same ideal in comparing a Juliet of to-day with Miss Neilson's Juliet. "When Miss —— is on the balcony," he said, "you hear all around you: 'How lovely she looks!' 'Isn't that robe dear?' 'How beautiful her voice is!' When Miss Neilson lived that little minute, a breathless people prayed with Juliet, 'I would not for the world they found thee here,' and sighed with Romeo—'O blessed, blessed night! I am afeard, being in night, all this is but a dream.'" Miss NeilsonwasJuliet. They, the audience, lived with these loversone hour of lyric rapture, and could never again be quite so commonplace in their attitude toward the "deathless passion." They may not now remember Adelaide Neilson, but they remember that story, and forever carry a new vision of life and love, because the actress lost herself in the life of the play. She did not exploit her personality and let it stand between the audience and the drama. When some one says to you—the reader or actress, "I shall never forget the way you raised your eyebrow at that point," don't stop to reply, but fly to your study and read the lines "at that point" over and over, with level brows, until you understand the meaning, and can express the thought so effectively by a lift of your voice that you no longer need the help of your eyebrow. Every gesture, every tone, must call attention, not to itself, but to the hidden meaning of the author. It must illumine the text of the character portrayed. That is it: if we would be artists (and there is not one among us who would not be an artist) we must cease to put our little selvesin front of our messages. In the home, in the office, in the houses of our friends, in the school-room, on the platform, on the stage, let us besimple,natural,sincere. Let us lay aside our mannerisms. Let us seek to know and reveal life. Then shall we be remembered—not, for a queer way of combing our hair, or lifting our eyes, or using our hands, or shrugging our shoulders, but for some revelation of truth or of beauty which we have brought to a community.PART IISTUDIES IN VOCAL EXPRESSIONSTUDIES IN VOCAL EXPRESSIONTHE VOCAL VOCABULARYThere is a theory that it is dangerous to go beyond the mere freeing of the instrument in either vocal or physical training. In accordance with this theory I was advised by a well-known actress to confine my study for the stage, so far as the vocal and pantomimic preparation was concerned, to singing, dancing, and fencing. "Get your voice and body under control," she said. "Make them free, but don't connect shades of thought and emotion with definite tones of the voice or movements of the body; don't meddle with Delsarte or elocution." This advice seemed good at the time. It still seems to me that it ought to be the right method. But I have grown to distrust it. One of the chief sources of my distrust has been the effect of thetheory upon the art of the actress who gave the advice. She is perhaps the most graceful woman on the stage to-day, and her voice is pure music. But her gestures and tones fail in lucidity; they fail to illumine the text of the part she essays to interpret. One grows suddenly impatient of the meaningless grace of her movements, the meaningless music of her voice. One longs for a swift—if studied—stride across the stage in anger instead of the unstudied grace of her glide in swirling-robed protest. One longs to hear a staccato declaration of intention instead of the cadenced music of a voice guiltless of intention. No! After the body has been made a free and responsive agent, a mastery of certain fundamental laws, a mastery of certain principles of gesture in accordance with the dictates of thought and emotion, is necessary to its further perfecting as a vivid, powerful, and true agent of personality. The action must be suited to the word, the word to the action, through a study of the laws governing expression in action.So with the voice: to become not only afree instrument, but a beautiful and powerful means of expression and communication it must learn to recognize and obey certain fundamental laws governing its modulations. A master of verbal expression is distinguished by his vast vocabulary of words, and his skill and discrimination in its use. A master of vocal expression must acquire what we may call avocal vocabulary, consisting of changes of pitch, varieties of inflection and variations in tone color, and must know how to use these elements with skill and discrimination. Our need for such a vocabulary was discovered to us at every step of the work in interpretation. The suggestions and exercises of the following studies aim to supplement the work in interpretation by meeting that need. Before making a detailed study of each element of this vocal vocabulary let us make a quick study with the four elements in mind. Remember, in the last preliminary exercise, as in the final complete interpretative endeavor, the material we employ is to be chosen from real literature. It is to be worth interpreting whether it be asingle line or phrase or a complete poetical drama. We have agreed to consider literature as real literature, and so worth our interpretative efforts, when it possesses one or combines all of the three qualities,—beauty,truth, andpower.This passage from Emerson'sFriendshipsurely meets that requirement. It is truth beautifully and powerfully expressed. It will serve.Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams instead of the tough fiber of the human heart.Having read this passage cursorily (as is the custom in reading to one's self to-day), will you now study it for a moment very closely. Now, once more, please, read it silently, noting the action of your mind as you read. ("Watch its pulsations," Dr. Curry would say.) And now, aloud, although without an auditor, read it, this time noting the effect of the action of the mind upon your voice. Did its pitch change? Where and why? How did you inflect the words "wineand dreams"? How did the inflection of these words differ from that of the last six words, "tough fiber of the human heart," with which they are contrasted in thought? Did your tone change color at any point? Why? Where? But now, once more, let us approach the passage, this time with a different intention. Let us study it with the idea of interpreting it for another mind. Now the method of attack is very different. Not that it ought to be different. But it is. Intense concentration ought to characterize all our reading, whether its object be to acquire knowledge or pleasure for one's self, or to impart either to another. But the day of reading which "maketh a full man" seems to be long past, so far as the general public is concerned. The necessity of skimming the pages of a dozen fourth-rate books of the hour in order to be at least a lucid interlocutor, and so a desired dinner guest, is making our reading a swift gathering of colorless impressions which may remain a week or only a day, and which leave no lasting effect of beauty or truth upon the mind andheart of the reader. Should it not be rather an intense application of the mind to the thought of a master mind, until that thought, in all its power and beauty, has broadened the boundaries of the reader's mind and enlarged the meaning of all his thoughts? I wonder if a much smaller proportion of time spent in such reading might not result in a lessbromidicsocial atmosphere, even though its tendency were a bit serious. I think it might be both safe and interesting to try such an experiment.But now we must return to Emerson onFriendship. In studying a passage for the purpose of vocal interpretation you have learned that the concentration of attention upon the thought must be intense, you must make the thought absolutely your own before you can present it to your auditor, it must possess you before you can express it; that the thought must seem in the moment of its expression to be a creation of your own brain, it must belong to you as only the thing you have created can, and until you have so recreated the thought it is not yours to give.Having recalled these precepts, read the passage silently again. Pour upon it the light of your experience, your philosophy, your ideals, your perception of truth. Comment upon it silently as you read. Now read it aloud and let your voice do this commenting. But wait a moment. Let me quote for you the paragraph following this statement.The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen.This is Emerson's paraphrase of his original statement. How much of it did your mental commentary include? How did your silent paraphrase resemble this? Read the original passage again to yourself in the light of this paraphrase. I shall ask you now to repeat the first sentence from memory, for you will find, after this concentrated contemplation of a thought, that its form is fixed fast in your mind. That is a delightful accompaniment of this kind of reading. The form ofthe thought, if it be apposite (which it must be to be literature, and we are considering only literature), the form of a thought so approached stays with us in all its beauty.Let us then repeat the original statement, having read the passage in which Emerson has elaborated it. Now, what you must demand of your voice is this: that it shall so handle the single introductory sentence as to suggest the rest of the paragraph. In other words, your voice must do the paraphrasing, by means of its changes in pitch, its inflections, and its variations in tone-color; by means, in short, of itsvocal vocabulary.ISTUDY IN PAUSE AND CHANGE OF PITCHIt is asserted that, "the last word has not been said on any subject." Mr. Hamilton Mabie seemed to me to achieve alast wordon the subject ofpausewhen he casually remarked: "Emerson was a master of pause; he would pause, and into the poolof expectancy created by that pause drop just the right word." There seems little to be added to complete the exposition of that single sentence. It surely