UC-NRLF 
 
 
 ^sseNtrats 
 
 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class S*^^ 
 
 021. 
 
 GENERM 
 

AI,FRKD AYRKS AS SHYI^OCK. 
 
 (after WILLIAM EDGAR MARSHALL'S PAINTING.) 
 
 Shylock, after the loss of his daughter, his jew- 
 els and his ducats, goes through the streets half 
 crazed, bewailing his misfortunes, when suddenly 
 he is halted by Solanio with : How, now Shylock? 
 
The essentials 
 
 OF 
 
 ELOCUTION 
 
 BY 
 
 ALFRED AYRES 
 
 AUTHOR OF "the ORTHOEPIST," " THE VERBALIST," 
 
 *'thk mentor," "acting and actors," etc. 
 
 NEW AND MUCH ENLARGED EDITION 
 
 Art is the perfection of nature.— Sir Tnoivf as Browne 
 The perfection of art is to conceal art. — Quintilian 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 1897 
 
0?3 
 
 Copyright 1886, by 
 
 FUNK & WAGNAI^I^S. 
 
 1897, by 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALI.S COMPANY. 
 
 Printed in the United States, America. 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 GtHi^^^ 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This is the shortest treatise on the Art of 
 Reading that has ever been written in the 
 English language ; yet, short as it is, it is of 
 more practical value than are all the others — 
 which is not saying much in its praise, for all 
 the others are of no practical value whatever. 
 
 The mode of procedure herein recom- 
 mended, in order to become skilled in elocu- 
 tion, is wholly unlike anything that has 
 hitherto found its way into print. Yet what 
 is here is older than the oldest of the vener- 
 able ** systems ** that have come down to us 
 from former generations, for what is here 
 dates back to the time when men began to 
 exchange ideas by means of a spoken lan- 
 guage. Then, as ever, the sensible man — 
 spoke he his own language or that of another 
 — spoke naturally, and not as the elocution of 
 the books, and of most teachers of the art, 
 would have us speak, for that tends to make 
 only bow-wowers and sing-songers. 
 
 Alfred Ayres, 
 
 New York, March, 1886. 
 
 100796 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2007 witii funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 littp://www.arcliive.org/details/essentialsofelocOOayrericli 
 
NOTE. 
 
 It has been intimated that this little book 
 owes its success to the exceeding modesty of 
 its preface. I do not think so ; I think it 
 owes its success to the fact that it is just the 
 sort of book its preface says it is. 
 
 The matter I have added — An Essay on 
 Pulpit Elocution, A Plea for the Intellectual 
 in Elocution, The Pause — Its Importance, and 
 A Critical Analysis of Canon Fleming's read- 
 ing of certain passages in Shakespeare — will 
 make the book much more instructive, pro- 
 vided the student take the trouble to decide 
 how far I am right in criticizing the learned 
 Canon. These pages offer such a field for the 
 practice of mental gymnastics as is seldom 
 met with. Elocutionists can not, I am con- 
 fident, be better employed than in studying 
 them. 
 
 Alfred Ayres. 
 
 New York, June, 1897. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 The Essentials of Elocution 5 
 
 Additional 28 
 
 Deportment 44 
 
 Pulpit Elocution 47 
 
 A Plea for the Intellectual in Elocu- 
 tion 57 
 
 The Pause — Its Importance 73 
 
 Studies in Emphasis 81 
 
OFTHG ' 
 
 UNIVERSITY ) 
 THE 
 
 ESSENTIALS OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 Elocution is the art of speaking lan- 
 guage so as to make the thought it ex- 
 presses clear and impressive. 
 
 This is best done by speaking the lan- 
 guage as we should speak it if the 
 thought were ours, and the language 
 came to us as we give it utterance. 
 
 If the thought were ours, and we 
 extemporized the language to express it, 
 we should never fail to speak with "good 
 accent and good discretion ; " we should 
 never fail to speak naturally and Jntel- 
 ligently, and consequently impressively. 
 
 If this is true — and who will question 
 it ? — then the first, the most important 
 
6 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 thing to be attended to by the reader is 
 to make himself^ acquainted . with the 
 author's tHought. If he does not do this, 
 aridd'o it thoroughly too, good reading 
 is impossible — ay, though he may be the 
 most learned of the learned in orotunds, 
 sostenutos, whispers and half-whispers, 
 monotones, basilar tones, and guttural 
 tones, high pitches, middle pitches, low 
 pitches, and all the rest of that old trum- 
 pery that has made many a noisy, stilted 
 reader, but never an intelligent, agreeable 
 one. He that understands and appreci- 
 ates his author will instinctively know 
 what tone to read him in ; a knowledge 
 of gutturals and basilars, of pitches and 
 whispers, will help him not a whit. This 
 complicated old machinery does not, 
 never has, and never will make anything 
 but mechanical readers — readers that, in- 
 stead of being occupied with the thoughts 
 of their authors, are occupied with the 
 sound of their own voices, which is fatal 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 7 
 
 to the object the reader has in view — 
 that of interesting his auditors. 
 
 Opening at random a treatise recently 
 published entitled "Philosophip Elocu- 
 tion" I find in the chapter headed 
 "Qualities of Voice" the following: " It 
 [the aspirate] is an impure quality, akin 
 to the guttural and whisper, coming as 
 it were between them, and next in at- 
 tenuated quality to the latter. It means, 
 properly, * sound emitted in rough breath- 
 ings * or hissings, and is necessary as ex- 
 pressive of violent passion. It then be- 
 comes comparative excellence in the 
 interpretation of hate^ aversion, fear, 
 anger, frenzy, horror, and the like pas- 
 sions. Where these rage intensely the 
 aspirate added to the guttural, still fur- 
 ther corrupting and vitiating the orotund 
 or fundamental voice, gives thereto that 
 vicious, fiendish character expressive of 
 dire revenge and destructiveness, which 
 are otherwise inexpressible. This quality 
 
8 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 of voice may be created as follows: 
 Raise the tongue at the root, high 
 toward the palate, obstructing as much 
 as possible the passage ; contract and 
 close the glottis still more than in gut- 
 tural tones ; make strong effort to ob- 
 struct the egress of air, while with strong- 
 est pressure of abdominal dorsal and pec- 
 toral muscles it is forced out through the 
 closed glottis and obstructed passage. 
 Thus, while uttering the words, there will 
 be an escape of air which is not converted 
 into speech, but, driven out with utmost 
 force, accompanies it with harsh and hiss- 
 ing sound. This is the aspirate as used 
 in the interpretation of the malignant 
 passions." 
 
 It is strange that intelligent persons 
 can be persuaded to believe that this 
 kind of " philosophy " ever has assisted 
 any one to become a reader ! It is this 
 kind of philosophy that has justly brought 
 the professional elocutionist into great 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 9 
 
 disrepute with the members of the dra* 
 matic profession, who will tell you that 
 they have never seen a student of elocu- 
 tion that could act, that they are always 
 unnatural, and consequently unsympa- 
 thetic, and yet the facts are : 
 
 I St. There can be no good acting with- 
 out good elocution. 
 
 2d. Without much study, and in the 
 right direction, there can be no good 
 elocution. 
 
 3d. There is no art that can be taught 
 with more success than elocution. 
 
 The actor himself becomes a student 
 of elocution the moment he asks himself 
 how a single sentence should be spoken. 
 Elocution teachers, as a class, undoubt- 
 edly do more harm than good ; their 
 teaching is commonly much worse than 
 no teaching at all, but that is not the 
 fault of the art. 
 
 Reading is a difficult art, far more dif- 
 ficult than most persons imagine. There 
 
lO THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 is no art for which a natural aptitude is 
 more necessary. There are many good 
 musicians to one good reader, and many 
 good judges of music to one good judge 
 of reading. In the reader sound and 
 fury are accepted, by most persons, as 
 art, and are applauded accordingly. I 
 have heard but two readers — three, if I 
 count Fanny Kemble — that I should be 
 willing to put in the very first rank. 
 These two were Mr. Edwin Forrest and 
 Miss Charlotte Cushman. There is, as 
 far as I know, no reader now before the 
 public to be compared with them. Of 
 course I have not heard them all, and, 
 then, opinions differ. Neither Mr. For- 
 rest nor Miss Cushman ever left anything 
 to chance, to inspiration, that could be 
 settled beforehand — not an emphasis, 
 not an inflection, not a pause. All was 
 carefully considered, and for everything 
 they did they had a reason. 
 
 I would walk farther and give more 
 
OF ELOCUTION. II 
 
 to hear any one read Hamlet's solilo- 
 quy on death as Mr. Forrest read it, 
 than I would to see any living Amer- 
 ican actor play his whole repertory ; and 
 I would walk farther and give more to 
 hear any one read the part of Queen 
 Catherine in Henry VHI.as MissCush- 
 man read it, than I would to see in her 
 best part an actress that should embody 
 all the excellencies of all the American 
 actresses of to-day. Mr. Forrest and 
 Miss Cushman were great players, and 
 what made them great was their won- 
 derful powers as readers, as elocutionists. 
 In all else that goes to make the actor 
 they have had many a peer. They were 
 intellectual players, scholarly players, 
 players that were far beyond the appre- 
 ciation of the great majority of those that 
 saw them. This lack of contemporary 
 appreciation was especially true of the 
 popular estimate of Mr. Forrest, whom 
 the million were inclined to think a phys- 
 
12 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 ical rather than an intellectual acton 
 Both Forrest and Cushman were close 
 and successful students of Nature, and 
 their delivery had in it none of the mere 
 noise and circumstance of declamation. 
 Their minds were ever occupied with 
 the thought, the sentiment and spirit of 
 their author, never with the tones they 
 employed. They knew that if they suc- 
 ceeded in mastering their author, the 
 time, the tone, the pitch, and the force 
 best suited to the rendering of him would 
 all take care of themselves. They knew 
 that any other course of procedure 
 would result in making their delivery 
 mechanical, automatic and soulless, in- 
 stead of spontaneous, realistic and im- 
 pressive. 
 
 But I would not be understood to in- 
 timate that it is necessary merely to un- 
 derstand an author in order to read him 
 well ; I say only that a thorough study 
 of the language to be read is the first 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 n 
 
 step to be taken, and that what follows is 
 often comparatively easy.* But as there 
 is, when one is not ill, a vast difference 
 between being well and being well, so 
 there is a vast difference between com- 
 prehending an author and comprehend- 
 ing him. Most persons of any culture 
 think they comprehend Shakspeare, yet 
 there is quite as much difference in their 
 appreciation of him as there is in their 
 appreciation of, say the paintings of the 
 great masters. How many of the read* 
 ers of "The Merchant of Venice" — to 
 take a very simple example — discover in 
 Portia s speech in the fourth act, begin- 
 ning "Tarry, Jew, the law hath yet 
 another hold on you," that the law is 
 specially severe when an alien attempts 
 
 * I assume that the student of elocution knows his moth- 
 er tongue sufficiently well to articulate it distinctly, and 
 to pronounce it according to some recognized authority. 
 Studies in articulation and pronunciation are properly 
 preparatory to the study of elocution, as an artt rathcf 
 than a part of it. 
 
14 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 the life of a citizen, and would so empha- 
 size the language as to bring out this 
 thought ? Very few, indeed, as I know 
 by observation. I once knew an elocu- 
 tionist (!) that for years had been getting 
 $5 an hour for teaching, and had gone 
 over this speech again and again without 
 discovering this peculiarity of the Vene- 
 tian law, and, of course, without making 
 it appear in the reading. 
 
 Elocution cannot be learned from 
 books, any better than painting or sculpt- 
 ure can. No treatise on the art, no mat- 
 ter how voluminous it is, can do much 
 more than give the learner a few hints to 
 set him thinking and observing. After 
 having carefully studied the language to 
 be read — supposing that its meaning is 
 not obvious — one should proceed to de- 
 termine how it should be spoken in 
 order to make the meaning clear : 
 
 I St. Which are the words that should 
 be emphasized. 
 
OF ELOCUTION, 1 5 
 
 2d. Which the clauses that, being 
 comparatively unimportant, should be 
 lightly touched — slurred. 
 
 3d. Where the voice should be kept 
 up, and where allowed to take the falling 
 inflection. 
 
 4th. Where the pauses should be 
 made, the longest of which are always 
 made between the thoughts. 
 
 The tone, I insist, will take care of it- 
 self. Herein he that knows what he is 
 reading about, he that appreciates his 
 author, will never fail. 
 
 In order to execute well, practice, as 
 a matter of course, is necessary, and a 
 great deal of practice, too. In practising 
 remember : 
 
 I St. To be chary of emphasis. Never 
 emphasize a word unless you think the 
 sense demands it. Emphasis being only 
 relative stress, over-emphasis defeats its 
 object. Do nothing without a reason. 
 Spare the ifsy the ands, and the buts. 
 
•.w'«v--V-vA^ 
 
 1 6 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 Do not come down on them as though 
 you would annihilate them, after the fash- 
 ion of many readers. The particles should 
 generally be touched lightly. 
 
 2d. That in slurring parenthetic clauses 
 — clauses that tell how, when, where, 
 etc. — we make a slight pause before and 
 after them, and speak them somewhat 
 more rapidly and less forcibly than the 
 rest of the text. Examples : 
 
 " Speak the speech — I pray you — as I 
 pronounced it to you." 
 
 " The censure of the which one must 
 — in your allowance — overweigh a whole 
 theatre of others." 
 
 " This book — as you see by the title 
 — is a prronouncing manual." 
 
 So, too, must the particles and the 
 pronouns, as a rule, be touched lightly, 
 after the manner of good offhand speak- 
 ers, and of cultivated persons in conver- 
 sation, except when the sense requires 
 them to be emphatic. Giving the name 
 
OF ELOCUTION, 1 7 
 
 sound to the particles and pronouns 
 — which necessitates the distinct aspi- 
 ration of the h's of the pronouns, a 
 thing that we hear an occasional Eng- 
 lishman do, seemingly to make sure of 
 not being taken for a cockney — makes 
 one's utterance stilted, pedantic and self- 
 conscious. Herein some of our Eng- 
 lish actors are great offenders. There is 
 as much difference between the proper 
 sound to give to the pronouns and the 
 particles in speaking and reading and their 
 name sounds as there is between the name 
 sound of the and the sound we usually 
 give it in conversation. The primary 
 object of reading, of reciting, and of de- 
 claiming is not to make our listeners 
 understand the words, but to make them 
 comprehend the thoughts the words ex- 
 press. The reader that sets himself the 
 task of sending every syllable to the ut- 
 termost corners of the house is sure to 
 be stilted, automatic, unnatural, and con- 
 
1 8 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 sequently uninteresting. If every syl- 
 lable reaches, so much the better, but 
 they must be sent without apparent 
 effort. Good taste limits clearness of 
 articulation as well as everything else. 
 Overdoing in articulating, as in man- 
 ners, is always far more objectionable 
 than underdoing, as nothing else is so 
 objectionable as self-consciousness and 
 affectation. An evident effort to be 
 fine is a distinguishing characteristic 
 of the underbred and the half-schooled. 
 3d. That great care should be taken not 
 to let the voice die out, as many readers 
 and players do, at the end of sentences 
 and as the breath leaves the lungs. No 
 other one thing is so destructive to the 
 sense, except the old-fashioned practice 
 of varying the tones in order to avoid 
 being monotonous — a reproach that will 
 never be made an intelligent reader that 
 is intent upon keeping his auditors occu- 
 pied with the thought of his author. Then 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 1 9 
 
 the tones will change spontaneously. 
 If the sentiment does not change them 
 let them remain unchanged. If the read- 
 er allows himself to be occupied with 
 the tones of his voice, the listener will do 
 likewise, and will soon become wearied. 
 This sing-song manner of delivery per- 
 vades nearly the whole German stage. 
 The German actor, jfind him where you 
 will, never, by any chance, speaks a sen- 
 tence in a natural tone, save when he 
 plays low-comedy parts. No one could 
 be more natural than he when he per- 
 sonates a comic tinker or a comic cob- 
 bler ; but when he attempts the persona- 
 tion of a man of the better sort his 
 delivery is artificial in the extreme. Nor 
 need we hunt far to find, even in high 
 places, on our own stage those that sin 
 in this direction quite as grievously as 
 the Germans do. This is a style of 
 elocution that costs little labor, and 
 makes small demands on the intelligence. 
 
20 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 4th. That in endeavoring to be natu- 
 ral one must be careful not to degen- 
 erate into the commonplace. Under- 
 doing is always worse than overdoing. 
 The worst of faults is tameness. The 
 happy mean between the declamatory 
 and the commonplace is often not easy 
 to find. This is the reason that we so 
 rarely hear certain passages in popular 
 plays satisfactorily spoken — Hamlet's 
 advice to the players, for example. How 
 beautifully, how naturally, and yet with 
 what princely dignity Mr. Forrest used 
 to speak these speeches ! 
 
 5th. To be deliberate, to take time. 
 But let your deliberation appear in the 
 time you consume with your pauses — 
 which, remember, when of much length, 
 must be between the thoughts — and 
 not in any drawling or dwelling on the 
 words, for they must come clean-cut 
 and sharply defined. Nothing else does 
 more to make one's reading natural and 
 
OF ELOCUTION, 21 
 
 realistic than the proper distribution of 
 time. In extemporizing we pause in- 
 stinctively : to give the listener time to 
 comprehend, and to prepare our next 
 thought for presentation. 
 
