Vocal Expression Part 19

XV

If he gains one, will some ticket, 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?

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 place Vacant left, and duly uttered "Love, Love, Love," whene'er the ba.s.s Asked the treble to atone For its somewhat somber drone.'

XVIII

But you don't know music! Wherefore 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!)

INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP

I

You know, we French stormed Ratisbon: 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 p.r.o.ne brow Oppressive with its mind.

II

Just as perhaps he mused 'My plans 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.

III

Then off there flung in smiling joy, 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.

IV

'Well,' cried he, 'Emperor, by G.o.d's grace 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.

V

The chief's eye flashed; but presently Softened itself, as sheathes A film the mother-eagle's eye When her bruised eaglet breathes; 'You're wounded!' 'Nay,' the soldier's pride Touched to the quick, he said: 'I'm killed, Sire!' And his chief beside, Smiling the boy fell dead.

MY LAST d.u.c.h.eSS

FERRARA

That's my last d.u.c.h.ess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said 'Fra Pandolf' by design; for never read Strangers like you that pictured countenance, The depth and pa.s.sion 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 d.u.c.h.ess' cheek: perhaps Fra 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 pa.s.sed her; but who pa.s.sed 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!

--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 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 a.n.a.lysis, 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 att.i.tude 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 att.i.tude toward the "deathless pa.s.sion." 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.