leaves no doubt in our minds as to the effect to be desired from the use of this element of our vocabulary. How to use it to gain that effect is our problem. First of all, we must cease to be afraid to pause. We hurry on over splendid opportunities to elucidate our text through a just use of this form of emphasis, beset by two fears: fear that we shall seem to have forgotten the text; fear that we shall actually forget it if we stop to think. Think of being afraid to stop to think lest we should stop thinking! That is precisely what the fear indicates. It arises, of course, from a confusion as to the real nature of pause. We confuse pause with its ghost, hesitation. Dr. Curry makes the difference clear for us in his definition of hesitation as an "empty pause." "Empty of what?" you ask. Empty of thought! Of course, an empty pause is a ghastly as well as a ghostly thing to experience. If you have ever faced an audiencein one of those "awful" moments when your voice has ceased because your thought has stopped, and when you are painfully aware of a pool of embarrassed sympathy into which you know there is no word to drop, then you have learned the meaning of anempty pause.On the other hand, if you shall ever face an audience in one of thosefatefulmoments when your voice pauses because your thought is so vital, that you realize both your audience and you must be given time to fully grasp it, and when you are serenely conscious of that "pool of expectancy" into which you know you have just the right word to drop, then you will learn the meaning of atrue pause.Some one has called inflection a running commentary of the emotions upon the thought. Emphasis might well be defined in the same way. The definition would need to be a bit more inclusive, since emphasis includes inflection. Emphasis then may be defined as a running commentary of the thought and emotion of the reader upon the thought of the text he interprets. Thewords reveal the thought; your valuation of that thought, as you interpret it, is revealed through your vocal vocabulary in voicing it. We, your auditors, can only gather from your emphasis your valuation of the truth or importance of what you are uttering. You may use one or all of the elements of your vocal vocabulary to bring out the thought of a single phrase. The elements of the vocal vocabulary are all forms of emphasis.Since pause is a cessation of speech it can hardly be called an element of a vocal vocabulary; but it may rightly be called the basis of our vocabulary because it determines our use of the other elements. It behooves us then to make a study of pause before testing our vocabulary as to its other elements.Here are two texts to be valued by our use of the pause.EXTRACT FROM THE DIARY OF A BOARDING-SCHOOL GIRLAt midnight, the magic hour as every girl knows for affairs of a purely private and personal nature, when far away at the end of a corridor you can almost hear Miss ——'s peaceful snore, when as the poet aptly put it in this morning's English stunt, "darkness clears our vision which by day is sun-blind"—(I thought Jane and I would die laughing and give it all away when we came to that line in Mr. Lanier's stupid poem),—well, as I say, exactly at that hour my heart began to beat so hard I thought it would wake Madge without the "punch" I had promised to give her when it was time to begin preparations for our grand spread.From Sidney Lanier'sCrystal.At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time.When far within the spirit's hearing rollsThe great soft rumble of the course of things—A bulk of silence in a mask of sound,—When darkness clears our vision that by dayIs sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owlFor truth and flitteth here and there aboutLow-lying woody tracts of time and oftIs minded for to sit upon a bough,Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken treeAnd muse in that gaunt place,—'twas then my heart,Deep in the meditative dark, cried out: ...The same hour,midnight, is designated by both girl and poet; the same two words, "at midnight," open the confession and thepoem. A pause must follow these words in the reading of either text, and another pause must be made after the qualifying phrase which immediately follows the opening words of either text. But what a difference in the comparative length of the pauses demanded by the two readings! A very different atmosphere attends an hour when it is the time chosen for a school-girl's escapade or set apart for apoet's meditation. And the voice by its use ofpausecan preserve or destroy either atmosphere. Try it. Make your pauses in reading the school-girl's text of equal length with the pauses the reading of Lanier's poem demands. You will find the result is thatoveremphasiswhich has brought such discredit upon the name of "elocution." I once heard a much-advertised reader strain all the elements of her vocal vocabulary in announcing a simple change in her programme. I have heard more than one reader give the stage directions, indicate the scene setting, and introduce the characters in exactly the same voice and with the same use of emphasis whichwere afterward employed in the most dramatic passages. Of course all the ammunition had been used up before the real battle began, and no one was in the least affected by the firing during the rest of the engagement.We have said that the use of pause determines the use of all other elements of the vocabulary. This is particularly true of thechange of pitchwhich immediately follows pause. We pause before a new idea to get possession of it; in that pause we measure the idea, and the pitch of the voice changes to accord with that measure. Every change of thought causes a change of pitch, but the degree and direction of change in pitch of the voice depends upon the degree and direction of change in thought values. In the pause the mind takes time to value the new thought, and tells the voice what change it must make. Robert Browning affords the best material for a study in change of pitch, because of his sudden and long parentheses, which can be handled lucidly by a voice only after it has mastered this element ofthe vocal vocabulary.Abt Vogleroffers the voice an excellent opportunity for exercise in change of pitch. I print the first stanza and first line of the second stanza of this poem for your use.Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willedArmies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,Man, brute, reptile, fly—alien of end and of aim,Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine—Remember, you are to confine your consideration to the one point,change of pitch, not the change of pitch within a word, which is inflection and belongs to another chapter,but to the broad changes of pitch from word to word, phrase to phrase, sentence to sentence, following the intricate changes of the thought.I leave you to blaze a trail through this forest of ideas. You must find the main road, and then trace the by-paths which lead away from that main road, and in this case, fortunately, come back to it again—which does not always happen in Mr. Browning's "woody tracts of thought." To employ a better figure for vocal purposes, you must cut off the stream, the voice, and trace the bed of this river of thought, following the main channel, and then its branches. You will find the main channel cut by the first and last lines:Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,· · · · ·Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine—All between, beginning with the second line, "Bidding my organ obey," and including the last words of the eighth line, "the princesshe loved," is a branch channel, leading away from and coming back to the main river's bed. But this branch channel is interrupted in turn by its own branch leading away from it and returning with it to join the main bed with the last line we quote. This second branch begins in the middle of the third line with the words, "As when Solomon willed," wanders in this course for five lines, and, rejoining the first offshoot, returns to the main channel with the last line. Now turn on the stream, theVoice, and watch it flow into the course as traced. Analyze the reading as to the use of pause and change of pitch.IISTUDY IN INFLECTIONTo me, the most notable among the many notable elements in Madame Alla Nazimova's acting is her illumination of the text of her impersonations throughinflection. To an ear unaccustomed to the "broken music" of her speech, a word may now and then be lost because of her still faulty English, but of her attitude toward the thought she is uttering, or the person she is addressing, or the situation she is meeting, there can never be a moment's doubt—so illuminating is the inflectional play of her voice. The tone she uses is not to me pleasing in quality. It does not fall in liquid alluring cadences upon the ear as does Miss Marlowe's, for instance. It is always keyed high, whether the child-wife Nora, or Hedda, omnivorous of experience, is speaking. But this high-pitched tone is endlessly volatile. It is restless. It never lets your attention wander. It is never monotonous. It is a master ofinflection. Madame Nazimova's emotion is always primarily intellectual. It always proceeds from a mind keenly alive to the instant's incident. This intensely intellectual temperament reveals itself through her voice in a rare degree of inflectional agility. Recall the revelation of Nora's soul in her cry: "It is not possible! It is not possible!" Madame Nazimova's conception of the mistress ofThe Doll's Houseis concentrated in thesefour words—in her inflection of the last word, I may almost say. When I close my eyes and think of Madame Nazimova's voice I see a grove of soft maples in early October with the sun playing upon them, while Miss Marlowe's tone carries me at once into the pine woods, where a white birch now and then shimmers its yellow