 6th. That in speakin^ ;_yieJ[angua£e,QL 
 others we should seem to be finding the 
 thought and the language as we go along. 
 I may say here that no one, no matter 
 who, can do himself full justice in speak- 
 ing the language of another unless he 
 is as familiar with it as he is with his 
 A B C's. He must know the language 
 so thoroughly that it costs him no 
 effort whatever to recall it. 
 
 7th. Not to commit a selection to 
 memory until, by going over it men- 
 tally, you are able to read it mentally 
 to your satisfaction. To memorize a 
 selection and then study the reading 
 is " to put the cart before the horse." 
 First decide upon the form of the utter- 
 ance, then, as you memorize, you will 
 
22 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 memorize the form as well as the words. 
 Salym i is said to have studied King 
 Eear^jix_.y;ears before he made any 
 effort to commit the part to memory. 
 
 8th. That untutored readers are al- 
 most certain to strike a higher key in 
 reading than that of their ordinary tone. 
 This is a fault that a little attention will, 
 in most cases, readily correct. An easy 
 way to make, sure of striking a natural 
 tone is to preface what one is about to 
 read with one or two extemporaneous 
 sentences, and then to go directly from 
 one's own language to that of the au- 
 thor. For example, thus: If you will 
 listen I will read, for your edification, I 
 hope, some verses by Alfred Tennyson. 
 They are entitled " Recollections of the 
 Arabian Nights," and begin by saying 
 that: 
 
 " When the breeze of a joyful dawn 
 blew free," etc. Nothing is easier than 
 in this way to begin in the tone one 
 
OF ELOCUTION, 23 
 
 habitually speaks in. Then, after a little 
 practice, one can forego the preface. 
 
 9th. To take braathjoftenj^yerj often, 
 and to take it inaud ibly. Leave gasp- 
 ing to " barn - stormers " and prayer- 
 meeting exhorters. Never speak with- 
 out having the lungs well filled. In 
 taking breath and in speaking use the 
 muscles of the chest as little as possible ; 
 make, if you can, the diaphragm and 
 abdominal muscles — the belly — do all 
 the work. Practice will make this easy, 
 and will immensely increase the so- 
 called lung power for both momentary 
 and continued effort. If a speaker from 
 nervousness loses his voice he has only 
 " to pull himself together," take a deep, 
 full breath, and speak from the abdo- 
 men, to find his voice instantly return 
 to him. In exercising the voice with 
 the view of strengthening it, it is not 
 necessary to make much sound, but 
 only to utter the words, or the vowels 
 
24 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 only, with intensity. This can be done 
 without disturbing a neighbor in an ad- 
 joining room. Voice is as much the re- 
 sult of muscular effort as is the turning 
 of somersaults, and one should not ex- 
 pect to have the muscles with which one 
 produces it well hardened and under 
 proper control with less than at least two 
 years' constant practice. No other exer- 
 cise is more, if equally, invigorating. It 
 is not necessary to have much voice in 
 order to read well. A fragile person 
 with a weak voice, if it is under control, 
 might be very artistic; but a strong 
 voice and great strength are necessary in 
 order to be effective, especially in deal- 
 ing with pathos or passion. 
 
 Advanced 'pupils in schools can com- 
 monly be taught with considerable suc- 
 cess to read naturally by giving them a 
 selection to familiarize themselves with 
 — a short, simple story, for example — and 
 
OF ELOCUTION, 
 
 25 
 
 then asking them, first, to give the sub- 
 stance of the selection in their own lan- 
 guage, and afterward the selection in the 
 language of its author. As soon as the 
 pupil begins to speak (or to read) in a 
 high tone or unnaturally he should be 
 stopped, with the question : " What did 
 you say this is about?" which will bring 
 him back to a natural tone. Then, after 
 he has extemporized a few sentences, he 
 should be directed to return to the lan- 
 guage of the book. One hour of this 
 kind of drill will accomplish more than 
 a whole term of wrestling with high 
 pitches, low pitches, basilars, gutturals, 
 orotunds, and sostenutos. 
 
 If these hints suffice to make the stu 
 dent of elocution think and observe, they 
 do about all that any treatise can do in the 
 way of making readers. He that would 
 acquire the art of speaking the language 
 set down for him in an intelligent and 
 
26 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 natural manner should study the manner 
 of good extemporaneous speakers and 
 of people in earnest conversation. He 
 should observe how they emphasize-how 
 they slur the unimportant, reserving their 
 breath and strength for the important — 
 and how they pause. Let him study him- 
 self, too, as well as others, especially if his 
 manner is naturally earnest and animated. 
 Whatever is even akin to a drawling, a 
 whining, an intoning, or a canting manner 
 of speaking he cannot too studiously shun. 
 Natural tones are the tones of truth and 
 honesty, of good sense and good taste. 
 It is with them only that the understand- 
 ing is successfully addressed ; with them 
 only that we can arouse and keep awake 
 the intelligence of the listener, which 
 is the object we always have in view, 
 whether we speak our own language or 
 that of another. 
 
 The only serious objection, I believe, 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 27 
 
 to the course I recommend is that it 
 offers comparatively little opportunity 
 for the professor to impress his pupils, 
 and through them the neighborhood, 
 with his profundity. In natural, com- 
 mon-sense processes there is rarely any- 
 thing that dazzles, never anything that 
 bewilders. 
 
28 THE ESSEN7YALS 
 
 ADDITIONAL. 
 
 I WILL indicate, as nearly as I am able, 
 what I conceive to be the proper read- 
 ing of Portia's great speech in the 
 fourth act of " The Merchant of Venice," 
 giving some of the reasons for the em- 
 phasis. A careful study of this speech 
 will give the student of elocution an 
 idea of the course it is necessary to pur- 
 sue, and of the thought required in order 
 to determine how the more difficult 
 authors should be read : 
 
 ^ indicates that the word it is placed 
 over should be touched lightly. 
 
 / indicates a place where breath 
 should be taken. 
 
 The italics indicate that the word 
 should be emphasized. 
 
 Portia. — Do you confess the bond? 
 
 Antonio. — I do. 
 
 Portia. — Then must the Jew be merciful. 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 29 
 
 Shylock.— On what compulsion must I ? Tell me 
 that. ^ 
 
 Portia. — The quality of mercy is not strained./ 
 
 Thoughtless readers, who comprise 
 fully forty-nine in every fifty, are sure to 
 make either quality or mercy y or possibly 
 both emphatic, while the thoughtful read- 
 er sees that the making ofeither of these 
 words emphatic puts a meaning into the 
 line not intended. To say that "The 
 quality of mercy is not strained " is to 
 say that some other attribute of mercy 
 is, or may be, strained — the quantity, 
 for example. And to say, "The quality 
 of mercy is not strained " is to say that 
 the quality of something else is, or may 
 be, strained. The thoughtful reader sees 
 that Portia says simply this : " Mercy 
 doesn't come by compulsion, it comes 
 of itself, it is spontaneous," and, having 
 seen this, he has no difficulty in decid- 
 ing how the line should be emphasized. 
 
 I will take, occasion here to say that 
 
30 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 when one is in doubt about the empha- 
 sis it is an excellent plan to express the 
 thought of the author in one's own lan- 
 guage, and then to transfer the emphasis 
 to the language of the author ; and also 
 that when one has difficulty in speaking 
 the language of an author naturally, that 
 it is likewise a good plan to express the 
 thought in one's own language, and then 
 to transfer the intonation to the author. 
 In doing so, in endeavoring to be nat- 
 ural, colloquial, one must be very careful 
 not to degenerate into the commonplace 
 — a very common fault. Of the two it 
 is better to overdo than to underdo, as 
 in underdoing there is great danger of 
 being tame, which is the worst of faults. 
 
 It droppeth/ as the gentle rain from heaven/ 
 Upon the place beneath :/ it is twice blest: / 
 
 The thoughtless reader, the reader 
 that has no reason for what he does, but 
 emphasizes in a hap-hazard fashion, is 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 3 1 
 
 sure to say " twice blest," intimating by 
 his emphasis that it has somewhere been 
 said in the context that mercy is once 
 blest, as without this statement his 
 emphasis would not be justified. We 
 should say of a man that has been twice 
 imprisoned, in simply stating the fact : 
 " He has been twice imprisoned i' but if 
 we were answering the question, " Has 
 he not been imprisoned ?" we should 
 instinctively say : *' Yes, he has been 
 twice imprisoned." In emphasis, as in 
 grammar, it is always the sense that 
 determines. 
 
 It blesseth him that gives/ and him that takes :/ 
 
 Strangely enough, " him that gives and 
 him that takes " is the hap-hazard way 
 of reading this line. If the language 
 I were, " The man that gives and the man 
 \ that receives," no one would err in read- 
 ing it 
 
 *Tis mightiest/ \ti the mightiest^/ it becomes 
 
32 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 Many thoughtful readers say, " Might- 
 iest in the mightiest," as they say, " Heart 
 of hearts." Their reasons for so doing 
 have always seemed to me valueless. 
 This emphasis seems to me absurd. Por- 
 tia simply says that even among the 
 mightiest mercy is still the mightiest. 
 In this sentence among is the word that 
 should receive the stress, if in Shak- 
 speare's mode of expressing the thought 
 in should receive it. 
 
 The throned monarch! better than his crown :/ 
 
 This is, probably, the line of the whole 
 speech with regard to which opinions 
 most differ. M any good readers — -among 
 them my learned friend, Professor J. B. 
 Roberts, of Philadelphia — insist that 
 better is much the most emphatic word. 
 They say, "All monarchs have crowns." 
 And if they have! If it had been any- 
 where said that mercy becomes the 
 throned monarch, as well as his crown, 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 33 
 
 then we should say properly that it 
 becomes him better than his crown ; but 
 this is nowhere said. Portia says that 
 the most exalted of men are more adorn- 
 ed by mercy than they are even by their 
 crowns. It is not more incorrect to say, 
 " Fame is better than riches," than it is to 
 say, "It becomes the throned monarch 
 better than his crown." Of the three 
 words crown is perhaps a little the most, 
 and better is certainly the least emphatic. 
 
 His sceptre/ shows the force of temporal power,/ 
 
 The attribute to awe / and majesty J 
 
 Wherein doth sit the dread /and fear of kings // 
 
 Care should be taken not to run awe 
 and majesty and dread and fear to- 
 gether, as it greatl)^ lessens the effect. 
 
 But mercy/ is above /Xh^ sceptred svidiy ;/ 
 It is enthroned in the hearts of kings./ 
 
 The pronoun it in this line, as will 
 be seen, stands in direct contradistinc- 
 tion to temporal power (its antecedent 
 
34 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 being mercy), which is enthroned in the 
 sceptre ; hence the sense demands that 
 it should be emphasized ; but, owing to 
 the shortness of the vowel sound, there is 
 something unpleasant to the ear in that 
 reading. Substitute that in the place of 
 it, and the effect of the emphasis is very 
 different. 
 
 It is an attribute to God/ Himself ;/ 
 And earthly power /doth then show likest GocTs/ 
 When mercy I seasons justice, I Therefore, Jew,/ 
 Though justice be thy plea,/ consider this,/ 
 That, in the course oi justice J none of us/ 
 
 Not "in th^ course of justice," as many- 
 thoughtless readers would have it. The 
 words the course of are not at all neces- 
 sary to the sense; the line is fully as 
 forcible without them. 
 
 Should see salvation./ We do pray/ for mercy,/ 
 And that same prayer/ doth teach us all/ to render 
 The deeds of mercy./ I have spoke thus much,/ 
 
 Not " I have spoke thus much," which 
 is equivalent to saying, " I have not 
 chanted it nor sung it.'' 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 35 
 
 To mitigate the Justice/ of thy plea ;/ 
 
 Which,/ if ihoM follow,/ this strict court of Venice/ 
 
 See what has been said about the slur- 
 ring of parenthetic clauses. 
 
 Must needs give sentence/ 'gainst/ the merchant there. 
 
 The voice should be kept well up to 
 the very end of the last line, in order to 
 make the proper climax. 
 
 As for the measure, in reading verse, 
 especially blank-verse, it is generally bet- 
 ter to leave it to take care of itself. The 
 thought is the thing ; it is with that that 
 we catch and hold the attention of the 
 listener. 
 
 In the following speeches of Shylock 
 I mark the pronouns, prepositions and 
 conjunctions that I would have touched 
 lightly. To give these little unemphatic 
 words their full name sound, as many 
 readers do, is most unnatural, and makes 
 one's reading sound very like a Conos- 
 
36 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 toga wagon going over a corduroy road. 
 By tripping over the unimportant we 
 bring the important into the foreground, 
 which makes it easier for the listener 
 to seize the thought. The reader that 
 goes pounding over the words soon 
 becomes tiresome. The only extempo- 
 rizers that speak in this manner are those 
 that endeavor to make up in clatter what 
 they lack in matter. 
 
 I have possessed your grace of what I purpose ; 
 And by our holy Sabbath have I sworn 
 To have the due and forfeit of my bond. 
 If you deny it, let the danger light 
 Upon your charter and your city's freedom. 
 You'll ask me, why I rather choose to have 
 A weight of carrion flesh than to receive 
 Three thousand ducats : — I'll not answer that : 
 But say, it is my humor : is it answered ? 
 What if my house be troubled with a rat, 
 And I be pleased to give ten thousand ducats 
 To have it baned ; what, are you answered yet? 
 Some men there are love not a gaping pig ; 
 Some, that are mad if they behold a cat. 
 Now for your answer : 
 As there is no firm reason to be rendered 
 Why he cannot abide a gaping pig ; 
 Why he, a harmless necessary cat ; 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 37 
 
 So can I give no reason, nor will I not, 
 
 More than a lodged hate and a certain loathing 
 
 I bear Antonio, that I follow thus 
 
 A losing suit against him. Are you answered ? 
 
 Duke. — How shalt thou hope for mercy, rend'ring 
 none? 
 
 Shy. — What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong ? 
 You have among you many a purchased slave, 
 Which, like your asses, and your dogs, and mules, 
 You use in abject and in slavish parts. 
 Because you bought them : shall I say to you. 
 Let them be free, marry them to your heirs ? 
 Why sweat they under their burdens ? let their beds 
 Be made as soft as yours, let their palates 
 Be seasoned with such viands ? you will answer, 
 The slaves are ours : — So do I answer you : 
 The pound of flesh that I demand of him 
 Is dearly bought, is mine, and I will have it : 
 If you deny me, fie upon your law ! 
 There is no force in the decrees of Venice : 
 I stand for judgment : — answer : shall I have it? 
 
 When not emphatic the h in all the 
 pronouns beginning with that letter 
 should be touched very lightly. In con- 
 versation initial k is frequently dropped 
 entirely, in the pronouns, by those whose 
 articulation is least faulty. There are not 
 a few, however, that, when they appear 
 
38 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 in public and are "on their mettle," studi- 
 ously avoid slurring the pronouns, and 
 consequently are careful to aspirate the 
 k distinctly in kzSy her, he and him, no 
 matter whether the thought demands 
 that the pronouns should be emphasized 
 or not; but in their endeavor to be nicely 
 correct they simply succeed in being 
 pedantically wrong. This error seriously 
 mars the delivery of many actors and 
 public readers, making their elocution 
 stilted and unnatural. Many of them 
 slur my, not unfrequently making it me 
 (e like y in only^, in fact, when the y 
 should retain its long sound ; but they 
 seem to think it would be a heinous 
 offence to treat the other pronouns in a 
 like manner. Pronouns in which the 
 letters should have their full value are 
 m.et with only at considerable intervals. 
 
 When, from being used in contradis- 
 tinction to another personal pronoun, ;;^jK 
 is emphatic, the y has its full, open, long-/ 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 39 
 
 sound Thus we should say, "Is this my 
 ink or yours f But when there is no 
 such emphasis — and there is but rarely — 
 the y has the sound of obscure i, as in 
 mi-nute and miraculous, which is very 
 like the sound of y in m^any, only, etc. 
 ** My \me\ ink is as bad as my \me\penr 
 These rules, however, are and should be 
 departed from in certain cases where we 
 would express respect or emotion. " My 
 \mi\ brother shall know of this." " Sir, 
 this lady is my \mt\ wife." " Ay, madam, 
 she was my \mi'\ mother!" Say me m 
 these sentences, and they become com- 
 monplace ; you take all the soul out of 
 them. 
 
 " Hearing their \th!r'\ conversation 
 and their \th'r'\ accounts of the approba- 
 tion their [MV] papers were received 
 with, I was excited to try my \me\ hand 
 among them \th!m^^r — Franklin. 
 
 "If their loss were as great 2iS yours, 
 it would bankrupt them \_lh'my 
 
 ^ \ \\ R A R Y 
 ^/ ^ OF THE 
 
40 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 " If you give me money, what are you 
 going to give them f 
 
 " If I had them \th!fn\ now, I should 
 know what to do with them \tJifn\!' 
 
 Why ^\^ you not come to ;;/^when I 
 called you ? 
 
 Though the name sounds of you and 
 of me are yoo and mee respectively, their 
 proper sounds in the sentence above, 
 where they are unemphatic, is ye and 
 mey the e in both cases having its ob- 
 scure sound, which is the sound that ter- 
 minal y often has — any, many, nightly 
 — and this is the only sound ever given 
 to these pronouns, when they do not 
 stand in positions that make them em- 
 phatic, except by the pedantic. 
 
 The name sound of your is yoor, but 
 when it stands in unemphatic positions, 
 as it generally does, its pronunciation 
 approaches that of the last syllable of 
 the word lawyer. 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 4 1 
 
 hamlet's advice to the players. 
 
