Once 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.
This 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.
Sing but play the lyre;
Playing was important clearly
Quite as singing: I desire,
Sir, you keep the fact in mind
For a purpose that's behind.
Held the judges round,
—Judges able, I should mention,
To detect the slightest sound
Sung or played amiss: such ears
Had old judges, it appears!
Played in time and tune,
Till the judges, weighing coldly
Each note's worth, seemed, late or soon,
Sure to smile 'In vain one tries
Picking faults out: take the prize!'
Strings the lyre possessed?
Oh, and afterward eleven,
Thank you! Well, sir—who had guessed
Such ill luck in store?—it happed
One of those same seven strings snapped.
(What 'cicada'? Pooh!)
—Some mad thing that left its thicket
For mere love of music—flew
With its little heart on fire,
Lighted on the crippled lyre.
For his truant string
Feels with disconcerted finger,
What does cricket else but fling
Fiery heart forth, sound the note
Wanted by the throbbing throat?
Cricket chirps at need,
Executes the hands intending,
Promptly, perfectly,—indeed
Saves the singer from defeat
With her chirrup low and sweet.
Cry with one assent
'Take the prize—a prize who grudges
Such a voice and instrument?
Why, we took your lyre for harp,
So it shrilled us forth F sharp!'
Once its service done?
That's no such uncommon feature
In the case when Music's son
Finds his Lotte's power too spent
For aiding soul-development.
Homeward, prize in hand,
Satisfied his bosom's yearning:
(Sir, I hope you understand!)
—Said 'Some record there must be
Of this cricket's help to me!'
Marble stood, life-size;
On the lyre, he pointed at you,
Perched his partner in the prize;
Never more apart you found
Her, he throned, from him, she crowned.
Somebody I know
Hopes one day for reputation
Thro' his poetry that's—oh,
All so learned and so wise
And deserving of a prize!
When his statue's built,
Tell the gazer ''Twas a cricket
Helped my crippled lyre, whose lilt
Sweet and low, when strength usurped
Softness' place i' the scale, she chirped?
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,—
Perched upon the place
Vacant left, and duly uttered
"Love, Love, Love," whene'er the bass
Asked the treble to atone
For its somewhat somber drone.'
Keep on casting pearls
To a—poet? All I care for
Is—to tell him that a girl's
'Love' comes aptly in when gruff
Grows his singing. (There, enough!)
A mile or so away,
On a little mound, Napoleon
Stood on our storming-day;
With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
Legs wide, arms locked behind,
As if to balance the prone brow
Oppressive with its mind.
That soar, to earth may fall,
Let once my army-leader Lannes
Waver at yonder wall,'—
Out 'twixt the battery smokes there flew
A rider, bound on bound
Full-galloping; nor bridle drew
Until he reached the mound.
And held himself erect
By 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 breast
Was all but shot in two.
We've got you Ratisbon!
The Marshal's in the market-place,
And you'll be there anon
To see your flag-bird flap his vans
Where I, to heart's desire,
Perched him!' The chief's eye flashed; his plans
Soared up again like fire.
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said
'Frà Pandolf' by design; for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The 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 first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, t'was not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say 'Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much,' or 'Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat': such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She 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 fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, 'Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark'—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
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 of transition. 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 no better 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 that instant'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 from As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice; but begin with actualized impersonation of the characters. No discussion more! No analysis more! The play—the "play's the thing" 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 in Part II and the exercises in Part III.
Omitting a review of the preliminary 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 the five 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 in pause, change of pitch, and inflection to 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 of tone-color, a sense of rhythm, and the power to suggest a background of musical sound. Having supplied as far as possible any 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 of good humor 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 of pause and inflection.
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 for support and freedom of tone.
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, first became 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 your illumined 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. That spoils 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 Neilson was Juliet. They, the audience, lived with these lovers one 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 selves in 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 be simple, 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 II
STUDIES IN VOCAL EXPRESSION
STUDIES IN VOCAL EXPRESSION
THE VOCAL VOCABULARY
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 the theory 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 a free 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 a vocal 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 a single 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, and power.
This passage from Emerson's Friendship surely 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 "wine and 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 and heart 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 less bromidic social 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 on Friendship. 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 of the 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 its vocal vocabulary.
I
STUDY IN PAUSE AND CHANGE OF PITCH
It is asserted that, "the last word has not been said on any subject." Mr. Hamilton Mabie seemed to me to achieve a last word on the subject of pause when he casually remarked: "Emerson was a master of pause; he would pause, and into the pool of 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 audience in 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 an empty pause.
On the other hand, if you shall ever face an audience in one of those fateful moments 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 a true 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. The words 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 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's Crystal.
When far within the spirit's hearing rolls
The great soft rumble of the course of things—
A bulk of silence in a mask of sound,—
When darkness clears our vision that by day
Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl
For truth and flitteth here and there about
Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft
Is minded for to sit upon a bough,
Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree
And 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 the poem. 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 a poet's meditation. And the voice by its use of pause can 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 that overemphasis which 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 which were 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 the change of pitch which 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 of the vocal vocabulary. Abt Vogler offers 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.
Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed
Armies 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!
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:
· · · · ·
All between, beginning with the second line, "Bidding my organ obey," and including the last words of the eighth line, "the princess he 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, the Voice, and watch it flow into the course as traced. Analyze the reading as to the use of pause and change of pitch.
II
STUDY IN INFLECTION
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 through inflection. 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 of inflection. 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 of The Doll's House is concentrated in these four 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's light 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—the faculty 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 this change of pitch within a word which 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 Sixteen will employ a straight, swift-falling inflection on the affirmative (unless some untoward influence, such as "Love the Destroyer," has embittered her life, when she may give us one of May Iverson's adorable replies, masked in indifference and circumlocution). Twenty will employ the straight-falling inflection without the swiftness of Sweet Sixteen's slide. With twenty-five we detect a faint sign of a curve in the more gradual fall. Twenty-eight to thirty-five employs various degrees of circumflex, according to the desire—or possibility—of concealing the real facts. Forty to forty-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 at seventy we hear a new and gentle circumflex of the "no," until the pride of extreme old age sets in at eighty-five with 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 of his 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 read Titan?" asked the gentle seer. "Yes," replied the lady. "Read it again!" said he. Query to the class: How did the lady inflect the word Yes to 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 through inflection as 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's Friendship, quoted in a preceding chapter. Let us repeat the first sentence again. "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." 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.
In Monna Vanna Maurice Maeterlinck gives the actress a superb opportunity to show her mastery of inflection. Let us turn to the scene in Prinzivalle's tent:[12]