leaves. Again, the voice of the Russian actress suggests a handful of diamonds, and the American instrument a set of turquoise in the matrix. The difference in these two agents of two compelling personalities is, of course, the result of a difference in the two temperaments; but undoubtedly it also arises from a difference in methods of training. Whatever the temperament, light and shade can be developed in the voice through practice of inflection; and whatever the temperament, a pure tone can be secured through a mastery of support of breath and freedom of vocal conditions. The voices of these two actresses vividly illustrate these two points. We shall study how to secure Miss Marlowe's tone. We are now to work for Madame Nazimova'slight and shade, so far as a mastery of inflection will secure it. How shall we proceed?"All my life," writes Ellen Terry, in her entrancing memoirs, "the thing which has struck me as wanting on the stage is variety. Some people are tone-deaf, and they find it physically impossible to observe the law of contrasts. But even a physical deficiency can be overcome by that faculty of taking infinite pains." That is the secret of successful acquisition in any direction, is it not—thefaculty of taking infinite pains? With Ellen Terry it resulted in a voice which in its prime estate suggested, it is said, all the riotous colors of all the autumns, or Henry Ward Beecher's most varied collection of precious stones. We can secure an approximate result by employing the same method. Let us proceed with infinite pains to practise, practise, practise inflection.Let us first examine thischange of pitch within a wordwhich we call inflection. How does the pitch change, and why, and what does the change indicate? We have discovered that a change of thought results in a broad change of pitch from word to word, phrase to phrase, sentence to sentence, and we shall discover that a change in emotion results in a change in the color of the tone we are using; but this element of our vocal vocabulary, inflection, is subtler than either of the other two. While change of pitch is an intellectual modulation, and variation in tone-color is an emotional modulation,inflection, in a degree, combines both. It is a change in both color and key within the word. It is primarily of intellectual significance, but it also reveals certain temperamental characteristics which cannot be disassociated with emotion. For instance, the staccato utterance of Mrs. Fiske is technically the result of her use of straight, swift-falling inflections, but it is temperamentally the result of thinking and feeling in terms of Becky Sharp.Let us see how inflections vary. They rise and fall swiftly or slowly. They move in a straight line from point to point, or make a curve. (The latter we call circumflex inflection.) They make various angles with the original level of pitch, rising or falling abruptly or gradually. These are some of the variations, each indicating an attitude of the mind and heart of the speaker toward the thought, or toward the one spoken to, or toward the circumstances out of which the speech arises. All must be mastered for use at will if light and shade are to be developed in the voice.Now let us take a phrase or sentence, and voice it under a certain condition, noting the inflection of the word or words which hold the thought of the phrase or sentence in solution. Then let us change the condition and again voice the thought, noting the change in inflection. Let me propound a profound question,—"Do you like growing old?" The answers will all be "yes" or "no." But what of the inflection of those monosyllabic words?Sweet Sixteenwill employ a straight, swift-falling inflection on the affirmative (unless some untoward influence, such as "LovetheDestroyer," has embittered her life, when she may give us one ofMay Iverson'sadorable replies, masked in indifference and circumlocution).Twentywill employ the straight-falling inflection without the swiftness of Sweet Sixteen's slide. Withtwenty-fivewe detect a faint sign of a curve in the more gradual fall.Twenty-eighttothirty-fiveemploys various degrees of circumflex, according to the desire—or possibility—of concealing the real facts.Fortytoforty-five, if in defiant mood, employs the abrupt-falling inflection, or, if quite honest, changes to the negative with as swift and straight a fall. This lasts through sixty-five, and atseventywe hear a new and gentle circumflex of the "no," until the pride of extreme old age sets in ateighty-fivewith the swift fall of sixteen's affirmative. Were it not expedient to maintain friendly relations with one's printer, I should venture to diagram these changes of tone within a word. As it is, I shall content myself with advising you to do so.It is my privilege to have had acquaintance with a woman who was a personal friend of Emerson. Among the incidents ofhis delightful talk with her, retold to me, I recall one which bears upon our present problem. They were discussing mutual "Friends on the Shelf." "Have you ever readTitan?" asked the gentle seer. "Yes," replied the lady. "Read it again!" said he. Query to the class: How did the lady inflect the wordYesto call forth the injunction,Read it again? What did her inflection reveal?However inclined we may be to quarrel with Bernhardt's conception of the Duke of Reichstadt, we can never forget her disclosure of the Eaglet's frail soul throughinflectionas she crushes letter after letter in her hand and tosses them aside, uttering the simple words,Je déchire, and the final revelation in the quick, thrilling curve of her wonderful voice on the same words as the little cousin leaves the room at the close of this episode of the letters.No better material can be chosen for a study of inflection than the paragraph from Emerson'sFriendship, quoted in a preceding chapter. Let us repeat the first sentence again. "Our friendships hurry to shortand poor conclusions because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams instead of the tough fiber of the human heart." Study, in voicing this, how to illumine the thought by your contrastive inflection of the words "wine and dreams" and "tough fiber of the human heart." A lingering circumflex cadence in uttering the first two words will suggest the unstable nature of a friendship woven out of so frail a fabric as wine and dreams, while a swift, strong, straight-falling inflection on each of the last six words indicates the vigorous growth of a love rooted in the tough fiber of the human heart.InMonna VannaMaurice Maeterlinck gives the actress a superb opportunity to show her mastery of inflection. Let us turn to the scene in Prinzivalle's tent:[12]
A TALEIWhat a pretty tale you told meOnce upon a time—Said you found it somewhere (scold me!)Was it prose or was it rhyme,Greek or Latin? Greek, you said,While your shoulder propped my head.IIAnyhow there's no forgettingThis much if no more,That a poet (pray, no petting!)Yes, a bard, sir, famed of yore,Went where such like used to go,Singing for a prize, you know.IIIWell, he had to sing, nor merelySing but play the lyre;Playing was important clearlyQuite as singing: I desire,Sir, you keep the fact in mindFor a purpose that's behind.IVThere stood he, while deep attentionHeld the judges round,—Judges able, I should mention,To detect the slightest soundSung or played amiss: such earsHad old judges, it appears!VNone the less he sang out boldly,Played in time and tune,Till the judges, weighing coldlyEach note's worth, seemed, late or soon,Sure to smile 'In vain one triesPicking faults out: take the prize!'VIWhen, a mischief! Were they sevenStrings the lyre possessed?Oh, and afterward eleven,Thank you! Well, sir—who had guessedSuch ill luck in store?—it happedOne of those same seven strings snapped.VIIAll was lost, then! No! a cricket(What 'cicada'? Pooh!)—Some mad thing that left its thicketFor mere love of music—flewWith its little heart on fire,Lighted on the crippled lyre.VIIISo that when (Ah, joy!) our singerFor his truant stringFeels with disconcerted finger,What does cricket else but flingFiery heart forth, sound the noteWanted by the throbbing throat?IXAy and, ever to the ending,Cricket chirps at need,Executes the hands intending,Promptly, perfectly,—indeedSaves the singer from defeatWith her chirrup low and sweet.XTill, at ending, all the judgesCry with one assent'Take the prize—a prize who grudgesSuch a voice and instrument?Why, we took your lyre for harp,So it shrilled us forth F sharp!'XIDid the conqueror spurn the creature,Once its service done?That's no such uncommon featureIn the case when Music's sonFinds his Lotte's power too spentFor aiding soul-development.XIINo! This other, on returningHomeward, prize in hand,Satisfied his bosom's yearning:(Sir, I hope you understand!)—Said 'Some record there must beOf this cricket's help to me!'XIIISo, he made himself a statue:Marble stood, life-size;On the lyre, he pointed at you,Perched his partner in the prize;Never more apart you foundHer, he throned, from him, she crowned.XIVThat's the tale: its application?Somebody I knowHopes one day for reputationThro' his poetry that's—oh,All so learned and so wiseAnd deserving of a prize!XVIf he gains one, will some ticket,When his statue's built,Tell the gazer ''Twas a cricketHelped my crippled lyre, whose liltSweet and low, when strength usurpedSoftness' place i' the scale, she chirped?XVIFor as victory was nighest,While I sang and played—With my lyre at lowest, highest,Right alike,—one string that made"Love" sound soft was snapt in twain,Never to be heard again,—XVIIHad not a kind cricket fluttered,Perched upon the placeVacant left, and duly uttered"Love, Love, Love," whene'er the bassAsked the treble to atoneFor its somewhat somber drone.'XVIIIBut you don't know music! WhereforeKeep on casting pearlsTo a—poet? All I care forIs—to tell him that a girl's'Love' comes aptly in when gruffGrows his singing. (There, enough!)