 Speak the speech (I pray you) as I pronounced it to you. 
 trippingly on the tongue. But, if you mouth it (as many 
 of our players do) I had as lief the town-crier had spoke 
 my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much — your hand 
 thus ; but use all gently : for, in the very torrent ^ iifn- 
 pesty and (as I may say) the whirlwind of passion, you 
 must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it 
 smoothness, O, it offends me to the soul^ to hear a 
 robustious^ periwigpated fellow tear a passion to tatters^ 
 to very rags^ to split the ears of the groundlings ; who 
 (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable 
 dumb shows and noise, I could have such a fellow 
 whipped for o'erdoing Termagant ; it out-herods Herod. 
 Pray you, avoid it. 
 
 Player. I warrant your honor. 
 
 Be not too tame, neither ; but let your own discretion 
 be your tutor. Suit the action to the word^ the word to 
 the action ; with this special observance, that you o'erstep 
 not the modesty of nature ; for anything so overdone is 
 from the purpose of playing, whose end^ both at the first 
 and nowy was and is, to hold (as 'twere) the mirror up to 
 nature : to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own 
 image, and the very age and body of the time his form 
 and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, 
 though it may make the unskilful laugh, cannot but 
 make the judicious grieve ; the censure of the which one 
 must (in your allowance) outweigh a whole theatre of 
 others, O, there be players that I have seen play, and 
 heard others praise, and that highly (not to speak it 
 profanely), that, having neither the «rr^«/ of Christians nor 
 the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted 
 
 I 
 
42 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 and BELLOWED, that I have thought some of Nature's 
 journeymen had made men, and not made them well^ 
 they imitated humanity so abominably, 
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY. 
 To be or not to be — that is the question : 
 Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer 
 The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 
 Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
 And, by opposing, end them — To die — to sleep — 
 No more ; and, by a sleep, to say we end 
 The heart-ache^ and the thousand natural shocks 
 That flesh is heir to — 'tis a consummation 
 Devoutly to be wished. To die — to sleep — 
 To sleep ? — perchance to dream — aye, there's the rub ! 
 For, in that sleep of death, what dreams may come 
 When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 
 Must give us pause ! There s the respect 
 That makes calamity of so long Hfe : 
 For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 
 The oppressor'' s wrong, the proud man's contumely ^ 
 The pangs of disprized love , the laws delay. 
 The insolence of office, and the spurns 
 That patient merit of the unworthy takes — 
 When he himself might his quietus make 
 With a bare bodkin ? Who would fardels bear. 
 To groan and sweat under a weary life, 
 But that the dread of something after death — 
 The undiscovered country, from whose bourn 
 No traveller xeXuxviS— puzzles the will. 
 And makes us rather bear those ills we have 
 Than fly to others that we know not of ! 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 43 
 
 Thus conscience does make cowards of us all: 
 
 And thus the native hue of resolution 
 
 Is sicklied o'er with the/jZ? r^j/ of thought ; 
 
 And enterprises of great pith and moment. 
 
 With M/j" regard, their currents turn awry^ 
 
 And /(S'J'^ the «flw<? of action, shakspeAre. 
 
 This soliloquy should not be spoken 
 in less than four minutes — certainly not 
 in less than three and a half. Mr. For- 
 rest took six minutes — never less in his 
 later years — to speak it, and his six min- 
 utes — so fully did he engross the atten- 
 tion of his listeners — did not seem 
 longer than the three minutes of many 
 others. 
 
 So much in the way of directions ! 
 And they should suffice to set the would- 
 be reader to thinking and observing, 
 and to studying Nature, which it is as 
 much his duty to copy in her best forms 
 as it is the painter's or the sculptor's. 
 
44 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 DEPORTMENT. 
 
 A WORD, and only a word, with regard 
 to deportment on the rostrum or the 
 stage. 
 
 The firs t and most important thing 
 to do is to learn to do nothing — to keep 
 still, to stand firmly on the feet, without 
 any dropping in the hips, letting the 
 hands y^// where the attraction of gravi- 
 tation will take them. 
 
 Of all the positions one can take, this 
 one is the most graceful, and it may 
 always be held until the demands of the 
 occasion necessitate a change. It should 
 never be changed simply for the sake of 
 change. 
 
 Yet it is the position least in favor 
 with the tyro. He persists in fre- 
 quently changing the position of his 
 feet, in dropping in the hips, in putting 
 
OF ELOCUTION, 45 
 
 his hands behind his back, on his hips, 
 or in his trousers pockets ; in putting his 
 thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, or in his 
 belt, if he wears one, or in clutching his 
 sword-hilt, if he carries one — in short, he 
 persists in doing everything but the right 
 thing, which is, I repeat, to keep still in 
 the position described. 
 
 No other one thing so quickly betrays 
 the novice as fidgeting, and fumbling, 
 and trying to hide the hands; and no 
 other one thing does so much to make 
 one appear to be master of the situation, 
 and to make one's bearing dignified and 
 pleasing to the eye as — repose. 
 
 If you would learn what not to do 
 observe our younger actors — especially 
 those that come to us from England. 
 They — some of them, at least — would 
 make a better figure if their arms were 
 amputated at the shoulder. 
 
 After rising to read to, or to address, 
 an assemblage of persons, do not be in 
 
46 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 haste to begin. Always wait till youi 
 auditors are quite still. Your waiting 
 with composure will never fail to im- 
 press your auditors favorably. 
 
 Be sparing with your gestures. Make 
 but few. The tyro generally makes 
 fully six times too many. Let those you 
 do make be made from the shoulder. 
 Little gestures made from the elbow are 
 meaningless. Gesture, if spontaneous, 
 always precedes the word. Gestures that 
 are not spontaneous are better not made. 
 
OF ELOCUTION, 47 
 
 PULPIT ELOCUTION. 
 
 Of the three places where we hear 
 most public speaking and reading — our 
 courts of law, our theaters, and our 
 churches — the place where we hear the 
 best elocution is the first, and the place 
 where we hear the worst elocution is 
 the last. The reason we hear the best 
 elocution in our courts of law is because 
 there the speakers are most occupied 
 with the thoughts expressed by the 
 language they utter, because there they 
 are most in earnest, and because there 
 they address themselves most to the 
 intelligence. Mere sound produces its 
 effect on the feelings, while reason 
 alone reaches the intelligence. 
 
 He that habitually addresses himself 
 to the feelings of his auditors is sure 
 
48 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 to become artificial, while he that ha- 
 bitually addresses himself neither to 
 the feelings nor to the reason of his 
 auditors is sure to become monotonous, 
 and, indeed, is in great danger of be- 
 coming a mere mumbler. In Metho- 
 dist pulpits we find the best examples 
 of the first class of speakers ; in Epis- 
 copal pulpits, the best examples of the 
 second. 
 
 No man's delivery can be wholly bad 
 if he have thought to utter that is 
 w^orth the uttering, if he be master 
 of the thought — it may not always be 
 his — and if he be intent on impressing 
 his auditors. The extemporizer is com- 
 monly more effective than he that 
 speaks a lesson conned, or speaks from 
 a manuscript, simply because his mind 
 is more fully occupied with the thought 
 as he gives it utterance. I say commonly 
 more effective, because it is possible for 
 at least some persons so to cultivate the 
 
OF ELOCUTION, 49 
 
 art of delivery as to be fully as effective 
 in the delivery of a lesson conned as 
 they would be if the whole — thought 
 and language — were their own. For 
 all, however, this requires much study, 
 and for some persons, no matter how 
 much study they give to the art of de- 
 livery, skill is impossible. Some of 
 our great players are probably quite as 
 impressive in speaking the language of 
 their parts as they would be if the 
 thought were theirs, and the language 
 came to them as they give it utterance. 
 This accomplishment they acquire by 
 availing themselves of the assistance of 
 the best masters, and by studying Na- 
 ture in her best forms. The most ef- 
 fective speaker of language this coun- 
 try has thus far produced, and one of 
 the most effective any country has ever 
 produced, was undoubtedly the late 
 Edwin Forrest, who insisted that he 
 owed even his wonderful voice to cul- 
 
 
50 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 ture. Mr. Forrest was one of the hard- 
 est of hard students in his art ; not a 
 thing did he leave undone that he 
 thought would in any degree improve 
 his elocution. In the matter of pro- 
 nunciation, for example, he was one of 
 the most correct persons that have ever 
 spoken the English language. Therein 
 it was always safe to take him as a 
 guide. Nor was he less correct in those 
 things that it is necessary to pay atten- 
 tion to in order fully to bring out an 
 author's thought. His emphasis, his 
 pauses, and the inflections were always 
 just what they should be to make his 
 language impressive. 
 
 Miss Charlotte Cushman was another 
 wonderful reader. True, Forrest and 
 Cushman were what the world calls 
 geniuses, but their genius, like the 
 genius of most geniuses, was in a great 
 measure merely a genius for close ap- 
 plication. The Forrests and the Cush- 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 51 
 
 mans are not more indebted to their 
 natural gifts than they are to what they 
 acquire by study. 
 
 No man can make language thor- 
 oughly effective that has not learned 
 how to do it ; that is not studied and 
 practiced in the art commonly called 
 elocution, which The Standard Diction- 
 ary defines as *' proper and effective oral 
 delivery.'* One writer on the art says 
 that elocution may be defined as simply 
 ''the intelligent, intelligible, correct, 
 and effective interpretation and ex- 
 pression of thought and emotion in 
 speech and action.'' Another says: 
 '* It is the appropriate utterance of the 
 thoughts and feelings presented in 
 written language." A definition I pre- 
 fer to either of these is this : *' Elocu- 
 tion is the art of speaking language so 
 as to make the thought it expresses 
 clear and impressive." 
 
 Nor is the utterance the only thing 
 
52 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 to be considered ; the handling of the 
 body — ^gestures, bearing — must also be 
 considered if one would be a pleasing 
 speaker. Oratory is an art, and like 
 the other arts, is largely acquirable. 
 How many preachers know anything 
 about what is called stage or rostrum 
 deportment? How often they appear 
 awkward and ungainly, when, by follow- 
 ing a few hints, they would appear dig- 
 nified and commanding ! 
 
 Much importance as has been at- 
 tached to the art by many persons as 
 far back, at least, as we have the his- 
 tory of civilization, there is to-day one 
 class of persons, a part of whose duties 
 is to speak in public two or three times 
 a week, that appear for the most part 
 to attach no importance to it whatever. 
 I mean the preachers. They, at least 
 many of them, appear to care not a 
 whit whether their delivery is good or 
 bad. There are those that think this 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 53 
 
 comes of the fact that elocution is 
 thought by many to make the speaker 
 or reader unnatural and stilted. I 
 think it may be found in the fact that 
 many preachers are indifferent, and are 
 content to discharge their duties in a 
 simply perfunctory manner. If they 
 had the burning zeal of a Paul or an 
 Ulfilas, of a Luther or a Calvin, of a 
 Massilon or a Whitfield, they should do 
 all in their power to make their deliv- 
 ery effective. In the Methodist pul- 
 pits, for example, it is too often the 
 fashion to vociferate — to rant, as the 
 stage calls it — with all the physical 
 energy the speaker chances to possess. 
 In the Episcopal, very many go to the 
 other extreme. There they go so far 
 in avoiding the vociferation indulged 
 in by their Methodist neighbors that 
 some of them lose all semblance of 
 being in earnest. They go through 
 the entire service, sermon included, as 
 
54 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 though they thought it quite "the 
 thing '* to be as monotonous and auto- 
 matic as possible. The Methodist ap- 
 pears to think his auditors want and 
 expect what the stage calls *' ginger/' 
 so he howls himself hoarse. The Epis- 
 copalian, on the contrary, appears to 
 think his auditors want and expect pro- 
 priety, alias monotony, so he gives it to 
 them in atone that oftentimes is hardly 
 audible. Yet both Methodist and Epis- 
 copalian profess to have the same mis- 
 sion, to teach the same truths, to be 
 guides in the same paths. It is, or is sup- 
 posed to be, the mission of both to con- 
 vince ; yet how differently do they go 
 about the compassing of the object in* 
 view ! And still, since there have been 
 men to convince, they have been con- 
 vinced in essentially the same way; and 
 as long as there are any men to convince, 
 they will be convinced in essentially the 
 same way. That way, however, is not 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 55 
 
 the way that fashion has introduced into 
 a great majority of the pulpits of to-day. 
 The speakers we find in these same 
 pulpits, when they are really intent on 
 bringing others to see as they see, are 
 very different in manner from the man- 
 ner they assume in their pulpits. Then 
 they talk like men. Then, they are 
 natural Then, the one leaves off vo- 
 ciferating; the other, mumbling. Then, 
 they both leave off intoning. Then, 
 they make a direct, earnest, honest, 
 manly appeal to the listener. 
 
 Some speakers, I should observe, 
 resort to vociferation, to clatter, to 
 make up for a paucity of matter. He 
 that has thought to present that he is 
 really desirous to have his auditors 
 comprehend, instinctively avoids drown- 
 ing it in a sea of sound. 
 
 As I have already intimated, elocu- 
 tion is looked upon with disfavor by 
 very many persons. The reason is be- 
 
56 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 cause the so-called methods are nearly- 
 all bad, and because the self-called 
 teachers of elocution, nineteen out of 
 twenty of them, are worse than the 
 methods. Elocution, however, can be 
 taught, and taught as successfully as 
 any other art can be taught. But, be- 
 ware, you that would study the art — if 
 there be any such — into whose hands 
 you get. 
 
 I have no doubt that if the reading 
 and speaking done in our churches 
 were done really well, from a purely 
 elocutionary point of view, the church 
 attendance would be well-nigh double 
 what it is. If you want people to go 
 to church you must interest them, and 
 you can't interest them by holloing at 
 them, or by mumbling at them. 
 
 The success of a speaker before the 
 average audience depends as much on 
 the manner of the delivery as on the 
 matter delivered. 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 57 
 
 A PLEA FOR THE INTELLECT- 
 UAL IN ELOCUTION. 
 
 The greater number of those who think themselves 
 elocutionists know no more about elocution than a 
 catfish knows about astronomy. — ''Thespis'* on 
 Elocution. 
 
 There are a good many persons in 
 this country that profess to occupy 
 themselves with the art commonly, and 
 properly, called elocution. They dis- 
 agree in a good many things, but they 
 all agree in one thing — that there are 
 many persons in this country that will 
 have none of them or of their art ; or, 
 to get nearer to the matter, of what 
 they call their art. 
 
 Not a few of these artists, real or 
 only self-called, seem to be desirous to 
 do what they can to convince the world 
 that elocution is a very good thing, and 
 
58 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 hence a thing that every one would be 
 the better for knowing something of. 
 This ought to be an easy thing to do, 
 since elocution is nothing else than 
 good speaking, or perhaps it would be 
 better to say it is good vocal delivery, 
 which surely is a thing that no one 
 would object to having, 
 
 There is one thing more in which all, 
 it would seem, are fully in accord ; and 
 that is that to bring elocution " into 
 better repute with the world,'' we have 
 but to make the elocution of the elocu- 
 tionists more frequently elocution. The 
 course to pursue in order to bring this 
 about is the question on which, it is 
 fairly clear to the observer, no two 
 think alike. One says: *'We should 
 be eager in our desires and work heart- 
 ily,'' but he doesn't tell us how to work 
 or what to work at. Another says: 
 *'You must advance or you will retro- 
 grade," but she doesn't tell us what to 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 59 
 
 do in order to advance. This same 
 adviser adds : '* I feel that the diggers 
 of the earth who go down deep have 
 better results than those who spend 
 their time in displaying what they 
 know*'; but how our adviser would 
 have us dig deep we are left to divine, 
 hence the advice is of doubtful worth. 
 Another says: *' First of all, I think 
 that elocution, both in teaching and in 
 practice, will be reformed by the light 
 of the harmonic principle.'* 
 
 How the harmonic principle would 
 aid in determining just what an author 
 would say, and just how one should 
 emphasize, inflect, and pause in order 
 to make an author's meaning clear, we 
 are left to find out as best we can. 
 Here, perhaps, we should do well to 
 invoke the aid of the principle har- 
 monic. This same counsellor tells us 
 that we must be in love with the poetry 
 we attempt to interpret, and that the 
 
6o THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 greatest thing in elocution, as in reli- 
 gion, is the love of God. How love of 
 God or of poetry could possibly sharpen 
 one's wits I cannot see. I have yet to 
 find that the pious read any better than 
 the impious, nor has it ever seemed to 
 me that love for the poetic betters that 
 discretion that Shakespeare intimates 
 is the elocutionist's best tutor. Indeed, 
 I have always been under the impres- 
 sion that poets are commonly bad read- 
 ers, even of their own compositions. 
 Love of poetry may, usually does, make 
 the reader earnest, but unwhipped earn- 
 estness is seldom anything but fuss and 
 fury. Then we have **The New^Elocu- 
 tion,'' **The New Dynamic Reading," 
 '* The Psychological Elocution," and 
 perhaps some other kinds of elocution 
 that I have never heard of. Whether 
 any one of these various kinds of elo- 
 cution is likely to drag elocution out 
 of the slough of despond, in which all 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 6l 
 
 concede that it at present wallows, is a 
 matter that I have not even an impres- 
 sion with regard to, as I have not even 
 a vague idea of what these various 
 kinds of elocution are. Philistine-like, 
 I have been content to stick to the old 
 sort, of which I have still much to 
 learn. No man should attempt the new 
 till he has mastered the old. 
 