A TALE
I
What a pretty tale you told meOnce upon a time—Said you found it somewhere (scold me!)Was it prose or was it rhyme,Greek or Latin? Greek, you said,While your shoulder propped my head.
II
Anyhow there's no forgettingThis much if no more,That a poet (pray, no petting!)Yes, a bard, sir, famed of yore,Went where such like used to go,Singing for a prize, you know.
III
Well, he had to sing, nor merelySing but play the lyre;Playing was important clearlyQuite as singing: I desire,Sir, you keep the fact in mindFor a purpose that's behind.
IV
There stood he, while deep attentionHeld the judges round,—Judges able, I should mention,To detect the slightest soundSung or played amiss: such earsHad old judges, it appears!
V
None the less he sang out boldly,Played in time and tune,Till the judges, weighing coldlyEach note's worth, seemed, late or soon,Sure to smile 'In vain one triesPicking faults out: take the prize!'
VI
When, a mischief! Were they sevenStrings the lyre possessed?Oh, and afterward eleven,Thank you! Well, sir—who had guessedSuch ill luck in store?—it happedOne of those same seven strings snapped.
VII
All was lost, then! No! a cricket(What 'cicada'? Pooh!)—Some mad thing that left its thicketFor mere love of music—flewWith its little heart on fire,Lighted on the crippled lyre.
VIII
So that when (Ah, joy!) our singerFor his truant stringFeels with disconcerted finger,What does cricket else but flingFiery heart forth, sound the noteWanted by the throbbing throat?
IX
Ay and, ever to the ending,Cricket chirps at need,Executes the hands intending,Promptly, perfectly,—indeedSaves the singer from defeatWith her chirrup low and sweet.
X
Till, at ending, all the judgesCry with one assent'Take the prize—a prize who grudgesSuch a voice and instrument?Why, we took your lyre for harp,So it shrilled us forth F sharp!'
XI
Did the conqueror spurn the creature,Once its service done?That's no such uncommon featureIn the case when Music's sonFinds his Lotte's power too spentFor aiding soul-development.
XII
No! This other, on returningHomeward, prize in hand,Satisfied his bosom's yearning:(Sir, I hope you understand!)—Said 'Some record there must beOf this cricket's help to me!'
XIII
So, he made himself a statue:Marble stood, life-size;On the lyre, he pointed at you,Perched his partner in the prize;Never more apart you foundHer, he throned, from him, she crowned.
XIV
That's the tale: its application?Somebody I knowHopes one day for reputationThro' his poetry that's—oh,All so learned and so wiseAnd deserving of a prize!
XV
If he gains one, will some ticket,When his statue's built,Tell the gazer ''Twas a cricketHelped my crippled lyre, whose liltSweet and low, when strength usurpedSoftness' place i' the scale, she chirped?
XVI
For as victory was nighest,While I sang and played—With my lyre at lowest, highest,Right alike,—one string that made"Love" sound soft was snapt in twain,Never to be heard again,—
XVII
Had not a kind cricket fluttered,Perched upon the placeVacant left, and duly uttered"Love, Love, Love," whene'er the bassAsked the treble to atoneFor its somewhat somber drone.'
XVIII
But you don't know music! WhereforeKeep on casting pearlsTo a—poet? All I care forIs—to tell him that a girl's'Love' comes aptly in when gruffGrows his singing. (There, enough!)
INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMPIYou know, we French stormed Ratisbon:A mile or so away,On a little mound, NapoleonStood on our storming-day;With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,Legs wide, arms locked behind,As if to balance the prone browOppressive with its mind.IIJust as perhaps he mused 'My plansThat soar, to earth may fall,Let once my army-leader LannesWaver at yonder wall,'—Out 'twixt the battery smokes there flewA rider, bound on boundFull-galloping; nor bridle drewUntil he reached the mound.IIIThen off there flung in smiling joy,And held himself erectBy just his horse's mane, a boy:You hardly could suspect—(So tight he kept his lips compressed,Scarce any blood came through)You looked twice ere you saw his breastWas all but shot in two.IV'Well,' cried he, 'Emperor, by God's graceWe've got you Ratisbon!The Marshal's in the market-place,And you'll be there anonTo see your flag-bird flap his vansWhere I, to heart's desire,Perched him!' The chief's eye flashed; his plansSoared up again like fire.VThe chief's eye flashed; but presentlySoftened itself, as sheathesA film the mother-eagle's eyeWhen her bruised eaglet breathes;'You're wounded!' 'Nay,' the soldier's prideTouched to the quick, he said:'I'm killed, Sire!' And his chief beside,Smiling the boy fell dead.
INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP
I
You know, we French stormed Ratisbon:A mile or so away,On a little mound, NapoleonStood on our storming-day;With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,Legs wide, arms locked behind,As if to balance the prone browOppressive with its mind.
II
Just as perhaps he mused 'My plansThat soar, to earth may fall,Let once my army-leader LannesWaver at yonder wall,'—Out 'twixt the battery smokes there flewA rider, bound on boundFull-galloping; nor bridle drewUntil he reached the mound.
III
Then off there flung in smiling joy,And held himself erectBy just his horse's mane, a boy:You hardly could suspect—(So tight he kept his lips compressed,Scarce any blood came through)You looked twice ere you saw his breastWas all but shot in two.
IV
'Well,' cried he, 'Emperor, by God's graceWe've got you Ratisbon!The Marshal's in the market-place,And you'll be there anonTo see your flag-bird flap his vansWhere I, to heart's desire,Perched him!' The chief's eye flashed; his plansSoared up again like fire.
V
The chief's eye flashed; but presentlySoftened itself, as sheathesA film the mother-eagle's eyeWhen her bruised eaglet breathes;'You're wounded!' 'Nay,' the soldier's prideTouched to the quick, he said:'I'm killed, Sire!' And his chief beside,Smiling the boy fell dead.
MY LAST DUCHESSFERRARAThat's my last Duchess painted on the wall,Looking as if she were alive. I callThat piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's handsWorked busily a day, and there she stands.Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said'Frà Pandolf' by design; for never readStrangers like you that pictured countenance,The depth and passion of its earnest glance,But to myself they turned (since none puts byThe curtain I have drawn for you, but I)And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,How such a glance came there; so, not the firstAre you to turn and ask thus. Sir, t'was notHer husband's presence only, called that spotOf joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhapsFrà Pandolf chanced to say 'Her mantle lapsOver my lady's wrist too much,' or 'PaintMust never hope to reproduce the faintHalf-flush that dies along her throat': such stuffWas courtesy, she thought, and cause enoughFor calling up that spot of joy. She hadA heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,Too easily impressed; she liked whate'erShe looked on, and her looks went everywhere.Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,The dropping of the daylight in the West,The bough of cherries some officious foolBroke in the orchard for her, the white muleShe rode with round the terrace—all and eachWould draw from her alike the approving speech,Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thankedSomehow—I know not how—as if she rankedMy gift of a nine-hundred-years-old nameWith anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blameThis sort of trifling? Even had you skillIn speech—(which I have not)—to make your willQuite clear to such an one, and say, 'Just thisOr that in you disgusts me; here you miss,Or there exceed the mark'—and if she letHerself be lessoned so, nor plainly setHer wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,—E'en then would be some stooping; and I chooseNever to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,Whene'er I passed her; but who passed withoutMuch the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;Then all smiles stopped together. There she standsAs if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meetThe company below, then. I repeat,The Count your master's known munificenceIs ample warrant that no just pretenseOf mine for dowry will be disallowed;Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowedAt starting, is my object. Nay, we'll goTogether down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!—Browning.
MY LAST DUCHESS
FERRARA
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,Looking as if she were alive. I callThat piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's handsWorked busily a day, and there she stands.Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said'Frà Pandolf' by design; for never readStrangers like you that pictured countenance,The depth and passion of its earnest glance,But to myself they turned (since none puts byThe curtain I have drawn for you, but I)And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,How such a glance came there; so, not the firstAre you to turn and ask thus. Sir, t'was notHer husband's presence only, called that spotOf joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhapsFrà Pandolf chanced to say 'Her mantle lapsOver my lady's wrist too much,' or 'PaintMust never hope to reproduce the faintHalf-flush that dies along her throat': such stuffWas courtesy, she thought, and cause enoughFor calling up that spot of joy. She hadA heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,Too easily impressed; she liked whate'erShe looked on, and her looks went everywhere.Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,The dropping of the daylight in the West,The bough of cherries some officious foolBroke in the orchard for her, the white muleShe rode with round the terrace—all and eachWould draw from her alike the approving speech,Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thankedSomehow—I know not how—as if she rankedMy gift of a nine-hundred-years-old nameWith anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blameThis sort of trifling? Even had you skillIn speech—(which I have not)—to make your willQuite clear to such an one, and say, 'Just thisOr that in you disgusts me; here you miss,Or there exceed the mark'—and if she letHerself be lessoned so, nor plainly setHer wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,—E'en then would be some stooping; and I chooseNever to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,Whene'er I passed her; but who passed withoutMuch the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;Then all smiles stopped together. There she standsAs if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meetThe company below, then. I repeat,The Count your master's known munificenceIs ample warrant that no just pretenseOf mine for dowry will be disallowed;Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowedAt starting, is my object. Nay, we'll goTogether down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
—Browning.
—Browning.
Our last form for interpretative vocal study is the play. We shall discover that the presentation of the play makes the same demands upon the interpreter as the monologue with the new element oftransition. We are still studying the monologue, because we are to read, not act, the play. It is still suggestive, not actualized impersonation. But instead of one character to suggestively set forth we have two, three, a dozen to present. The transition from character to character becomes our one new problem. As we have said before, in making the transition from character to character, voice, mind, and body must be so volatile that the action of the play shall not be interrupted. I know of nobetter way to enter upon the study of a play for reading (or acting) than to treat each character as the speaker in a monologue of the Browning type. The danger in transition from character to character centers in the instant's pause when one speaker yields to another. The unskilful reader loses both characters at this point and becomes conscious of himself; the action of the play stops; and the illusion of scene and situation is lost. The great reader of the play (in thatinstant's pause), as he utters the last word of one character, becomes the interlocutor listening to the words which he as the other character has just uttered. In that instant he must show the effect of the speech he has just uttered upon the character he has just become. Which is the greater art: to read a play, or to act in it?
Use for your study of the play the Shakespearian drama. Begin with scenes fromAs You Like ItandThe Merchant of Venice; but begin with actualized impersonation of the characters. No discussion more! No analysis more! The play—the "play's thething" through which to complete this evolution in Vocal Expression.
A FINAL WORD ON INTERPRETATION
Looking back over these studies in interpretation, let us review in true scholastic fashion the main points thus far discovered. We say looking back, but as far as the arrangement of our text goes this review involves looking forward too. The division of the book into three parts is purely a matter of a necessary separation in discussing the three activities involved in vocal expression. If your use of this book has been intelligent, each study in interpretation has revealed your need to strengthen your vocal vocabulary or to perfect your vocal technique, and you have turned at once for the required help to the studies inPart IIand the exercises inPart III.
Omitting a review of thepreliminary plunge, which was intended to "show up" all your peculiar powers and all your especial needs at once, and so furnish a basis for the main work, let us see what happened in thefive following studies. It will simplify our statement in each case to base the analysis of our discoveries on the form of literature employed in each study.
You found then (or ought to have found) in Study One: that the essay and didactic poem make a fundamental appeal to the mind; that the demand upon the interpreter of this form is for clear, concise thinking; that your need is for a command of unerring emphasis and purposeful inflection. You turned to the studies inpause,change of pitch, andinflectionto meet that need. Returning to the main study, you tested your vocal skill on the essay to find the essay so read might persuade an auditor to some readjustment of his ideas, values, discriminations, or strengthen him in convictions already held.
Study Two revealed that in lyric poetry the primary appeal is to emotion; that its vocal demand upon the interpreter is for a mastery oftone-color, a sense of rhythm, and the power to suggest a background of musical sound. Having supplied as far as possibleany lack in your vocabulary or technique by supplementary work in Parts II and III, returning you found that a lyric rightly read could release in the auditor pity, forgiveness, forbearance, endurance, understanding, love.
The Third Study should have convinced you that a sense ofgoodhumor is a safe and desirable thing to cultivate; that the whimsical tone in interpretation will leaven almost any lump of sheer learning and counteract a serious overdose of sentiment; that fable, fairy tale, and nonsense rhyme depend too for successful interpretation upon this element of whimsicality in the reader; that the secret of the whimsical element in vocal expression lies in a use ofpauseandinflection.
Study Four should have discovered to you that the three elements of the short story can only be realized through imagination; that imaginative vigor dealing with action requires sustained vitality of tone. Such discovery should have resulted in many hours of work on the exercises forsupportandfreedomoftone.
When you reached the Fifth and last Study, the work in monologue and drama should have easily awakened your dramatic instinct and quickly released your histrionic power. You should have learned through monologue and drama to understand various types of persons; to see more clearly the relations of men and events; to more intelligently comprehend life itself.
Finally, we have discovered that to become a true interpreter of literature means to become a lucid channel for the message of an author to the mind of an auditor,—nay, that it means more than that. In final evolution the interpreter of literature becomes a revealer of life. The final effect of literature worth interpreting is to enlarge the world's knowledge of life's beauty, truth, or power. Your final concern as an interpreter is to let life find through you uninterrupted revelation on one of these planes; to become a pure medium between the beauty, truth, and power of life and the seeking soul. The author need not be considered in this final analysis, because you, the interpreter, firstbecame identified with the author, and then both of you are lost in the vision, save only as either personality may enlarge or clarify the revelation.
A personal experience may help you to realize this ideal of the interpreter's art.