 And then there are a good many 
 persons who think, it would seem, that 
 coming together and speaking some 
 pieces to one another and clapping one 
 another on the back and crying, Bravo, 
 brother ! and Well done, sister ! whether 
 the pieces are well spoken or not, will 
 do something, or should do something, 
 toward bringing elocution '' into better 
 repute with the world.** This, per- 
 haps, will do the business, but I'm 
 skeptical; Tm afraid it won't; I don't 
 see how it can. On the contrary, this 
 sort of thing, it seems to me, is shaped 
 
62 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 to do harm rather than good. There 
 is danger that it will send the tyro home 
 distended like the pouter-pigeon, with 
 a misconception of his own importance, 
 in which event he is more than ever in 
 danger of never knowing how little he 
 knows. Chest out and chin ahigh, he 
 says to himself: ''Ha, ha! I read be- 
 fore an audience of experts, and they 
 applauded ! I thought I was, now I 
 know that lam! Halleluiah! Glory 
 to Art in the highest ! '' No good can 
 come of thinking one's self a game- 
 cock when one is only a bantam. Com- 
 monly, we profit more by being made to 
 see our faults than by being blinded to 
 them. Mutual admiration societies and 
 air-castle building are very like in what 
 they yield. 
 
 That elocution is a good thing, since 
 it is nothing else than ''proper and 
 effective oral delivery," no one will 
 deny, though careless talkers often in- 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 63 
 
 veigh against elocution when, if they 
 would reflect for a moment, they would 
 not inveigh against the art, but against 
 those who profess to cultivate it. The 
 habit prevails among actors to decry 
 elocution ; the less they know the more 
 emphatic their disapproval, yet an 
 actor's manner of speaking, more than 
 all else, fixes his status in his vocation. 
 So far as we know, all great actors 
 have not only been great elocutionists, 
 but they were schooled in elocutionary 
 art by teachers of high or low degree, 
 from Mr. William Shakespeare, of 
 Stratford-on-the-Avon, to Miss Louisa 
 A. Fangs, of New York on the Hudson. 
 "And you,*' I imagine I hear a cho- 
 rus of voices ask, *' have you a way to 
 drag elocution out of the slough in 
 which it wallows?*' Oh, yes, I have a 
 way. Whether it be like Wolsey's, a 
 sure and safe one, I will not pretend to 
 say. The outcome of pursuing my 
 
64 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 way would depend much upon the in- 
 telligence employed in the pursuit. 
 
 It has ever seemed to me that elocu- 
 tion spreads out enormously in a di- 
 rection whose domain the average elo- 
 cutionist never deems it worth his while 
 to explore, much less to cultivate. With 
 few exceptions, so far as I have been 
 able to judge, the now-a-day elocution- 
 ists look upon elocution as being little 
 more than a near kin to gymnastics. 
 They begin, continue and end with the 
 brawn side of the art, and demean 
 themselves, from first to last, as though 
 having got the voice-making machine 
 in good condition and well under con- 
 trol ; as though, having possessed them- 
 selves of the power successfully to fire 
 sound at words, they have done all 
 there is to do to be an accomplished 
 elocutionist. That elocution is an emi- 
 nently intellectual art — an art the gym- 
 nastic side of which to the intellectual 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 65 
 
 side IS as one to many — is something 
 the elocutionists make haste to say 
 they know, while their doing says they 
 know it not. 
 
 That elocution is a highly intellect- 
 ual, and, consequently, a very difficult 
 art, we have evidence that amounts to 
 proof in the fact that, so far as is gen- 
 erally known, America has produced 
 only two readers of the first class. If 
 this be true, as both these readers have 
 been more than twenty years dead, it 
 might be questioned whether or not 
 the great majority of the present gen- 
 eration of elocutionists have had an op- 
 portunity to learn what good reading 
 is. Really good reading, I am sure, 
 would be a revelation to the majority 
 of the more intelligent of them; the 
 less intelligent would, perchance, re- 
 mind us of the Mohawk that preferred 
 a colored lithograph to a picture by 
 Rubens. 
 
66 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 To those elocutionists who contend 
 that a course in muscle training, in 
 voice-culture, must precede every other 
 step in acquiring the elocutionary art; 
 that it is useless to try to learn to read 
 until one has trained the voice — to such 
 elocutionists the field that the real elo- 
 cutionist begins, continues, and ends 
 with, is an unknown realm. The verit- 
 able elocutionist, the elocutionist that 
 recognizes the importance of cultivating 
 the intellectual side of his art, in his 
 teaching, gives little time to voice-cul- 
 ture, and that little he gives grudg- 
 ingly. He knows that if his pupil is 
 in earnest, a few simple hints, a direct- 
 ing word now and then will suffice to 
 enable him, little by little, to strengthen 
 the voice-making apparatus and get it 
 under control. He feels, he knows, 
 that to take a pupil's time in putting 
 him through a course of voice exercises 
 is to receive without making an equit- 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 67 
 
 able return. He knows that the pupil 
 can exercise and develop the voice- 
 making muscles perfectly well without 
 his immediate aid. Teachers that spend 
 time in vocal culture are of the sort 
 that contrive to make as many bites of 
 the cherry as possible ; that are ever in- 
 tent on making the little they know go as 
 far as they can ; that are always studying 
 to make the simple appear complex. 
 The few things a reader has to do, in 
 order to read well, offer difficulties so 
 great that none ever attain to excel- 
 lence but those who supplement natural 
 aptitude with long and careful study. 
 I would not be understood to intimate 
 that the gymnastic elocutionists are 
 dishonest. To censure them for not 
 knowing what they never have had an 
 opportunity to learn, or even to know 
 the existence of, obviously would be 
 unfair. Few of us ever see anything 
 that is not pointed out to us. The 
 
68 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 fact, however, Is still a fact, that the 
 brawn side of elocution is to the brain 
 side as a pond is to the Pacific. Mas- 
 tery of the gymnastic side is within the 
 easy reach of all. 
 
 Cultivating the voice, moreover, after 
 the fashion of the tonists is a danger- 
 ous thing to do. If cultivated after 
 their fashion, it seldom, if ever, fails to 
 lead to artificiality. Cultivating special 
 tones for this sentiment and for that 
 sentiment, for this passion and for that 
 passion, is fatal. The Murdock school 
 of elocution has done infinite harm. 
 The late Mr. Murdock was not a read- 
 er ; he was a chanter. Keeping track 
 of the thought in the tones of a sing- 
 songer is bothersome. It is always 
 safe to be direct and honest, subtle I ago 
 to the contrary notwithstanding. The 
 reader that thinks of the tones he makes 
 quickly becomes tiresome. 
 
 As we can very well judge of the 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 69 
 
 grade of a man's culture by noting 
 what he laughs at, so we can very well 
 judge what an elocutionist knows of 
 the art he professes to cultivate by no- 
 ting what he applauds. At the first 
 meeting of the National Association of 
 Elocutionists, in 1892, a young woman 
 read a selection from Shakespeare, and, 
 as I thought, read badly. To my think- 
 ing, there was but one thing in her 
 reading to commend — earnestness — 
 but the earnestness, being unschooled, 
 was but little less than fuss and fury. 
 Yet the two or three hundred experts 
 there assembled applauded rapturously. 
 Had the young woman read well, artist- 
 ically, naturally, the fury and fuss would 
 have been absent. Would the applause 
 of the experts have been equally rap- 
 turous ? I doubt it, and I doubt it be- 
 cause I noted what, at that convention, 
 seemed most to please. Soon after the 
 Shakespeare reading, a young woman 
 
70 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 of winsome mien read a poem and read 
 it with much intelligence. She seemed 
 simply to have set herself the task of 
 letting her auditors know what it was 
 about, and this she did successfully. 
 Her methods were direct and natural, 
 without any apparent effort to be effect- 
 ive. I heard no one at the convention 
 that pleased me more ; but the im- 
 pression she made on me was very 
 different from the impression she seem- 
 ed to make on her auditors generally, 
 for they applauded in the most per- 
 functory manner, and did not call for 
 an encore, as was their habit. Though 
 the young woman was unknown to me 
 I sought her out and said what I could 
 to console her. I have no doubt there 
 were others in the audience — half-a- 
 dozen, perhaps — that thought of the 
 two readings essentially as I did, but 
 the few counted for little among the 
 many. On another occasion, at a re- 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 71 
 
 ception attended largely, if not wholly, 
 by elocutionists, a young woman read 
 a selection from Shakespeare, and read 
 exceptionally well. Her effort was 
 damned with faint applause ; it was 
 plain that she had fired too high for 
 her audience. The next number on 
 the programme chanced to be a young 
 woman from the West, who gave them 
 a broadly humorous character sketch. 
 This, though scarcely within the prov- 
 ince of elocutionary art, the audience 
 applauded till the windows rattled. 
 
 All of which goes to show that our 
 elocutionists, taken as we find them, do 
 not know good reading from bad. Nor 
 will they ever know good reading from 
 bad until, instead of giving nine parts 
 of their attention to the brawn side 
 of elocution and one part to the brain 
 side, they give nine parts of their at- 
 tention to the brain side and one part 
 to the brawn side. Indeed, if they will 
 
7^ 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 but properly take care of the brain side, 
 the brawn side will well-nigh take care 
 of itself. Then we shall have elocution 
 that Is elocution, .and elocutionists that 
 are elocutionists; then, and not till 
 then, will elocution stand with the stage 
 and with the world as it deserves to 
 stand. 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 n 
 
 THE PAUSE— ITS IMPORT- 
 ANCE. 
 
 All that is necessary in order to 
 read well, is to speak naiutalty, but 
 naturalness of all things is the most 
 difficult thing to attain. Any one that 
 can draw at all can draw something 
 that would be readily recognized as an 
 attempt to draw the human figure, but 
 to draw the human figure so that it is 
 true to Nature one must be a s uperb 
 artist. 
 
 The most difficult thing to learn in 
 reading is properly to d istribute the 
 time, to be delibem to pause fre- 
 quently and naturally. The accom- 
 plished reader always takes plenty of 
 time. ^ He that does not, he that has-"^ 
 tens, never seems to be master of the 
 
74 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 situation, to have his task well In hand, 
 and consequently he never Is as effec- 
 tive as he might be. Nor must this 
 deliberation appear in anything but in 
 the frequency and in the length of the 
 pauses. It must never appear in any 
 drawling or dwelling on the words ; 
 they must always come clean-cut and 
 jsharply defined. Pausing properly does 
 'more than any other one thing to make 
 one's reading natural and realistic. In 
 extemporizing we pause instinctively 
 to give the listener time to compre- 
 hend, and to prepare our next thought 
 for presentation. 
 
 The most accomplished and pains- 
 taking reader does not pause always 
 in the same places, but the variation in 
 the places where he pauses, and takes 
 breath, Is inconsiderable. Pausing at 
 just such places Is not always so 
 imperative as is the putting of the 
 emphasis on certain words; yet the 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 75 
 
 pausing cannot vary much without 
 materially affecting the delivery, and 
 the points indicated by experts for 
 making the pauses would not differ 
 greatly. It occasionally — not infre- 
 quently, perhaps — occurs that the 
 reader pauses simply to take breath, 
 when so far as the sense is concerned 
 it is a matter of indifference whether a 
 pause is made or not. If, however, 
 the breath is well managed, this will 
 occur very rarely. Breathing places, 
 i. e. places where the sense demands a 
 pause, are usually abundant. The un- 
 skilled reader commonly runs over a 
 large percentage of them. In the in- 
 terest of force and stayjng: power, the 
 reader should avail himself of every 
 opportunity the construction affords to 
 brea.the. Sometimes he should breathe 
 between every word. For example: 
 " Bloody, bawdy villain ! Remorseless, 
 treacherous, lecherous, kindless vil- 
 
76 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 lain ! '' He should take breath five 
 times in speaking these eight words. 
 Nor is it simply necessary to take 
 breath ; the breathing should be full 
 and deep. There is always plenty of 
 time, if the reader knows how to use it. 
 Pausing never makes a reader monoton- 
 ous and tiresome ; but dragging out 
 the words always does. 
 
 Being mindful of the fact that an 
 ounce of example is worth a pound of 
 theory, I submit two or three speeches 
 from Shakespeare with the pauses, at 
 the least, approximately indicated. 
 Pauses made with discretion vary, of 
 course, very much in length ; some are 
 only momentary, while others may be 
 measured by seconds. 
 
 Here is a speech in which certain 
 pauses are as necessary as are any to 
 be found in any passage I can at the 
 moment recall ; and yet the majority of 
 the Mercutios I have heard have run 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 77 
 
 over them without even the suspicion 
 of a halt : 
 
 Ha ! ha ! a dream ? O, then 1 see ! 
 
 Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies* 
 
 midwife and she comes in shape no bigger 
 
 than an agate-stone on the forefinger of an alder- 
 man drawn with a team of little atomies 
 
 athwart men's noses as they lie asleep ; Her 
 
 waggon spokes made of long spinners* legs ; 
 
 the cover of the wings of grasshoppers ; the 
 
 traces of the smallest spider's web ; the collars 
 
 of the moonshine's watery beams ; her whip 
 
 of cricket's bone ; the lash of film ; her 
 
 waggoner a small gray-coated gnat not 
 
 half so big as a round little worm pricked 
 
 from the lazy finger of a maid ; her chariot is 
 
 an empty hazel nut made by the joiner squirrel 
 
 or old grub time out of mind the fairies' 
 
 coach-makers. And in this state she gallops 
 
 night by night through lovers' brains and 
 
 then they dream on love ; o'er courtiers' 
 
 knees that dream on curtsies straight ; o'er 
 
 doctors' fingers who straight dream on fees ; 
 
 o'er ladies' lips who straight on kisses dream ; 
 
 sometimes she gallops o'er a lawyer's nose 
 
 and then dreams he of smelling out a suit ; 
 
 and sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail 
 
 tickling a parson as he lies asleep ; then 
 
 dreams he of another benefice ; sometime 
 
 she driveth o'er a soldier's neck and then 
 
 dreams he of cutting foreign throats ; of breaches 
 
78 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 —ambuscades Spanish blades of healths 
 
 five fathoms deep ; and then anon drums in 
 
 his ears at which he starts and wakes ; and 
 
 being thus frighted swears a prayer or two 
 
 and sleeps again* 
 
 Hamlet's advice to the Players 
 should, I think, be paused substantially 
 thus: 
 
 speak the speech 1 pray you as I pronounced 
 
 It to you trippingly on the tongue but if you 
 
 mouth it as many of our players do 1 had as 
 
 lieve the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not 
 
 saw the air too much with your hand thus 
 
 but use all gently for in the very torrent tem- 
 pest and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion 
 
 you must acquire and beget a temperance 
 
 that may give it smoothness. O, it offends 
 
 me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig- 
 
 pated lellow tear a passion to tatters to very 
 
 rags to split the ears of the groundlings who 
 
 for the most part are capable of nothing 
 
 but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. 1 
 
 would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing 
 
 Termigant it out-herods Herod. Pray you 
 
 avoid it. 
 
 Be not too tame neither but let your own dis- 
 cretion be your tutor suit the action to the 
 
 •^ord— ' — ajid the word to the action with this 
 
 special observance that you o'erstep not the mod- 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 79 
 
 esty of nature for anything so overdone is 
 
 from the purpose of playing whose end both 
 
 at the first and now was and is to hold 
 
 as 'twere the mirror up to nature to show 
 
 virtue her own feature scorn her own image 
 
 and the very age and body of the time his 
 
 form and pressure. Now this overdone or 
 
 come tardy off though it makes the unskillful 
 
 laugh cannot but make the judicious grieve 
 
 the censure of which one must in your allow- 
 ance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, 
 
 there be players that I have seen play and 
 
 heard others praise and that highly not to 
 
 speak it profanely that neither having the accent 
 
 of Christian nor the gait of Christian pagan 
 
 nor man have so strutted and bellowed 
 
 that I have thought some of nature's journeymen 
 
 had made men and not made them well they 
 
 imitated humanity so abominably. 
 
 I hope we have reformed that indifferently 
 
 with us. 
 
 O, reform it altogether. And let those that play 
 
 your clowns speak no more than is set down for 
 
 them for there be of them that will themselves 
 
 laugh to set on some quantity of barren specta- 
 tors to laugh too though in the meantime 
 
 some necessary question of the play be then to be 
 
 considered that's villainous and shows a most 
 
 pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. 
 
 In a few instances, I have left the 
 pause with which we always follow 
 
8o THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 every strongly emphatic word un- 
 marked. For example, we read : That 
 will themselves — laugh — to set on, etc. 
 I aim not to suggest the elocution of 
 these speeches, but to demonstrate the 
 importance of the pause as a part of 
 elocution. 
 
OF ELOCUTION. gj 
 
 STUDIES IN EMPHASIS. 
 I. 
 
 To learn to read well is the business of half a life. 
 — Macaulay. 
 
 One of t he chief things to, "hf^ at- 
 tended to in reading is to give to j he 
 indivi dual words the relative import- 
 ance requisite to make the thought 
 easy to seize by the listener. He that 
 reads well trips lightly over a large j 
 majority of the words. When we in 
 any way give prominence to a word in 
 the utterance we are said to emphasize 
 it. To be convinced that emphasizing 
 properly is important, we have only to 
 reflect that a change of emphasis often 
 changes the meaning of a sentence, or 
 suggests a thought in the context that 
 is not there, If we read : 
 
 It becomes 
 The throned monarch better than his crown, • 
 
82 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 we suggest the thought that the con- 
 text says that *' it becomes the throned 
 monarch as well as his crown/' The 
 [sense determined, there cannot be two 
 /equally good ways to read. Indeed, 
 the sense determined, there is never 
 but one best way to read, and this best 
 way it is always the reader's duty to 
 find, if he can. 
 
 The importance of emphasizing pro- 
 perly can hardly be overestimated. 
 Professor S. H. Clark, in speaking of 
 the importance of being right in em- 
 phasizing, says : *' One's emphasis is 
 the gauge of one's ability to under- 
 stand. Whatever else a man may be, 
 he is not a reader if he fails to empha- 
 size correctly. One who emphasizes 
 correctly is more than likely to do jus- 
 tice to his author in other regards. 
 Nothing else betrays our ignorance of 
 the text like bad emphasis. Emphasis 
 means judgment and the judgment that 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 83 
 
 guides one to discreet and illuminative 
 emphasis is more than likely to lead 
 one to a proper emotional rendering/' 
 
 In a book recently published, entitled 
 '* The Art of Reading and Speaking/' 
 by Canon Fleming, Chaplain-in-Ordin- 
 ary to Queen Victoria, there are some 
 forty pages given up to selections from 
 Shakespeare and Milton with those 
 words italicized that, in the author's 
 judgment, should, in the reading, be 
 emphasized. There are often words 
 emphasized that I should not empha- 
 size, and sometimes there are words 
 un-emphasized that I should empha- 
 size. 
 
 It is not probable that the Canon's 
 reading would differ as much from 
 mine as his marking differs from mine. 
 It is often hard to decide, in marking 
 emphasis, whether to italicize a word 
 or not. In such cases, I usually leave 
 the word unitalicized, lest the italicizing 
 
84 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 prove misleading. Over-emphasis Is 
 something the reader should be careful 
 to avoid, as over-emphasis may easily 
 be carried so far as to bar the effect of 
 the emphases that are properly placed. 
 Though neither the Canon nor I may 
 be right, yet the study of our marking 
 must tend to make the student of the 
 art of reading more painstaking than 
 he otherwise might be. 
 
 There are few persons — even on the 
 stage. In the pulpit, or on the rostrum — 
 that have any apprehension of the field 
 that the art of reading offers for the 
 exercise of the intelligence. The art 
 of delivery, of reading, of elocution — 
 call It what you will — affords a field for 
 the display of as much perception as 
 does any one of the other arts. In 
 proof thereof, we have the fact that 
 there are fewer persons that excel In 
 reading than there are that excel in 
 painting or sculpture, not to mention 
 
OF ELOCUTION, 85 
 
 music, which is the least intellectual of 
 all the arts, if we consider only the 
 making of sweet sounds. 
 
 Here are some of the lines in the 
 Canon's book with the changes I would 
 suggest in the marking of them : 
 
 1. Angels and ministers oi grace defend ms ! 
 
 2. Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned; 
 
 3. Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from 
 
 hell, 
 
 4. Be thy intents wicked ot charitable^ 
 
 5. Thou com'st in such a questionable shape, 
 
 6. That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee — Hamlet, 
 
 7. King, Father, Royal Dane ! O, answer m^e^ 
 
 8. Let me not burst in ignorance ; but tell 
 
 9. Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, 
 
 10. Have burst their cerements ; why the sepulchrCj 
 
 11. Wherein we saw thee quietly inurned, 
 
 12. Hath op'd his ponderous and marble jaws, 
 
 13. To cast thee up again ! What may this mean, 
 
 14. That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel, 
 
 15. Revisifst thus the glimpses of the moon, 
 
 16. Making night hideous ; and we, fools of nature, 
 
 17. So horridly to shake our disposition 
 
 18. With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls? 
 
 19. Say, why is this ? Wherefore ? What should 
 
 we do? 
 
 The first seven lines seem to me to 
 
86 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 be marked with good discretion till we 
 come to the last word — Why empha- 
 size me ? There is no question of the 
 Ghost's answering anyone else. 
 
 I should not italicize: eighth line, 
 neither not nor tell ; tenth line, why ; 
 thirteenth line, cast, what; fifteenth 
 line, revisit' st ; sixteenth line, night; 
 seventeenth line, so, shake ; eighteenth 
 line, beyond ; nineteenth line, why this. 
 
 I should italicize : eleventh line, 
 quietly ! sixteenth line, nature ; eigh- 
 teenth line, souls ; nineteenth line, is. 
 
 In making three syllables of canton" 
 ized and two of hearsed, the learned 
 Canon conforms to immemorial usage ; 
 the rhythm, however, is greatly bet- 
 tered by making four syllables of canon- 
 ized 2Lnd one of hearsed. Indeed, this 
 change, with the pause that falls after 
 bones, makes the rhythm well-nigh per- 
 fect. 
 
 Two of Canon Fleming's readings in 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 87 
 
 the speech above have been defended 
 thus : 
 
 In summing up Mr. Ayres says of the seventh line 
 of the speech beginning "Angels and ministers of 
 grace," etc., "Why emphasize me? There is no 
 question of the Ghost's answering anyone else." 
 
 According to the play there is a very decided ques- 
 tion of the Ghost answering some one else. The 
 Ghost first appears twice to Bernardo and Marcellus 
 — they communicate this to Horatio, and upon the 
 occasion of his watch he attempts to speak to the 
 Ghost. Horatio determines to inform Hamlet, for 
 ** this spirit dumb to us will speak to him,'* 
 
 Now when Hamlet is acquainted with the facts of 
 the Ghost's visitations he determines to watch and 
 speak to it though it '* blast me." 
 
 I should think that Canon Fleming's reading was 
 beautifully correct, because it takes notice of a very 
 trifling detail in the speech, and it rather surprises 
 me that Mr. Ayres should have failed to grasp it. 
 
 On that little word me, properly emphasized, hangs 
 a great deal of the pathos and power of Hamlet's 
 appeal. In that one word is all this meaning : You 
 have thrice appeared to these soldiers, and once even 
 Horatio had courage to address you, but answer you 
 make not — now it is I, Hamlet, your son, who speaks 
 to you, my father's spirit. " Hamlet, King, Father, 
 Royal Dane ! O answer me.** 
 
 Again, in the nineteenth line, Mr. Ayres says 
 **I should not italicize why, this, in 'Say, why is 
 thisr** 
 
 ^ R A \i Y^ 
 jr. " OF THE 
 
 Of ^, . 
 
88 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 Hamlet makes several distinct interrogations and 
 he sums up : 
 
 Say, why is this ? Wherefore ? What should we do ? 
 
 Canon Fleming's reading is most correct, because 
 by a proper emphasis of why and this, the full force 
 of the questions asked is made sufficiently impressive. 
 Whereas, if Hamlet had but asked one question, 
 then it seems to me it would have been incorrect to 
 italicize why and this. 
 
 To be sure, the best authorities will always dis- 
 pute many things in Shakespeare, more especially 
 as to the correct reading of certain passages, but, 
 after all, there can be only one that is really correct. 
 
 My reply is : 
 
 Mr. Markley^s plea for the emphases 
 that he defends is, I think, as strong as 
 it would be possible for anyone to 
 make ; yet it is not strong enough to 
 make me, ''on second thought,'' look 
 upon Canon Fleming's emphasis in the 
 two instances that Mr. Markley defends 
 as being acceptable. 
 
 Canon Fleming and Mr. Markley 
 contend for, *'0, answer me'' and 
 ''why is this?'' I contend for, ''O, 
 answer me " and '* Why is this ? '' 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 89 
 
 The least of my reasons for not em- 
 phasizing me — which, if emphasized at 
 all, must be made much more emphatic 
 than answer- — is because the vowel of 
 me is the most difficult of all the vowels 
 to make emphatic. This is a consider- 
 ation that counts for something with the 
 reader. Another reason — which is of 
 somewhat more importance — lies in the 
 fact that far-fetched emphases are al- 
 ways objectionable ; they are likely to 
 divert the auditor's attentions from the 
 matter immediately in hand — a thing 
 that the player, the reader, and the 
 speaker should always study to avoid. 
 But these are reasons of comparatively 
 little weight ; the chief reason, the rea- 
 son that far outweighs all others for 
 my objecting to Canon Fleming's read- 
 ing lies in the fact that the learned 
 Canon's reading does not express 
 Hamlet's thought ; does not say what 
 Hamlet wants to say, which is this : Do 
 
90 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 not persist in remaining silent. Dis- 
 close, make known, what your mission 
 is. Do not let me burst in ignorance, 
 but tell me why you go stalking about 
 when you should lie quietly inurned in 
 your goodly marbled sepulchre. The 
 whole speech shows clearly : ay, most 
 emphatically, that Hamlet's whole be- 
 ing is possessed with the desire to be 
 answered and not that he, being the 
 Ghost's son, has claims to consideration 
 that his comrades have not. The 
 thought the Canon's reading expresses 
 has the great demerit of being signally 
 belittling. 
 
 As for the other reading — why is this 
 — it has not, to my thinking, a peg to 
 stand on. Hamlet asks : What means 
 this, what imports, what signifies this, 
 why is this — your going about thus, by 
 the ''glimpses of the moon, making 
 night hideous." O, answer me ! 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 II. 
 
 91 
 
 You speak the things you should speak, but you 
 speak them not in the manner they should be 
 spoken. — Plutarch. 
 
 The more I study Canon Fleming's 
 marking, the more am I inclined to 
 think that his reading is of the stiltedi 
 ponderous sort that tries to get an effectl 
 out of every word. Here is a speechj 
 of Cassius* (Julius Caesar, Act I., Sc. 
 2) in which the learned Canon italicizes 
 double the number of words that, in 
 my judgment, should be emphasized. 
 Take, for example, the line : 
 
 Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Ccesar, 
 
 Read as here indicated, the utterance is, 
 it seems to me, most monotonous and 
 non-natural, having none of the spirit 
 in it that pervades the entire speech. 
 This is an easy sort of reading. Any 
 one can pound over words in a trip- 
 hammer sort of way, whereas to go 
 
92 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 lightly over the unimportant and to 
 dwell on the important words with that 
 appreciative discrimination that makes 
 the thought clear and forcible; that 
 causes the listener to be occupied with 
 the matter rather than with the manner, 
 is never an easy thing to do. The 
 thought, and not the sound, is what 
 enlists and holds the attention of the 
 listener. In the thought there is never 
 any sameness, whereas tones continu- 
 ally recur, hence they quickly pall. 
 The time consumed by the two styles 
 differs but little, but they distribute the 
 time very differently. The one is the 
 style of the brawn elocutionist, the 
 other of the brain elocutionist ; the one, 
 
 \of the reader that merely apprehends 
 ;iiis author ; the other, of the reader that 
 
 /fully comprehends his author. If we 
 read the line I have quoted as it is 
 italicized above, and then read it thus : 
 
 Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Ccesar^ 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 93 
 
 we quickly see, or I greatly err, that by 
 going lightly over three of the words 
 our English author emphasizes, the ren- 
 dering of the line gains immensely in 
 effect as well as in animation. 
 
 Here is the entire speech as the 
 learned Canon marks it : ^ 
 
 1. Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world 
 
 2. Like a Colossus ; and we petty men 
 
 3. Walk under his huge legs, and peep about 
 
 4. To find ourselves dishonorable graves, 
 
 5. Men at sometime are masters of \.\i^\x fates : 
 
 6. Th.Q fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars^ 
 
 7. But in ourselves that we are underlings 
 
 8. Brutus and Casar ! what should be in that Ccesar? 
 
 9. Why should that name be sounded more thanyours 
 
 10. Write them together, yours is as fair a name ; 
 
 11. Sound ih^m, it doth become the mouth as well; 
 
 12. Weigh them, it is as heavy ; conjure with them 
 
 13. Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Ccesar , 
 
 14. iV<77f/ in the names of «// the ^^^j at once 
 
 15. Upon what meat does />^2V our C<:^j«^' feed 
 
 16. That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed; 
 
 17. Rome, thou hast lost the breed oi noble bloods. 
 
 18. ^/^^;/ went there /5/ an age, since ih& great flood, 
 
 19. But it vtSiS famed with ^«^r^ than <7W^ man ? 
 
 20. When could M^/ say, till now, that talked oi Rome, 
 
 21. That the ^/^^ w«//j, incompassed but 07te man ? 
 
 22. Now is it -^^w^ indeed, and r^^w enough^ 
 
94 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 23. When there is in it but one only man, 
 
 24. Oh, you and /have heard omy fathers say, 
 
 25. There was a Brutus once that would have brooked^ 
 
 26. The eternal devil to keep his j/a/^ in ^^//^ 
 
 27. As easily as a king ! 
 
 In these twenty-seven lines one hun- 
 dred and four words are marked for 
 emphasis, fifty more than I should 
 mark. In the first line I should not 
 mark bestride, narrow, or world; nor in 
 the second line we men ; fifth line, mas- 
 ters ; sixth line, ^^^r, not; seventh line, 
 underlings; eighth line, what, that; 
 ninth line, name, Tnore; tenth line, write, 
 together, name; eleventh line, become; 
 thirteenth line, start, spirit, soon; four- 
 teenth line, 7WW, names, all; fifteenth 
 line, meat, this, Ccesar; sixteenth line, 
 so; seventeenth line, lost, bloods; eight- 
 eenth line, by, age; nineteenth line, 
 faulted, more; twentieth line, when, they, 
 talked, Rome; twenty-first line, wide, 
 walls; twenty-third line, whe7i, man; 
 twenty-fourth line, oh, you, I; twenty- 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 95 
 
 fifth line, BrutuSy brooked; twenty-sixth 
 line, eternaly state^ Rome. 
 
 On the other hand, in the third line, I 
 should mark for emphasis the word 
 abouty as I think it should be made quite 
 as emphatic as the preceding word. I 
 should also mark feed in the fifteenth 
 line for emphasis, and king in the last 
 line. 
 
 Any one desirous to compare the 
 two readings would do well to copy the 
 speech and mark it as I suggest, or to 
 mark it in the printed page. 
 
 III. 
 
 The right word in the right place, and the right 
 emphasis on the right word. — Dr. Rush. 
 
 As I have already intimated, a great 
 fault, to my thinking, with Canon 
 Fleming's reading is over-emphasizing. 
 This, I think, clearly appears, if we 
 study his marking of the following 
 
 I 
 
gS THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 scene — the first of the third act of 
 *' The Merchant of Venice '' : 
 
 Shylock. — How iiowy Tubal, what news from Genoa ? 
 Hast thou found my daughter ? ""'^^ 
 
 At the utmost, I should italicize only 
 the words now, Genoa, and daugh- 
 ter. The utterance the Canon, if I 
 understand him, recommends is monot- 
 onous and non-natural. 
 
 Tubal. — I often carne where I did hear of her ; but 
 ca7tnot Jindh.QX. 
 
 Why emphasize came, did or cannot? 
 I fail to see any reason for it. Hear 
 2indjind are the only words that should 
 be made specially to stand out. 
 
 Shylock. — Why, there, there, there! A diamond 
 gone — cost me two thousand ducats at Frankfort. The 
 curse nf;^r fell upon our nation till now. I never felt 
 it till now, 
 
 I should not italicize nation till. 
 Though it is Shakespeare, the diction, 
 I venture to intimate, is bettered by 
 transposing the words of the next sen- 
 tence, thus: Till now^ I never felt it. 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 97 
 
 This transposition, if I do not err, en- 
 ables the reader to make the sentence 
 more effective, for the reason that it 
 puts the most emphatic word near the 
 end. No one is invulnerable — no, not 
 even Shakespeare. It is questionable 
 whether / never should be italicized ; I 
 am inclined to think not. 
 
 Two^Jk^usjiind ducats in that; and other precious, 
 precious jewels ! 
 
 Neither ducats nor jewels seem to me 
 to be emphatic. 
 
 I would my daughter were dead at my ^oot and the 
 jewels in her ear. Would she were hearsed 2X vay foot 
 and the ducats in her coffin. 
 
 There are only four words here that 
 I should mark for emphasis, the first 
 
 foot, ear, hearsed, and coffin. Passion 
 
 is cam.m.only~rapid. Rapidity would be 
 impossible if the reader tarried on all 
 the words our author italicizes. 
 
 No news of them ! Why so ; and I know not whafs 
 spent in the search. Why, thou loss upon loss ! 
 
98 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 The first sentence being little else 
 than a wail, an exclamation — a question 
 it is not — I should make as much of 710 
 as of news. Why so I should treat in 
 like manner. I should also emphasize 
 the second loss. Know not and spent 
 I should not emphasize. 
 
 The thief ^ono. with so much and so much to ^ndthe 
 thief ; and no satisfaction^ no revenge^ nor no ill luck 
 stirring but what lights o' my shoulders ; no sights but 
 o* my breathing ; no tears but o* my shedding ! 
 
 Nine of the twenty-four words here 
 marked for emphasis I should not em- 
 phasize. In the clause: ''And so much to 
 find the thief/' I should emphasize only 
 one vjord— -find. To read it according 
 to the Canon's marking would be to 
 drown it in a sea of sound — a thing that 
 any fellow having a good voice-making 
 apparatus, can do, whether he have any 
 brains or not. I should not emphasize 
 the second so much, the second thief, 
 the second no, no ill lucky nor the two 
 succeeding no's. 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 99 
 
 Tubal. — Yes, o^^ men have ill lucky too, Antonio ^ 
 as I heard in Genoa — 
 
 I should not emphasize yes or ill- 
 luck. 
 