With a sense of protest, I had presented a play I loved to an audience with which I felt little sympathy. By chance there was in that audience one of our best teachers and critics. After my recital I sought his criticism. Beginning, as the true critic always should, with a noting of some point of power, he said, "I congratulate you upon yourillumined moments, but—they are too infrequent. You must multiply them." "What do you mean by my illumined moments?" I asked. "The moments when you do not get between your audience and the thought you are uttering—the moments when you become a revealer of life to them. Your attitude toward your audience is not sustained in the simplicity and clearness of some of its moments. You suddenly ring down the curtain in the middle of the scene. Thatspoils the scene, you know. You seem to feel a revolt against the giving of your confidence to the audience, and thereupon you immediately shut them away. You become conscious of yourself, and we, the audience, lose the vision and become conscious of you and the way you are reading or reciting or acting." Then he added, "Adelaide Neilson, at first, had illumined moments in her playing of Juliet, but finally her impersonation became one piece of illumination." That delightful teacher, reader, and critic, the late Mr. Howard Ticknor, suggested the same ideal in comparing a Juliet of to-day with Miss Neilson's Juliet. "When Miss —— is on the balcony," he said, "you hear all around you: 'How lovely she looks!' 'Isn't that robe dear?' 'How beautiful her voice is!' When Miss Neilson lived that little minute, a breathless people prayed with Juliet, 'I would not for the world they found thee here,' and sighed with Romeo—'O blessed, blessed night! I am afeard, being in night, all this is but a dream.'" Miss NeilsonwasJuliet. They, the audience, lived with these loversone hour of lyric rapture, and could never again be quite so commonplace in their attitude toward the "deathless passion." They may not now remember Adelaide Neilson, but they remember that story, and forever carry a new vision of life and love, because the actress lost herself in the life of the play. She did not exploit her personality and let it stand between the audience and the drama. When some one says to you—the reader or actress, "I shall never forget the way you raised your eyebrow at that point," don't stop to reply, but fly to your study and read the lines "at that point" over and over, with level brows, until you understand the meaning, and can express the thought so effectively by a lift of your voice that you no longer need the help of your eyebrow. Every gesture, every tone, must call attention, not to itself, but to the hidden meaning of the author. It must illumine the text of the character portrayed. That is it: if we would be artists (and there is not one among us who would not be an artist) we must cease to put our little selvesin front of our messages. In the home, in the office, in the houses of our friends, in the school-room, on the platform, on the stage, let us besimple,natural,sincere. Let us lay aside our mannerisms. Let us seek to know and reveal life. Then shall we be remembered—not, for a queer way of combing our hair, or lifting our eyes, or using our hands, or shrugging our shoulders, but for some revelation of truth or of beauty which we have brought to a community.
There is a theory that it is dangerous to go beyond the mere freeing of the instrument in either vocal or physical training. In accordance with this theory I was advised by a well-known actress to confine my study for the stage, so far as the vocal and pantomimic preparation was concerned, to singing, dancing, and fencing. "Get your voice and body under control," she said. "Make them free, but don't connect shades of thought and emotion with definite tones of the voice or movements of the body; don't meddle with Delsarte or elocution." This advice seemed good at the time. It still seems to me that it ought to be the right method. But I have grown to distrust it. One of the chief sources of my distrust has been the effect of thetheory upon the art of the actress who gave the advice. She is perhaps the most graceful woman on the stage to-day, and her voice is pure music. But her gestures and tones fail in lucidity; they fail to illumine the text of the part she essays to interpret. One grows suddenly impatient of the meaningless grace of her movements, the meaningless music of her voice. One longs for a swift—if studied—stride across the stage in anger instead of the unstudied grace of her glide in swirling-robed protest. One longs to hear a staccato declaration of intention instead of the cadenced music of a voice guiltless of intention. No! After the body has been made a free and responsive agent, a mastery of certain fundamental laws, a mastery of certain principles of gesture in accordance with the dictates of thought and emotion, is necessary to its further perfecting as a vivid, powerful, and true agent of personality. The action must be suited to the word, the word to the action, through a study of the laws governing expression in action.
So with the voice: to become not only afree instrument, but a beautiful and powerful means of expression and communication it must learn to recognize and obey certain fundamental laws governing its modulations. A master of verbal expression is distinguished by his vast vocabulary of words, and his skill and discrimination in its use. A master of vocal expression must acquire what we may call avocal vocabulary, consisting of changes of pitch, varieties of inflection and variations in tone color, and must know how to use these elements with skill and discrimination. Our need for such a vocabulary was discovered to us at every step of the work in interpretation. The suggestions and exercises of the following studies aim to supplement the work in interpretation by meeting that need. Before making a detailed study of each element of this vocal vocabulary let us make a quick study with the four elements in mind. Remember, in the last preliminary exercise, as in the final complete interpretative endeavor, the material we employ is to be chosen from real literature. It is to be worth interpreting whether it be asingle line or phrase or a complete poetical drama. We have agreed to consider literature as real literature, and so worth our interpretative efforts, when it possesses one or combines all of the three qualities,—beauty,truth, andpower.
This passage from Emerson'sFriendshipsurely meets that requirement. It is truth beautifully and powerfully expressed. It will serve.
Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams instead of the tough fiber of the human heart.
Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams instead of the tough fiber of the human heart.
Having read this passage cursorily (as is the custom in reading to one's self to-day), will you now study it for a moment very closely. Now, once more, please, read it silently, noting the action of your mind as you read. ("Watch its pulsations," Dr. Curry would say.) And now, aloud, although without an auditor, read it, this time noting the effect of the action of the mind upon your voice. Did its pitch change? Where and why? How did you inflect the words "wineand dreams"? How did the inflection of these words differ from that of the last six words, "tough fiber of the human heart," with which they are contrasted in thought? Did your tone change color at any point? Why? Where? But now, once more, let us approach the passage, this time with a different intention. Let us study it with the idea of interpreting it for another mind. Now the method of attack is very different. Not that it ought to be different. But it is. Intense concentration ought to characterize all our reading, whether its object be to acquire knowledge or pleasure for one's self, or to impart either to another. But the day of reading which "maketh a full man" seems to be long past, so far as the general public is concerned. The necessity of skimming the pages of a dozen fourth-rate books of the hour in order to be at least a lucid interlocutor, and so a desired dinner guest, is making our reading a swift gathering of colorless impressions which may remain a week or only a day, and which leave no lasting effect of beauty or truth upon the mind andheart of the reader. Should it not be rather an intense application of the mind to the thought of a master mind, until that thought, in all its power and beauty, has broadened the boundaries of the reader's mind and enlarged the meaning of all his thoughts? I wonder if a much smaller proportion of time spent in such reading might not result in a lessbromidicsocial atmosphere, even though its tendency were a bit serious. I think it might be both safe and interesting to try such an experiment.
But now we must return to Emerson onFriendship. In studying a passage for the purpose of vocal interpretation you have learned that the concentration of attention upon the thought must be intense, you must make the thought absolutely your own before you can present it to your auditor, it must possess you before you can express it; that the thought must seem in the moment of its expression to be a creation of your own brain, it must belong to you as only the thing you have created can, and until you have so recreated the thought it is not yours to give.Having recalled these precepts, read the passage silently again. Pour upon it the light of your experience, your philosophy, your ideals, your perception of truth. Comment upon it silently as you read. Now read it aloud and let your voice do this commenting. But wait a moment. Let me quote for you the paragraph following this statement.
The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen.
The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen.
This is Emerson's paraphrase of his original statement. How much of it did your mental commentary include? How did your silent paraphrase resemble this? Read the original passage again to yourself in the light of this paraphrase. I shall ask you now to repeat the first sentence from memory, for you will find, after this concentrated contemplation of a thought, that its form is fixed fast in your mind. That is a delightful accompaniment of this kind of reading. The form ofthe thought, if it be apposite (which it must be to be literature, and we are considering only literature), the form of a thought so approached stays with us in all its beauty.
Let us then repeat the original statement, having read the passage in which Emerson has elaborated it. Now, what you must demand of your voice is this: that it shall so handle the single introductory sentence as to suggest the rest of the paragraph. In other words, your voice must do the paraphrasing, by means of its changes in pitch, its inflections, and its variations in tone-color; by means, in short, of itsvocal vocabulary.
It is asserted that, "the last word has not been said on any subject." Mr. Hamilton Mabie seemed to me to achieve alast wordon the subject ofpausewhen he casually remarked: "Emerson was a master of pause; he would pause, and into the poolof expectancy created by that pause drop just the right word." There seems little to be added to complete the exposition of that single sentence. It surely leaves no doubt in our minds as to the effect to be desired from the use of this element of our vocabulary. How to use it to gain that effect is our problem. First of all, we must cease to be afraid to pause. We hurry on over splendid opportunities to elucidate our text through a just use of this form of emphasis, beset by two fears: fear that we shall seem to have forgotten the text; fear that we shall actually forget it if we stop to think. Think of being afraid to stop to think lest we should stop thinking! That is precisely what the fear indicates. It arises, of course, from a confusion as to the real nature of pause. We confuse pause with its ghost, hesitation. Dr. Curry makes the difference clear for us in his definition of hesitation as an "empty pause." "Empty of what?" you ask. Empty of thought! Of course, an empty pause is a ghastly as well as a ghostly thing to experience. If you have ever faced an audiencein one of those "awful" moments when your voice has ceased because your thought has stopped, and when you are painfully aware of a pool of embarrassed sympathy into which you know there is no word to drop, then you have learned the meaning of anempty pause.
On the other hand, if you shall ever face an audience in one of thosefatefulmoments when your voice pauses because your thought is so vital, that you realize both your audience and you must be given time to fully grasp it, and when you are serenely conscious of that "pool of expectancy" into which you know you have just the right word to drop, then you will learn the meaning of atrue pause.
Some one has called inflection a running commentary of the emotions upon the thought. Emphasis might well be defined in the same way. The definition would need to be a bit more inclusive, since emphasis includes inflection. Emphasis then may be defined as a running commentary of the thought and emotion of the reader upon the thought of the text he interprets. Thewords reveal the thought; your valuation of that thought, as you interpret it, is revealed through your vocal vocabulary in voicing it. We, your auditors, can only gather from your emphasis your valuation of the truth or importance of what you are uttering. You may use one or all of the elements of your vocal vocabulary to bring out the thought of a single phrase. The elements of the vocal vocabulary are all forms of emphasis.
Since pause is a cessation of speech it can hardly be called an element of a vocal vocabulary; but it may rightly be called the basis of our vocabulary because it determines our use of the other elements. It behooves us then to make a study of pause before testing our vocabulary as to its other elements.
Here are two texts to be valued by our use of the pause.
EXTRACT FROM THE DIARY OF A BOARDING-SCHOOL GIRLAt midnight, the magic hour as every girl knows for affairs of a purely private and personal nature, when far away at the end of a corridor you can almost hear Miss ——'s peaceful snore, when as the poet aptly put it in this morning's English stunt, "darkness clears our vision which by day is sun-blind"—(I thought Jane and I would die laughing and give it all away when we came to that line in Mr. Lanier's stupid poem),—well, as I say, exactly at that hour my heart began to beat so hard I thought it would wake Madge without the "punch" I had promised to give her when it was time to begin preparations for our grand spread.
EXTRACT FROM THE DIARY OF A BOARDING-SCHOOL GIRL
At midnight, the magic hour as every girl knows for affairs of a purely private and personal nature, when far away at the end of a corridor you can almost hear Miss ——'s peaceful snore, when as the poet aptly put it in this morning's English stunt, "darkness clears our vision which by day is sun-blind"—(I thought Jane and I would die laughing and give it all away when we came to that line in Mr. Lanier's stupid poem),—well, as I say, exactly at that hour my heart began to beat so hard I thought it would wake Madge without the "punch" I had promised to give her when it was time to begin preparations for our grand spread.
From Sidney Lanier'sCrystal.At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time.When far within the spirit's hearing rollsThe great soft rumble of the course of things—A bulk of silence in a mask of sound,—When darkness clears our vision that by dayIs sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owlFor truth and flitteth here and there aboutLow-lying woody tracts of time and oftIs minded for to sit upon a bough,Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken treeAnd muse in that gaunt place,—'twas then my heart,Deep in the meditative dark, cried out: ...
From Sidney Lanier'sCrystal.
At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time.When far within the spirit's hearing rollsThe great soft rumble of the course of things—A bulk of silence in a mask of sound,—When darkness clears our vision that by dayIs sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owlFor truth and flitteth here and there aboutLow-lying woody tracts of time and oftIs minded for to sit upon a bough,Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken treeAnd muse in that gaunt place,—'twas then my heart,Deep in the meditative dark, cried out: ...
The same hour,midnight, is designated by both girl and poet; the same two words, "at midnight," open the confession and thepoem. A pause must follow these words in the reading of either text, and another pause must be made after the qualifying phrase which immediately follows the opening words of either text. But what a difference in the comparative length of the pauses demanded by the two readings! A very different atmosphere attends an hour when it is the time chosen for a school-girl's escapade or set apart for apoet's meditation. And the voice by its use ofpausecan preserve or destroy either atmosphere. Try it. Make your pauses in reading the school-girl's text of equal length with the pauses the reading of Lanier's poem demands. You will find the result is thatoveremphasiswhich has brought such discredit upon the name of "elocution." I once heard a much-advertised reader strain all the elements of her vocal vocabulary in announcing a simple change in her programme. I have heard more than one reader give the stage directions, indicate the scene setting, and introduce the characters in exactly the same voice and with the same use of emphasis whichwere afterward employed in the most dramatic passages. Of course all the ammunition had been used up before the real battle began, and no one was in the least affected by the firing during the rest of the engagement.
We have said that the use of pause determines the use of all other elements of the vocabulary. This is particularly true of thechange of pitchwhich immediately follows pause. We pause before a new idea to get possession of it; in that pause we measure the idea, and the pitch of the voice changes to accord with that measure. Every change of thought causes a change of pitch, but the degree and direction of change in pitch of the voice depends upon the degree and direction of change in thought values. In the pause the mind takes time to value the new thought, and tells the voice what change it must make. Robert Browning affords the best material for a study in change of pitch, because of his sudden and long parentheses, which can be handled lucidly by a voice only after it has mastered this element ofthe vocal vocabulary.Abt Vogleroffers the voice an excellent opportunity for exercise in change of pitch. I print the first stanza and first line of the second stanza of this poem for your use.
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willedArmies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,Man, brute, reptile, fly—alien of end and of aim,Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine—
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willedArmies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,Man, brute, reptile, fly—alien of end and of aim,Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!
Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine—
Remember, you are to confine your consideration to the one point,change of pitch, not the change of pitch within a word, which is inflection and belongs to another chapter,but to the broad changes of pitch from word to word, phrase to phrase, sentence to sentence, following the intricate changes of the thought.