 Shylock. — What, what, what? ill luck, ill luck? 
 Tubal. — Hath an ^^^osycast away, coming from 
 TriJ>olis, 
 
 Argosy and Tripolis seem to me to 
 be the only words that should be made 
 at all prominent. 
 
 Shylock. — I thank God; I thank God. Is it trjie? 
 }g^ it true ? 
 
 Tubal. — I spoke with some of the sailors that ''scaped 
 the wreck. 
 
 I should, at the most, mark sailors 
 and wreck for emphasis. 
 
 Shylock. — I thank, thee, goo^ Tubal. Good news, 
 good news. Ha, ha I IVhere? in Genoa 1 
 
 The only possible reason that I can 
 see for emphasizing the first good is in- 
 sufficient. NewSy both times, and Ge- 
 noa should be made quite as emphatic 
 as any other words in the speech. 
 
 Tubal. — Your daughter spent, in Genoa, as I heard, 
 one night, fourscore ducats. 
 
lOO THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 I should expend neither time nor 
 stress on spent, nor should I heed the 
 comma. The reader should always be 
 on his guard against expending his 
 breath where he would get no return 
 for it. 
 
 Shylock. — Thou stick'st a dagger in me. I shall 
 never see ray gold again. Fourscore ducats at a sitting! 
 Fourscore ducats I 
 
 Stick' st should surely not be empha- 
 sized. I have always read: ''Fourscore 
 ducats — at a sitting?'' having Tubal 
 nod in answer to the question. The 
 clause is commonly treated as an ex- 
 clamation. My treatment,^ I think, 
 makes the clause much more effective. 
 
 Tubal. — There came divers of Antonio's creditors in 
 my company to Venice that swear he ca7inot choose but 
 break. 
 
 At the most, I should mark for em- 
 phasis creditors, swear, and break. 
 
 Shylock. — I am very glad of it. I'll plague him ; 
 ril torture him ; Vm glad of it. 
 
 The verji in the first sentence is a 
 
 i 
 
OF ELOCUTION. loi 
 
 superfluity. More can be made of the 
 sentence without it than with it. Were 
 I to speak the very, I should touch the 
 glad comparatively lightly. 
 
 Tubal. — One of them showed me a ring that he 
 had of your daughter for a monkey. 
 
 What a heartless little wretch Jessica 
 is — swap a ring that was a present from 
 her mother to her father for a monkey ! 
 
 Shylock. — Out upon her ! Thou torturest me, 
 Tubal. It was my torquoise. I had it of Leah when 
 I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a 
 wilderness of monkeys. 
 
 It not being necessary, in order to 
 make the thought clear, to emphasize 
 given it is bad technique to make much 
 of it. The skillful reader would touch 
 it lightly in order that wilderness might 
 be made to stand out the more boldly ; 
 then he would pause long enough after 
 it to take a deep, full breath which he 
 would expend in a burst on wilderness^ 
 thereby ending one of the best short 
 
I02 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 Speeches ever written with a telling 
 climax. 
 
 Tubal. — But Antonio is certainly undone, 
 Shylock. — Nay thafs true^ thafs very true. Go, 
 Tubal, fee me an officer ; bespeak hivm, fortnight before, 
 I will have the kcart of him if h.& forfeit ; for were he 
 out of VenicCy I can make what merchandise I will, 
 Goy Tubal, and meet me at our synagogue; go, good 
 Tubal ; at our Synagogue, Tubal. 
 
 I should read : '* That^s very true/' 
 and '* bespeak him 2, fortnight before." 
 As for ify I defy all the bellowcution- 
 ists in Christendom to find a reason 
 worth a blade of grass for emphasizing 
 it. Not once in a hundred times when 
 we hear this little word mauled is there 
 any reason for treating it other than 
 with the greatest delicacy. Neither 
 merchandise^ meet, nor good should I 
 emphasize, unless I paused after me to 
 decide upon the place of meeting — 
 which I always do — then, I should 
 dwell on meet. If this treatment was 
 intended by our author, he should have 
 put a dash after me. 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 IV. 
 
 103 
 
 ** If little labor, little are our gains ; / 
 
 Man's fortunes are according to his pains." / 
 
 Canon Fleming has given more 
 space in his book to ** The Merchant of 
 Venice '' than to any other of the Shake- 
 speare plays. He begins his marking 
 of the fourth act for emphasis with the 
 Duke*s speech, which he treats thus : 
 
 1. Make room and let him stand before our face, 
 
 2. Shylock, the world thinks, and I think so, too^ 
 
 3. That thou but leadst this fashion of thy malice 
 
 4. To the last hour of act ; and then, 'tis thought, 
 
 5. Thou'lt show thy fnercy and remorse more strange 
 
 6. Than is thy strange apparent cruelty ; 
 
 7. And where thou now exacfst the penalty — 
 
 8. Which is a /^z^«^ of this /^^r merchant's y?(fj^ — 
 
 9. Thou wilt not only loose the forfeiture, 
 
 10. But, touched YJith. human gentleness and love 
 
 11. Forgive a moiety of X^ixe principal ; 
 
 12. Glancing an eye of pity on his losses 
 
 13. That have, of late, so huddled on his back 
 
 14. Enough to press a royal merchant down 
 
 15. And //^^^^ commiseration of his state 
 
 16. From brassy bosoms and rough hearts oi flint, 
 
 17. From stubborn Turks and Tartars never trained 
 
 \ 
 
I04 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 i8. To offices of tender courtesy, 
 
 19. We all expect a gentle answer^ Jew. 
 
 Why emphasize stand? It's not a 
 question whether the Jew stand or sit ; 
 it's a question of the place where he 
 stand. 
 
 In the second line, the only emphatic 
 words are world, /, and too. 
 
 The third line I should leave un- 
 marked. There is no word in the line 
 that in the reading should be made 
 specially salient. 
 
 In the fourth line, I should make 
 hour quite as emphatic as the other 
 emphatic words. Act, possibly, should 
 be slightly more emphatic than the 
 other words. The reasons, however, 
 would occupy too much space. 
 
 In the fifth line, more should be 
 touched quite lightly. The thought- 
 less reader never fails to dwell on it ; 
 not because he has a reason for doing 
 so, but because he unconsciously yields 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 105 
 
 to the beguiling influence of the long 
 (7, the most sonorous vowel in the lan- 
 guage. 
 
 The wisdom of marking loose in the 
 ninth line is questionable. If at all 
 emphatic, it is only slightly so. The 
 marking is misleading. 
 
 The tenth line, read as the Canon 
 marks it, could, it seems to me, not be 
 other than very '* preachy.** It sounds 
 to my mind's ear, as I look at it, like 
 the delivery of those that, instinctively, 
 endeavor to make up in clatter what 
 they lack in matter. It smacks of the 
 sound-and-fury sort of elocution. The 
 words touched and huma7i should not 
 be made at all emphatic. The empha- 
 sizing of the two words is utterly inde- 
 fensible. 
 
 The emphasizing of forgive in the 
 eleventh line is quite natural, and con- 
 sequently proper, provided the reader 
 employ a persuasive tone ; if, however, 
 
Io6 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 the tone be strictly judicial, the word 
 should come in for no emphasis. 
 
 In the thirteenth line, I should dwell 
 on so, making it, possibly, more em- 
 phatic than huddled. 
 
 There is only one emphatic word in 
 the fourteenth line — royal. 
 
 The emphasis on pluck in the fif- 
 teenth line is probably a misprint. 
 
 The three following lines I should 
 read essentially thus : 
 
 From brassy bosoms and rough hearts oi flint 
 From stubborn Turks and Tartars never trained 
 To offices of tender courtesy. 
 
 There is no question of the kind of 
 Turks, or Tartars, or of courtesy, 
 hence the adjectives should not be em- 
 phasized. Take the adjectives out and 
 the language loses none of its force. I 
 think I shall not be alone of the opin- 
 ion that the learned Canon's reading is 
 sometimes rather ill-digested. 
 
 The nineteenth line is sometimes 
 
OF ELOCUTION, 
 
 107 
 
 read as marked, and sometimes read 
 without any emphasis on answer. Both 
 readings are defensible. I prefer the 
 reading that emphasizes answer. 
 
 V. 
 
 Proficiency in the art of elocution, as well as in the 
 other arts, is the work of time and labor. — Bronson. 
 
 Canon Fleming continues to indicate 
 the emphasis he thinks will most clear- 
 ly bring out the thought in the fourth 
 act of ** The Merchant of Venice *' by 
 marking the lines thus : 
 
 1. I have /(^jj-^j-j-^^ your Grace of what \ purpose; 
 
 2. And by our holy sabbath have I sworn 
 
 3. To have the due and forfeit of my bond, 
 
 4. If you deny it, let the danger light 
 
 5. Upon your charter and your city' s freedom, 
 
 6. You'll ask me why I rather choose to have 
 
 7. A weight of carrion fleshy than to receive 
 
 8. Three thousand ducats ; I'll not answer that ; 
 g. But say it is my humor. Is it answered? 
 
 10. What if my house be troubled with a rat 
 
 11. And I be pleased to give ten thousand ducats 
 
 12. 'Yo\i2Js[^\\. baned? What — B,re yon answered yet ? 
 
 13. Some men there are love not Si gaping pig ; 
 
Io8 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 14. Some that are mad if they behold a cat^ 
 
 15. Now for your aiiszuer, 
 
 16. As there is no firm reason to be rendered 
 
 17. Why he cannot abide 2l gaping pig, 
 
 18. Why he a harmless^ necessary cat. 
 
 19. So can /give no reason^ nor W// I not, 
 
 20. More than a lodged hate^ and a certain loathing 
 
 21. I ^mr Antonio that I follow ^/^wj- 
 
 22. A losing suit against him. Are you answered? 
 
 To my thinking, ^^z/^ in the third 
 line should be touched quite lightly. I 
 can imagine a reader going over the 
 line — as many would — with an ele- 
 phantine tread, making much of have ; 
 but such readers are not the sort of 
 readers that take Nature as their mod- 
 el. They are of the sort of readers 
 that — unwittingly, perhaps — seek to get 
 their effects out of the sound of their 
 voices rather than out of the thoughts 
 of their author. Such reading is utter- 
 ly wanting in movement, snap, action, 
 earnestness; in short, it utterly lacks 
 the natural. It is an easy sort of read- 
 ing ; easy because it does not tax the 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 109 
 
 intelligence. Many persons of high 
 intelligence read in this manner from 
 habit. It has never occurred to them 
 that there is any other way to read ; 
 that if the thoughts were theirs, and 
 the language came to them as they 
 give it utterance they would speak it in 
 an entirely different manner. If such 
 readers chance upon any one whose 
 utterance is true to Nature — particular- 
 ly if they hear something read that they 
 themselves read — the effect on them, 
 not infrequently, is startling ; the ex- 
 ceeding difference in treatment is a 
 revelation to them. 
 
 True, danger in the fourth line, city's 
 in the fifth, ask in the sixth, and weight 
 in the seventh properly get a little 
 stress, but they, properly, get so little 
 stress compared with the more emphat- 
 ic words that, in my judgment, it is 
 misleading to mark them. I don't see 
 how a reader could fail to give them 
 
1 1 o THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 all the prominence they demand. The 
 other words italicized should bespoken 
 with all the unction the reader is mas- 
 ter of. 
 
 Not, that and say in the eighth and 
 ninth lines are absolutely unemphatic. 
 Read as marked, how ponderous the 
 second clause of the eighth line is ! A 
 great effect may be produced with hu- 
 mor, but not if the reader tarries on 
 the word say. 
 
 In the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth 
 lines, there are only five emphatic 
 words — raty ten, baned, what, and yet. 
 All the other words should be spoken 
 rapidly. After rat, and before and 
 after ten, the reader should pause quite 
 as long as he would after what in the 
 twelfth line. 
 
 The learned Canon's marking of the 
 thirteenth line is peculiar. According 
 to his reading, there are men that, 
 though they love not gaping pigs, they 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 1 1 1 
 
 do love pigs that do not gap. Neither 
 love nor not is emphatic, while pig is 
 slightly the most emphatic word in the 
 line. 
 
 While I should not emphasize ren- 
 dered in the sixteenth line, I should 
 emphasize reason very strongly. The 
 defense of the emphasis on no firm is 
 easily seen, but to my thinking, it is 
 hardly worth considering. Indeed, 
 these two words are but slightly em- 
 phatic. 
 
 In the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 lines, I should emphasize pig and cat 
 very strongly, and should not empha- 
 size abide. 
 
 In the nineteenth line, I should em- 
 phasize neither so nor no. 
 
 I always make two syllables of lodged, 
 as to my ear it betters the rhythm. It 
 is always printed, I believe, as one syl- 
 lable. The fact that if two syllables 
 be made of the word the line has a syl- 
 
1 1 2 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 lable too many, does not disturb me. 
 Rhythm, smoothness, is the thing that 
 is important. 
 
 To my seeing, there is not one em- 
 phatic word in the twenty-first line, 
 and only two in the twenty-second — 
 losing and answered. 
 
 If these discussions 2X^ studied, they 
 will not fail, I think, to interest and 
 benefit many ; but, if they are only 
 read, they will, I fear, neither interest 
 nor benefit anyone. 
 
 VI. 
 
 ** The student of the art of delivery never finishes, 
 there is always something left for him to learn." 
 
 Canon Fleming proceeds to mark the 
 emphatic words in the fourth act of 
 *' The Merchant of Venice " as follows : 
 
 Bassanio. — This is no answer ^ thou unfeeling man, 
 to excuse the current of thy cruelty, 
 
 I should not emphasize no, but I 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 113 
 
 should emphasize man quite as strongly 
 as the adjective unfeeling. The two 
 words are equivalent to one single 
 word — wretch or monster, for example 
 — and consequently should be made 
 about equally emphatic. In such 
 cases, the last word always gets 
 slightly the most stress. If the locu- 
 tion be such that the words may be 
 transposed without affecting the sense, 
 it will be found that the word placed 
 last will always be slightly the most em- 
 phatic. Here is an example: ** It 
 seems that a law had been recently 
 made that a tax on old bachelors' pates 
 should be laid.'* Now, transpose the 
 three italicized words as we will — the 
 pates of old bachelors, the pates of 
 bachelors that are old — and we see 
 that it is always the last word that is 
 naturally somewhat the most emphatic. 
 
 Shylock. — I am not bound to please thee with my 
 answer. 
 
114 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 Our author marks no word in this 
 speech for emphasis. I have always 
 emphasized thee very strongly, and 
 this, possibly, will be considered by 
 most persons the more effective read- 
 ing; but is it the more correct ? That, 
 I am inclined to think, is more than 
 doubtful. Should I ever play the 
 scene again, I think I shall adopt the 
 Canon's reading, speaking the speech 
 in a sneering rather than in an angry 
 tone. Treated in this manner, I 
 should not be surprised to see the 
 speech gain in effectiveness. 
 
 Bassanio. — Do all men kill the things they do not 
 love ? 
 
 Were there any question of the 
 things men do love, then the emphasis 
 on 7iot would be correct, but not other- 
 wise. 
 
 Shylock. — Hates any man the thing he would not 
 kill? 
 
 Neither not nor kill should I empha- 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 1 1 5 
 
 size, but I should emphasize would 
 very strongly. The thought is : Does 
 any man hate a thing he would not 
 like to kill, and this thought is very 
 clearly brought out by emphasizing 
 would. The two last words should be 
 touched very lightly. 
 
 Bassanio. — Every offence is not a hate 2X first. 
 Shylock. — What! would'st thou have a serpent 
 sting thee twice ? 
 
 This reading is bettered, I think, by 
 touching sting lightly. 
 
 Antonio. — I pray you, think, you question with a 
 Jew. 
 
 The comma after think is the Can- 
 on's. This reading seems to me utter- 
 ly bad; it has, so far as I can see, 
 neither rhyme nor reason to defend it. 
 Jew is surely the word to emphasize. 
 
 You may as well go stand upon the beach 
 And bid the main flood bate his usual height; 
 
 It is not probable that our author 
 would have us make as much of stand 
 as the italicizing would intimate. 
 
1 1 6 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 You may as well use question with the wolf^ 
 Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb, 
 
 I should not stop for an instant on 
 question, and in the second line the 
 only words I should emphasize are ewe 
 and lamb. 
 
 You may as well y^^^^V the mountain pines 
 To wag their high tops and to make no noise. 
 
 Were I to mark these two lines for 
 emphasis, I should probably italicize 
 mountain pines and leave the rest to 
 the reader's discretion. 
 
 You may as well do anything most hard 
 
 As seek to soften that (than which what's harder?) 
 
 His ye wish heart; therefore I do beseech you 
 
 Make no more offers^ use no further m-eans^ 
 
 But, with all brief Z-nA plain conveniency^ 
 
 Let me have judgment and the Jew his wilL 
 
 Here, to my thinking, is a great 
 deal too much emphasizing. The 
 reading here indicated cannot be 
 other, it seems to me, than heavy, 
 stilted, monotonous — in a word, un- 
 natural. The words I should not em- 
 
OF ELOCUTION, 
 
 117 
 
 phasize are : do, most, what's tkereforCy 
 no more, no further and alL 
 
 Bassanio — For thy three thousand ducats here are 
 six, 
 
 Shylock. — If evWy ducat in six thousand ducats 
 Were in six parts, and every part a ducat ^ 
 I would not draw them; I would have my bond. 
 