I leave you to blaze a trail through this forest of ideas. You must find the main road, and then trace the by-paths which lead away from that main road, and in this case, fortunately, come back to it again—which does not always happen in Mr. Browning's "woody tracts of thought." To employ a better figure for vocal purposes, you must cut off the stream, the voice, and trace the bed of this river of thought, following the main channel, and then its branches. You will find the main channel cut by the first and last lines:
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,· · · · ·Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine—
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
· · · · ·
· · · · ·
Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine—
All between, beginning with the second line, "Bidding my organ obey," and including the last words of the eighth line, "the princesshe loved," is a branch channel, leading away from and coming back to the main river's bed. But this branch channel is interrupted in turn by its own branch leading away from it and returning with it to join the main bed with the last line we quote. This second branch begins in the middle of the third line with the words, "As when Solomon willed," wanders in this course for five lines, and, rejoining the first offshoot, returns to the main channel with the last line. Now turn on the stream, theVoice, and watch it flow into the course as traced. Analyze the reading as to the use of pause and change of pitch.
To me, the most notable among the many notable elements in Madame Alla Nazimova's acting is her illumination of the text of her impersonations throughinflection. To an ear unaccustomed to the "broken music" of her speech, a word may now and then be lost because of her still faulty English, but of her attitude toward the thought she is uttering, or the person she is addressing, or the situation she is meeting, there can never be a moment's doubt—so illuminating is the inflectional play of her voice. The tone she uses is not to me pleasing in quality. It does not fall in liquid alluring cadences upon the ear as does Miss Marlowe's, for instance. It is always keyed high, whether the child-wife Nora, or Hedda, omnivorous of experience, is speaking. But this high-pitched tone is endlessly volatile. It is restless. It never lets your attention wander. It is never monotonous. It is a master ofinflection. Madame Nazimova's emotion is always primarily intellectual. It always proceeds from a mind keenly alive to the instant's incident. This intensely intellectual temperament reveals itself through her voice in a rare degree of inflectional agility. Recall the revelation of Nora's soul in her cry: "It is not possible! It is not possible!" Madame Nazimova's conception of the mistress ofThe Doll's Houseis concentrated in thesefour words—in her inflection of the last word, I may almost say. When I close my eyes and think of Madame Nazimova's voice I see a grove of soft maples in early October with the sun playing upon them, while Miss Marlowe's tone carries me at once into the pine woods, where a white birch now and then shimmers its yellow leaves. Again, the voice of the Russian actress suggests a handful of diamonds, and the American instrument a set of turquoise in the matrix. The difference in these two agents of two compelling personalities is, of course, the result of a difference in the two temperaments; but undoubtedly it also arises from a difference in methods of training. Whatever the temperament, light and shade can be developed in the voice through practice of inflection; and whatever the temperament, a pure tone can be secured through a mastery of support of breath and freedom of vocal conditions. The voices of these two actresses vividly illustrate these two points. We shall study how to secure Miss Marlowe's tone. We are now to work for Madame Nazimova'slight and shade, so far as a mastery of inflection will secure it. How shall we proceed?
"All my life," writes Ellen Terry, in her entrancing memoirs, "the thing which has struck me as wanting on the stage is variety. Some people are tone-deaf, and they find it physically impossible to observe the law of contrasts. But even a physical deficiency can be overcome by that faculty of taking infinite pains." That is the secret of successful acquisition in any direction, is it not—thefaculty of taking infinite pains? With Ellen Terry it resulted in a voice which in its prime estate suggested, it is said, all the riotous colors of all the autumns, or Henry Ward Beecher's most varied collection of precious stones. We can secure an approximate result by employing the same method. Let us proceed with infinite pains to practise, practise, practise inflection.
Let us first examine thischange of pitch within a wordwhich we call inflection. How does the pitch change, and why, and what does the change indicate? We have discovered that a change of thought results in a broad change of pitch from word to word, phrase to phrase, sentence to sentence, and we shall discover that a change in emotion results in a change in the color of the tone we are using; but this element of our vocal vocabulary, inflection, is subtler than either of the other two. While change of pitch is an intellectual modulation, and variation in tone-color is an emotional modulation,inflection, in a degree, combines both. It is a change in both color and key within the word. It is primarily of intellectual significance, but it also reveals certain temperamental characteristics which cannot be disassociated with emotion. For instance, the staccato utterance of Mrs. Fiske is technically the result of her use of straight, swift-falling inflections, but it is temperamentally the result of thinking and feeling in terms of Becky Sharp.
Let us see how inflections vary. They rise and fall swiftly or slowly. They move in a straight line from point to point, or make a curve. (The latter we call circumflex inflection.) They make various angles with the original level of pitch, rising or falling abruptly or gradually. These are some of the variations, each indicating an attitude of the mind and heart of the speaker toward the thought, or toward the one spoken to, or toward the circumstances out of which the speech arises. All must be mastered for use at will if light and shade are to be developed in the voice.
Now let us take a phrase or sentence, and voice it under a certain condition, noting the inflection of the word or words which hold the thought of the phrase or sentence in solution. Then let us change the condition and again voice the thought, noting the change in inflection. Let me propound a profound question,—"Do you like growing old?" The answers will all be "yes" or "no." But what of the inflection of those monosyllabic words?Sweet Sixteenwill employ a straight, swift-falling inflection on the affirmative (unless some untoward influence, such as "LovetheDestroyer," has embittered her life, when she may give us one ofMay Iverson'sadorable replies, masked in indifference and circumlocution).Twentywill employ the straight-falling inflection without the swiftness of Sweet Sixteen's slide. Withtwenty-fivewe detect a faint sign of a curve in the more gradual fall.Twenty-eighttothirty-fiveemploys various degrees of circumflex, according to the desire—or possibility—of concealing the real facts.Fortytoforty-five, if in defiant mood, employs the abrupt-falling inflection, or, if quite honest, changes to the negative with as swift and straight a fall. This lasts through sixty-five, and atseventywe hear a new and gentle circumflex of the "no," until the pride of extreme old age sets in ateighty-fivewith the swift fall of sixteen's affirmative. Were it not expedient to maintain friendly relations with one's printer, I should venture to diagram these changes of tone within a word. As it is, I shall content myself with advising you to do so.
It is my privilege to have had acquaintance with a woman who was a personal friend of Emerson. Among the incidents ofhis delightful talk with her, retold to me, I recall one which bears upon our present problem. They were discussing mutual "Friends on the Shelf." "Have you ever readTitan?" asked the gentle seer. "Yes," replied the lady. "Read it again!" said he. Query to the class: How did the lady inflect the wordYesto call forth the injunction,Read it again? What did her inflection reveal?
However inclined we may be to quarrel with Bernhardt's conception of the Duke of Reichstadt, we can never forget her disclosure of the Eaglet's frail soul throughinflectionas she crushes letter after letter in her hand and tosses them aside, uttering the simple words,Je déchire, and the final revelation in the quick, thrilling curve of her wonderful voice on the same words as the little cousin leaves the room at the close of this episode of the letters.
No better material can be chosen for a study of inflection than the paragraph from Emerson'sFriendship, quoted in a preceding chapter. Let us repeat the first sentence again. "Our friendships hurry to shortand poor conclusions because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams instead of the tough fiber of the human heart." Study, in voicing this, how to illumine the thought by your contrastive inflection of the words "wine and dreams" and "tough fiber of the human heart." A lingering circumflex cadence in uttering the first two words will suggest the unstable nature of a friendship woven out of so frail a fabric as wine and dreams, while a swift, strong, straight-falling inflection on each of the last six words indicates the vigorous growth of a love rooted in the tough fiber of the human heart.
InMonna VannaMaurice Maeterlinck gives the actress a superb opportunity to show her mastery of inflection. Let us turn to the scene in Prinzivalle's tent:[12]