 If Shylock were asked if he would 
 accept, then he would properly, natu- 
 rally, emphasize the negative, but not 
 otherwise. Draw^ I take it, is the em- 
 phatic word. 
 
 VII. 
 
 ** The most offensive thing we encounter on the stage 
 is a big voice with little intelligence behind it." 
 
 Our English reader continues his 
 marking of the emphatic words in the 
 fourth act of '*The Merchant of Ven- 
 ice ** thus: 
 
 Duke. — How shalt thou hope for mercy ^ rend ring 
 none ?" 
 
 If the thought is : How can you ex- 
 pect any mercy, since you render no 
 
1 1 8 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 mercy ? then thou and rencPring are 
 properly the emphatic words of the 
 line. 
 
 Shylock. — What judgment shall I dread, doing no 
 wrong ? 
 You have among you many a purchased slave. 
 Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules ^ 
 You tise innbject and in slavish parts, 
 Because you bought them. 
 
 Neither you nor use should I em- 
 phasize ; hvX parts I should emphasize 
 quite as strongly as any other word in 
 the sentence. 
 
 Shall /say X.o you. 
 Let them h^ free, marry them to your heirs. 
 Why sweat they under burdens ? 
 
 This reading of the first clause seems 
 to me to be ** clean out of the way.*' 
 Never have I erred more, or say is the 
 word, and the only word, to emphasize. 
 The Canon's reading I have often 
 heard, and it may be the traditional 
 reading, but tradition never yet has 
 made anything right. There is no 
 reason, good or bad, for emphasizing 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 119 
 
 marry. The offensive lies not in the 
 marrying, but in the thought of marry- 
 ing the slaves to the owners' children. 
 
 Let their beds 
 Be made as soft 2,s> yours ^ and let X.\i.^\x palates 
 Be seasoned v<[\\.\i. such viands? 
 
 Neither made nor seasoned nor such 
 should, so far as I can see, be made 
 the least emphatic. The first their I 
 should emphasize as strongly as bedsy 
 nor should I treat the second their as 
 an unemphatic word. It stands in 
 contradistinction to your understood ; 
 this we clearly see, if we supply the 
 ellipses. 
 
 You will answer t 
 The slaves are ours. So do / answer ^^«. 
 
 Why emphasize you ? There is no 
 suggestion that an answer shall, or 
 may, come from anyone else. Here 
 is a typical example of a non-natural, 
 non-intelligent style of reading that is 
 very prevalent. The art in it is on a 
 
I20 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 level with the art in the sign of the 
 way-side inn. Neither the first you^ 
 slaves, nor so should be emphasized. 
 
 1h.G pound oi Jlesh that I demand oi him 
 
 Is dearly bought ; 'tis mine^ and I will have it. 
 
 I should not pause an instant on de- 
 mandy nor do I emphasize will, though 
 this is the usual, and I believe the 
 traditional, reading. To me, this treat- 
 ment smacks too strongly of the bark- 
 ing-dog style. Veritable resolve does 
 not waste its strength in loud talk. . 
 
 If you deny me, fie upon your law ! 
 
 There is no force in the decrees of Venice, 
 
 I stand for judgment : answer^ shall I have it ? 
 
 In these three lines the learned 
 Canon and I would have been of one 
 mind had he not italicized no and de- 
 crees. 
 
 Duke. — Upon my power I may dismiss this court. 
 Unless Bellario, a learne'd doctor. 
 Whom I have sent for to determine this 
 Come here to-day. 
 
 To my thinking, the reading here 
 
OF ELOCUTION, 121 
 
 indicated is about as wide of what it 
 should be as it well could be. There 
 is no question of anybody's else power, 
 hence why emphasize my ? If there is 
 anything to emphasize in the second 
 line it surely is not unless and learned; 
 it is rather Bellario and doctor. I 
 should not emphasize sent. Its posi- 
 tion in the line brings to it a little 
 more breath than the other words get, 
 determine excepted, but it cannot be 
 said to be emphatic. 
 
 Salarino. — My lord^ here stays without 
 A messenger with letters from the Doctor, 
 New come from Padua, 
 
 The most emphatic, or rather the 
 only emphatic, word in the first line is 
 without. This, I think, clearly appears 
 if we transpose the words thus : 
 
 Without, my Lord, there stays a messenger. 
 Duke. — Bring us the letters ; call the messenger. 
 
 This is the treatment, I fancy, that 
 this line has commonly received from 
 
122 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 time immemorial ; yet I like better the 
 reading that makes well-nigh as much 
 of letters and messenger as of bring and 
 call. 
 
 BassANIO. — Good cheer y Antonio ! What man, courage 
 yet ! 
 The Jew shall have tny fleshy bloody bones and c//, 
 Ere thou shalt lose for me one drop of blood. 
 
 All readers, I think, emphasize what. 
 It's not being italicized here is prob- 
 ably due to an oversight. Neither /^^j"^ 
 nor one should I emphasize. 
 
 Antonio. — /am a tainted v7&th.Qr of ihejlock 
 Meetest for death ; the weakest kind of fruit 
 Drops earliest to the ground ; and so let me. 
 You cannot better be employed, Bassanio, 
 Than to live still, and write mine epitaph, 
 
 Antonio has no thought here of in- 
 stituting a comparison between him- 
 self and anyone else. There is no 
 such thought, for example, as I am the 
 sickly wether of the flock ; you are 
 the healthy wether of the flock, hence 
 he would not emphasize the qualifying 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 123 
 
 word. In the first three lines of this 
 speech, I should either not mark any 
 word for emphasis, or I should mark, 
 in addition to the words our author 
 marks, the words wether^ fruity and 
 ground. In neither case should I mark 
 the first word, which, together with 
 am, should be tripped over lightly. Epi- 
 taph rather than write is the emphatic 
 word. The line means, live on and 
 epitaph me. If Antonio knew that 
 Bassanio had already composed his 
 epitaph, he would probably emphasize 
 write^ not otherwise. 
 
124 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 VIII. 
 
 One's emphasis is the gauge of one's ability to un- 
 derstand. Nothing else betrays our ignorance of 
 the text like misplaced emphasis. One who empha- 
 sizes correctly is more than likely to do justice to 
 his author in other regards. The acumen that 
 guides to a discreet and illuminative emphasis is 
 more than likely to lead to a proper emotional ren- 
 dering. — S. H, Clark, 
 
 Canon Fleming goes from where we 
 left him directly to Portia's entrance. 
 He takes an occasional liberty with 
 the text that I fail to see any reason 
 for. I follow him, however, as he pro- 
 ceeds, thus : 
 
 Duke. — Give me your hand. You come from 
 learned Bellario ? 
 
 Portia. — I do^ my Lord. 
 Duke. — You are welcome; take your place. 
 Are you acquainted with the cause in question? 
 
 Marked or unmarked, no one could 
 fail to read the first speech correctly ; 
 but why change old to learned, and 
 why mark the adjective for emphasis? 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 i?5 
 
 If *' cause in question" — which it will 
 be observed is not Shakespeare — 
 means cause of this action, litigation or 
 suit, then it would seem that causCy and 
 not question, is the emphatic word. 
 
 Portia. — I am informed throughly of the cause; 
 Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew? 
 
 Of these seven italicized words, I 
 should emphasize only three — through- 
 ly, merchant, and Jew. 
 
 Duke. — Antonio and old Shylock^ both sld^n^. forth, 
 
 Portia. — Is your name Shy lock? 
 
 Shylock. — Shylock is my name. 
 
 Portia. — You stand within his danger ^ do you not? 
 
 Emphasize within or the second 
 you ! f I fail to see why. 
 
 Antonio. — Ay, so he says, 
 Portia. — Do you confess the bond ? 
 Antonio. — I do. 
 
 So is unemphatic, as we see if we 
 transpose the words, thus : He says so. 
 
 Portia. — Then must the Jew be merciful. 
 
 The context might make this the 
 
126 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 proper reading ; but it doesn't. As 
 the Jew has not already been impor- 
 tuned, so far as Portia knows, the 
 proper reading emphasizes Jew and 
 merciful. The thought Portia would 
 express is simply this : Since you ac- 
 knowledge the bond, there is nothing 
 left for you but to throw yourself on 
 the mercy of the Jew. 
 
 Shylock. — On what compulsion must I ? Tell me 
 that. 
 
 I would not quarrel with this mark- 
 ing, though I should have left tell un- 
 italicized. The emphasis on mtist is 
 not necessary to bring out the sense, 
 but, by emphasizing it, Shylock may, if 
 he treats it properly, very forcibly give 
 utterance to the feeling aroused with- 
 in him by the suggestion that he shall 
 be merciful. Such cases as this are 
 rarely met with. The naked thought 
 nearly always determines. 
 
 Portia. — The quality of mercy is not strained. 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 1 2 7 
 
 I say and, a la Meddle, I say it bold- 
 ly : Nobody reads this line correctly. 
 There is but one emphatic word in it 
 — strained. All the other words 
 should be tripped over quite lightly; 
 yet, all the many Portias I have heard 
 — save one of my own coaching — 
 made at the least two, and usually 
 three, words in the line emphatic. To 
 make any word in the line emphatic 
 but strained is to suggest a meaning 
 not intended. The first three words 
 add nothing to the sense, nothing. 
 They are there simply as padding, 
 to fill out the line, or as rhetorical 
 embellishment, yet the majority of 
 readers — good, easy souls! make 
 quality quite as emphatic as any other 
 word in the line, and often more 
 emphatic than the word that alone 
 should be emphasized. Strange that 
 so few readers deem it all necessary to 
 think! There is more in the art of 
 
1 2 8 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 reading than the mere firing of sound 
 at words, few as there are that seem to 
 think so. 
 
 If it were anywhere said that mercy 
 is strained, we should properly empha- 
 size not, and should not emphasize 
 strained. 
 
 It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
 Upon the place beneath. It is iiiuice blest ; 
 It hlesseth him X\i2X gives and him that takes 
 * Tis mightiest in the viightiest. It becomes 
 The throndd monarch better than his crown. 
 
 Not place, but beneath, is the em- 
 phatic word. Take what word we please 
 instead of beneath — above, chosen, de- 
 signated — and we find that it is the 
 limiting, defining word that properly 
 gets the stress. It is only the heavy, 
 monotonous, elephantine style of de- 
 livery, which our author would seem 
 to sympathize with, that would dwell 
 on blesseth. In the sixth line, better is 
 the least and crow7i the most emphatic 
 word. This line usually gives the 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 129 
 
 learner more trouble than any other 
 line in the whole speech. There are 
 thoughtful readers who contend that 
 better is the only emphatic word in the 
 line, but their reasons have always 
 seemed to me quite valueless. 
 
 1. His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, 
 
 2. The attribute to awe send majesty 
 
 3. Wherein doth sit the dread Sind fear of kings 
 
 4. But mercy is above this sceptred sway, 
 
 5. It is efithrone'd in the hearts of kings ; 
 
 6. It is an attribute to God himself: 
 
 7. And earthly power doth then show likest God's, 
 
 8. When 7nercy seasons justice. 
 
 In the first of these eight lines, 
 /orce is not at all emphatic, nor is at- 
 tribute in the second. In the third 
 line, ^m^s is properly slightly more 
 emphatic than either dread or fear. 
 The thought is made clearer to many 
 by changing the to our. In the fourth 
 line, not sway, but sceptred, is the 
 word to emphasize. A little study en- 
 ables us to see that the sceptre's sway 
 is contrasted with mercy's sway, force 
 
1 30 THE ESSEN TIALS 
 
 or power; it matters not which word 
 we use. Enthrondd, in the fifth line, 
 should be touched very lightly. Its 
 long, sonorous is very beguiling, but 
 it is only the unthinking bowwower, 
 who reads for sound, not sense, that 
 would dwell on it. It, whose anteced- 
 ent is mercy, is properly as emphatic 
 as hearts. This somewhat more clear- 
 ly appears if we change it to that, 
 which, though it be Shakespeare, I do 
 not hesitate to intimate would better 
 the diction. The change would give 
 the reader a much better vowel sound 
 to deal with. In the seventh line, we 
 should trip lightly over them, and 
 should emphasize Gods fully as 
 strongly as earthly. This is made 
 clear by supplying the ellipsis, power, 
 after God's. The sentiment, rather 
 than the sense, makes seasons about as 
 emphatic as the words immediately be- 
 fore and after it. 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 131 
 
 Therefore, Jew, 
 'Y\iOVi%h. justice be thy plea ^ consider this 
 That in the course oi justice none of us 
 Should see salvation. 
 
 Neither justice^ plea^ nor consider 
 are at all emphatic. The emphatic 
 words are be and this. 
 
 We do pray for mercy ^ 
 And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
 The ^(f^^j of mercy. 
 
 Neither teach nor render should be 
 emphasized. Ally on the contrary, 
 should be made very emphatic. 
 
 I have spoke thus much 
 To mitigate ih^ justice of ihy plea^ 
 Which, if ihoM/ollotUy this strict court of Venice 
 Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there. 
 
 In order to make the words spoke 
 thus much say what they are intended 
 to say they must all be spoken with 
 equal stress. Spoken as our author 
 marks them they suggest the thought 
 that something else will be spoken for 
 some other purpose. Not infrequent- 
 
132 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 ly we hear a Portia emphasize spoke 
 and trip over the other two words, in- 
 timating that she is going to sing, or 
 chant, or write something else for 
 some other purpose. The one read- 
 ing is as bad as the other. Plea is un- 
 emphatic. The comma after which is 
 mine. I do not find it in any one of 
 the three editions within my present 
 reach. The clause being parenthetic, 
 the comma seems to me to be neces- 
 sary. Stricty court and Venice are 
 equally emphatic. To emphasize 
 strict only is to say that there is at the 
 least one other court that is not strict. 
 At the best, strict is little else than 
 padding. The line is just as forcible 
 without it ; it serves chiefly to fill out 
 the line. So far as sense and force 
 are concerned, one word, court, would 
 suffice. In reading the last line the 
 question of climax should be consid- 
 ered. Read for the thought only, the 
 
OF ELOCUTION, 
 
 133 
 
 speech ends tamely. The necessary 
 elevation is attained by dwelling on 
 needs and Against and making a slight 
 pause before and after 'gainst. 
 
 This speech is read in every con- 
 cievable manner. The Portias that I 
 have seen, almost without an excep- 
 tion, have gone at it in a pell-mell, 
 haphazard, slapdash way that showed 
 that they depended on their voice- 
 making apparatus rather than on the 
 thought, on vociferation rather than 
 on Shakespeare, for any effect they 
 might produce. They were rewarded 
 with the plaudits of the many; the 
 censure of the few did not concern 
 them, and — they were happy. 
 
134 ^-^-^ ESSENTIALS 
 
 IX. 
 
 ** He that reads really well utters the words with 
 the care that the musician exercises in playing or 
 singing." 
 
 I occasionally meet a person who 
 seems to think that the exercise of the 
 intelligence in reading is fatal to what 
 an actor I met, a day or two ago, called 
 spontaneity, by which I understood 
 him to mean naturalness. He seemed 
 to incline strongly to the opinion that 
 emphasis, pause, and inflection are 
 matters of little importance, and that a 
 reader is likely to be stilted and non- 
 natural in proportion to the extent he 
 allows himself to consider the question 
 of technique. All that is necessary, 
 according to these people, if I under- 
 stand them, is to know the words and 
 to speak them with earnestness. If 
 they are right, then reading is only a 
 matter of memory and unction; in 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 135 
 
 other words, of memory and unguided 
 fuss and fury. To these people, who 
 are commonly actors (self-declared), I 
 would say, with as much respect as I 
 can muster for the occasion, that if 
 they would but give half as much time 
 to the learning- of their business, as the 
 average chorus-singer or clog-dancer 
 gives to learning his, they might possi- 
 bly modify their opinion with regard to 
 the value of study. There are many 
 of us that are never more glib, never 
 more confident, never more dogmatic 
 than when we talk about something 
 we know nothing about. 
 
 But let us return to Canon Fleming 
 and '* The Merchant of Venice'* : 
 
 Shylock.— J/y deeds upon my head! I crave [the 
 law] 
 
 The penalty and forfeit of my bond. 
 
 We all agree, I think, with regard 
 to the meaning of the first sentence, 
 which is this : For my deeds I will be 
 
 s^=YB R A R y^ 
 ^ OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 CaL!FO^>^^^ 
 
136 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 answerable. Does our author's em- 
 phasis make the words express this 
 thought? I think not. His emphasis, 
 to my seeing, makes the words say: 
 My deeds upon my head, and not on 
 any other part of my body. To make 
 the words say what they are intended 
 to say, it is necessary, I am confident, 
 to emphasize the second m^y as strong- 
 ly as the first, and this, if I do not err, 
 is the way the sentence is usually read. 
 Whether the learned Canon gives us 
 the full line or not, crave is not em- 
 phatic; it is the thing craved, the law, 
 that we should emphasize. The next 
 line, with its emphatic words, stands in 
 elocutionary apposition to law. 
 
 Portia. — Is he not able to discharge the money ? 
 
 Bassanio. — Yes, here I tender it for him in the 
 court! 
 Yea, twice the sum: if that will not suffice^ 
 I will be bound to pay it ten times o'er, 
 On forfeit of my hands, my head, my feet [heart]. 
 If this^\W not suffice, it must appear 
 That malice bears down truth. 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 137 
 
 I fail to see any defense for the 
 emphasis on tender in the first line, 
 not in the second, noty suffice or appear 
 in the fifth, or for bear or down in the 
 sixth. On the other hand, I should 
 emphasize sum in the second line quite 
 as strongly as twice. If Bassanio said, 
 for example, I not only tender him the 
 sum we owe him, but twice the sum, 
 our author's emphasis would be cor- 
 rect, not otherwise. In the third line 
 I should emphasize the last three 
 words. They^^^ of the fourth line is 
 a new reading to me. Possibly it is a 
 misprint. 
 
 And I beseech you 
 Wrest once the law to your authority y 
 To do a great right do a little wrongs 
 And curb this cruel devil of his will. 
 
 The emphasizing of wrest and once 
 smacks of the kind of elocution that 
 tries to get an effect out of every word. 
 It reminds one of those speakers that 
 make up in sound for what they lack 
 
138 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 in sense. Read in this way, the line 
 loses much of its proper effect. All 
 the words but two should come *' trip- 
 pingly from the tongue." Why em- 
 phasize this in the last line? There is 
 no question of any other devil. 
 
 Portia. — It viust not be. There is no power in 
 Venice 
 Can alter a decree established 
 'Twill be recorded for 2. precedent, 
 And many an error, by the same example^ 
 Will rush into the state. It can not be. 
 
 The most emphatic word in the first 
 sentence is the last. If it had been 
 said that it must be, then not should 
 be the only emphatic word. If it had 
 been said that it cannot be, then must 
 would be the only emphatic word. As 
 it is, three words are emphasized about 
 equally in order to give the delivery 
 the elevation that the situation and 
 sentiment demand. For the same 
 reason, many and error in the fourth 
 line should be emphasized. Neither 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 139 
 
 nOi power, alter nor decree should be 
 emphasized; Venicey on the contrary, 
 should be emphasized quite as strong- 
 ly as any other word in the speech. 
 
 Shylock. — A Daniel come to judgment ! Yea^ a 
 
 Daniel! 
 O wise young judge ! How do I honor thee. 
 
 Of these nine italicized words, I 
 should emphasize only five — Daniely 
 yea, Daniel, wise and honor. 
 
 Portia. — I pray you, let me look Vi'^ovi the bond, 
 
 I should emphasize pray quite as 
 strongly as look, and should not em- 
 phasize bond. 
 
 Shylock. — Here 'tis most reverend doctor ^ here it is, 
 
 Shylock's eagerness is ill indicated 
 by all this italicizing ; and then, read 
 according to the marking, Shylock 
 cannot get the effect out of the word 
 reverend that is within his easy reach 
 if he emphasizes this word only. 
 
 Portia. — Shylock! There's thrice thy money offered 
 thee. 
 
I40 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 One word only, thrice, is all that, 
 in my judgment, should be made at all 
 emphatic in this line. The exclamation 
 point is our author's. I doubt wheth- 
 er it will be found elsewhere. A com- 
 ma is the usual punctuation. 
 
 Shylock. — An oath, an oath ! I have an oath in 
 heave7i : 
 Shall I \2iy perjury upon my soul? 
 NOf not for Venice, 
 
 The effect is weakened, rather than 
 heightened, by making the third oath 
 emphatic. I should italicize not rather 
 than no of the last line. Both words 
 should be spoken with a good deal of 
 force. 
 
 Portia. — Why, this bond is forfeit, 
 
 And lawfully y by this the Jew may claim 
 A poutid oi flesh be by him cut off 
 Nearest the merchant's heart. Be merciful. 
 Take thrice thy fnoney. Bid me tear the bond. 
 
 In these five lines, our Author 
 would emphasize sixteen words ; I 
 should emphasize only Xixn^— forfeit, 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 141 
 
 lawfully, pound, fiesh, nearest, heart, 
 merciful, take, and tear. *' Take thrice 
 thy money, means, simply, Accept their 
 offer. Why emphasize bond since there 
 is no question of tearing anything 
 else ? 
 
 Shylock. — When it is /<2/^ according to the tenor. 
 It doth appear you are a worthy judge; 
 You know the law, your exposition 
 Hath been most sound, I charge you by the law. 
 Whereof you are a well deserving pillar^ 
 Proceed to judgment. By my soul I swear 
 There is no power in the tongue of man 
 To alter me. I stay here on my bond. 
 
 In the first line of this speech, a 
 Shylock should not only make clear the 
 fact that the bond must be *' paid accord- 
 ing to the tenor,*' but in order to get 
 all the effect out of the line there is in 
 it, he must also emphasize the fact 
 that nothing but a pound of Antonio's 
 flesh will be accepted. This he does 
 best by a peculiar, indescribable hand- 
 ling of the word according which re- 
 sults in making it the most emphatic 
 
142 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 word in the line. In the third line, I 
 should emphasize law as strongly as 
 know. If it were a question as to 
 whether Portia does or does not know 
 the law, the case would be very differ- 
 ent. If the thought were, for example, 
 you know the law but you are not will- 
 ing to h^ guided by it. In the fourth 
 line I should again emphasize law. 
 Our author's reading of the seventh 
 line does not express the thought the 
 line is intended to convey, which is, 
 simply, there is no power in man to 
 alter me; the other words serve for 
 little else than for poetical embellish- 
 ment. The effect of the last sentence 
 is heightened by dwelling on on as 
 much as on the two preceding words. 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 X. 
 
 143 
 
 I hold every man a debtor to his profession from 
 the which, as men do of course seek to receive coun- 
 tenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavor 
 themselves, byway of amends, to be a help and orna- 
 ment thereto.— Bacon. 
 
 Canon Fleming continues to intimate 
 how he would have the Trial Scene in 
 '* The Merchant of Venice '' read in 
 this wise : 
 
 Antonio. — Most heartily I do beseech the court 
 
 To give ihQ judgment, 
 Portia. — Why then thus it is ; 
 
 You must prepare your dosom for his knife, 
 Shylock. — O noble judge ! O excellent young man ! 
 
 To my thinking, our author's reading 
 of these three speeches is much bet- 
 tered by spending no more breath on 
 the words beseech^ courty and prepare 
 than is necessary to articulate them 
 distinctly. I certainly should not em- 
 phasize them. 
 
144 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 Portia. — For the intent 3,n6. purpose of the law 
 Hath /2/// relation to X.h.& penalty, 
 Which here appeareth due upon the bond. 
 
 It would seem to me that law is 
 scarcely, if at all, less emphatic than 
 either intent or purpose. What Shy- 
 lock has just said about Portia's know- 
 ing the law does not effect the reading 
 of the line. Penalty should certainly 
 not be made more emphatic than here 
 and appeareth^ hence I should italicize 
 all three or none. The wisdom of 
 marking bond for emphasis is ques- 
 tionable. No reader, I think, would 
 fail to give it all the prominence de- 
 sirable. 
 
 Shylock. — *Tis very true ! O wise and upright judge ! 
 How much more elder art than thy looks, 
 
 I should counsel the reader to make 
 quite as much of true as of very ; and, 
 in the second line, I would intimate 
 that I would have him make a great deal 
 more of much than of any other word 
 in the line by leaving all the other 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 145 
 
 words in Roman. All the words, to 
 my thinking, after this one strong em- 
 phasis, should be enunciated quite 
 trippingly. Here, as always, I aim 
 only at what I think will heighten the 
 effect. Nature is a niggard and does 
 not expend her energies where she 
 will not be rewarded. 
 
 Portia. — Therefore lay bare your bosom. 
 Shylock. — Ay, his breast. 
 
 So says the bond: — doth it not, noble judge? 
 
 Nearest his heart. Those are the very words. 
 
 Neither doth nor judge ^o\Adi I em- 
 phasize, but I should emphasize not. 
 The long of noble makes it possible 
 for the exultant Shylock to voice his 
 joy to the full. No utterance con- 
 ceivable of jtidge would aid him herein 
 a whit. Why emphasize those? If 
 there be ^ reason, I cannot see it. 
 The bare of Portia's line should be 
 emphasized. 
 
 Portia. — It is so. Are there balance here to weigh 
 VdQjlesh? 
 
146 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 Shylock. — I have them ready, 
 
 Portia. — Have by some surgeon, Shylock, on your 
 charge. 
 
 To stop his wounds, lest he do bleed to death. 
 
 Neither is.fieshy stop, nor bleed^ovXdi 
 I emphasize ; and had I marked your 
 for emphasis, I should also have marked 
 charge. 
 
 Shylock. — Is it so nominated \n. the bond? 
 Portia. — It is not so expressed ; but what of that? 
 
 *Twere good you do so much for charity, 
 Shylock. — I cannot _/f«^ it. *Tis not in the bond, 
 Portia. — Come, merchant, have you anything to 
 say? 
 
 I should not italicize not, good, or 
 anything. Say, it seems to me, rather 
 than anything, is the word to mark, if 
 one would mark something. Some- 
 times the line is read with the emphasis 
 on you — a reading easily defended. 
 
 Antonio. — But little ; I am armed 2ir\d well prepared. 
 Give me your hand, Bassanio ; fare you 
 
 well ! 
 Grieve not that I sltd. fallen to this ior you, 
 T ox h&x&in Fortune sho^shQiSQli more 'kind 
 Than is her custom. 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 147 
 
 I see no reason for making fallen 
 emphatic. If the word were come, 
 would anyone think of emphasizing it? 
 HereiUy to my thinking, is the most em- 
 phatic word in the fourth line, unless it 
 be kind, which is very much more em- 
 phatic than more. If we had as kind 
 anywhere, then more kind would be 
 correct. 
 
 It is still her use 
 To let the wretched tn2in outlive his wealthy 
 To view, with hollow eye and wrinkled hvovr^ 
 An age of poverty ; from which lingering penance 
 Of such a misery doth she cut me off, 
 
 I should italicize neither use, outlive, 
 hollow, wrinkled, lingering, misery, cut, 
 nor offy but I should italicize eye, brow, 
 poverty, such, and me. I should hope 
 and expect to get a better result than 
 our author by marking the lines thus : 
 
 It is still her use 
 To let the wretched Tn3.n outlive his wealthy 
 To view, with hollow eye, and wrinkled drow. 
 An age oi poverty ; from which lingering penance 
 Of such a misery doth she cut me off. 
 
148 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 It is quite safe, I think, to leave the 
 secondary emphases to take care of 
 themselves. I strongly suspect that 
 our author often employs rules in de- 
 termining what words should be em- 
 phasized. If he does, I incline to the 
 opinion that he succeeds no better 
 with them than others have succeeded 
 with them. It is safe to say that the 
 average rule-user goes wrong more fre- 
 quently than he goes right. The rule 
 of gumption is the only rule that is 
 worth a fig in determining what words 
 should be emphasized 
 
 Commend me to your honorable wife ; 
 TV// her \.\i& process of Antonio's end; 
 Say how I loved yoM : speak va^fair in death. 
 And when the tale is told bid h-^r h^ judge 
 Whether Bassanio had not once a love, 
 
 I question the wisdom of marking 
 any word in the first two of these five 
 lines for emphasis, there being no em- 
 phasis that is at all salient. If honor- 
 ablcj however, is marked, then wife 
 
OF ELOCUTION, 
 
 149 
 
 should also be marked, else we might 
 argue that we have in the reading an 
 intimation that Bassanio is a polyga- 
 mist. In the third line I should not 
 emphasize say or speak. By empha- 
 sizing bid in the fourth line instead of 
 her, we spoil the rhythm of an other- 
 wise perfect line. There can be no 
 doubt, I think, that Shakespeare em- 
 phasized her. 
 
 ^ Repent not you that you shall lose your friend , 
 And he repents not that Yiq pays your debt ; 
 For^ if the Jew do cut but deep enough, 
 I'll pay it instantly with all my heart. 
 
 Our author's reading of the first 
 three of these four lines seems to me 
 to be very bad indeed. In fact, I don't 
 see how it could easily be worse. The 
 most offensive thing in it is the empha- 
 sis on and the pause after for. The 
 emphasizing of the ors and j^r's, and 
 the particles generally, is a character- 
 istic of that species of reader known 
 
I50 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 in stage parlance as the scene chewer. 
 There is not a syllable in the four lines 
 that should be touched more lightly 
 than the first syllable of the third line. 
 I should read these lines thus : 
 
 Repent vioX.you that you shall lose yo\xr friend ^ 
 And he repents not that h.^ pays your debt ; 
 For if the Jew do cut but deep enough, 
 1*11 pay it instantly with all my heart. 
 
 XI. 
 
 " There cannot be two right ways to read a sen- 
 tence any more than there can be two right solutions 
 to a mathematical problem. There can be only one 
 reading that fully brings out the thought." 
 
 Canon Fleming proceeds, in his 
 *' Artof Reading and Speaking/* which 
 he dedicates, *' to all who desire to be 
 cultured readers and speakers of our 
 mother tongue," to mark the emphatic 
 words in the Trial Scene of " The 
 Merchant of Venice" in this wise: 
 
 Bassanio — Antonio, I am married to a wife 
 Which is as dear to me as life itself; 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 151 
 
 But life itself, my wife, and alt the worlds 
 Are not with me esteemed above thy life; 
 I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them a;// 
 Here to MeV devil to deliver jj/^/^. 
 
 It is a mistake, it seems to me, to 
 mark wt/e in the first line for emphasis, 
 as I do not think that more should be 
 made of it than of married. Not life 
 but itself m the second line is the em- 
 phatic word. Words ending in self 
 are used in most cases for emphasis 
 only; they seldom add to the thought. 
 Commonly the word preceding should 
 also be emphasized, but here we have 
 an exception ; the emphasis on itself 
 suffices. If the not in the fourth line 
 contradicted a preceding affirmative, 
 it would be proper to emphasize it. 
 The emphatic words in this line are 
 esteemedy thy, and life. The first of 
 the three, however, may safely be left 
 to take care of itself. Why emphasize 
 this ? There is no question of any 
 other devil. Deliver^ not you^ is the 
 
1 5 2 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 emphatic word. Put any word we 
 please in the place of deliver — rescue 
 or release, for example — and we find it 
 naturally gets the emphasis, I should 
 mark this speech thus : 
 
 Antonio, I am married to a wife 
 Which is as dear to me as life itself; 
 But life itself, my wifey and all the worlds 
 Are not with me esteemed above thy life; 
 I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them «//, 
 Here to this devil to deliver you. 
 Portia — Your wife would give you little thanks 
 If she were by to hear you make the offer. 
 
 Neither wife, little, nor hear should 
 I emphasize, but I should emphasize 
 tha7tks. If we had not the last three 
 words of the second line, hear would 
 get the emphasis that now goes to 
 offer. 
 
 GratiaNO — / have a wife whom I protest I love . 
 I would she were in heaven, so she could 
 Entreat some power to change this currish Jew. 
 
 In these three lines our author marks 
 ten words for emphasis ; I should mark 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 153 
 
 six, — the first and the third /, heaven^ 
 change^ currish ^nd/ew. 
 
 NerissA. — 'Tis well yoM offer it behind h^t back; 
 The wish would make else an unquiet home. 
 
 Here again, I should mark only half 
 as many words for emphasis as our 
 author — back, else and home. Else, to 
 my thinking, is the most emphatic 
 word in the speech. With the empha- 
 sis on well I should not quarrel. 
 
 Shylock. — These be the Christian husbands ! I have a 
 daughter ; 
 Would diny of the stock of Barabbas 
 Had been her husband rather than a Christian ! 
 We trifle time: \ pray ih^^ pursue sentence. 
 
 In the first line I should emphasize 
 neither husbands nor /. Our author 
 emphasizes /, possibly because Bas- 
 sanio and Gratiano have said they 
 have wives. If this be his reason, 
 which is the only reason I can see, I 
 do not think it sufficient. In the 
 second line, I should not emphasize 
 either would or stock. Nor in the 
 
154 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 third line should I emphasize husband. 
 The caesura, as is frequently the case, 
 makes the word sufficiently prominent. 
 
 Portia. — K pound oi that same merchant s flesh is thine. 
 
 The court awards it and the law doth give it. 
 Shylock. — Most rightful judge, 
 
 Portia. — And you must cut this flesh from off his 
 breast: 
 The law allows it and the court awards it. 
 Shylock. — Most learned judge I A sentence ! Come^ 
 prepare! 
 
 In the first line, I should not empha- 
 size merchant's; nor in the fourth line, 
 flesh. Judge I should not emphasize 
 in either instance ; all the emphasis 
 should go to the adjectives. 
 
 Portia. — i. Tarry a little : There is so?nething else, 
 
 2. This bond — doth give thee here — no jot 
 
 of blood; 
 
 3. The words expressly are 3. pound oi flesh : 
 
 4. Then take thy bond ; take thou thy 
 
 pou7id oi flesh ; 
 
 5. But, in the cutting it if thou dost shed 
 
 6. One drop of Christian bloody thy lands and 
 
 7. Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate 
 
 8. Unto the state of Venice. 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 155 
 
 In a foot-note our author says : 
 '* This passage to be read very slowly 
 and deliberately/' Herein I think his 
 dramatic instinct is greatly at fault. 
 Read as he advises, the speech would 
 not produce half its possible effect. 
 Nor would it produce half its possible 
 effect emphasized as he emphasizes it ; 
 It would be wholly wanting In climax, 
 which it is far from wanting If the last 
 two lines are properly spoken. 
 
 Neither little nor something In the 
 first line should have any emphasis 
 whatever ; all the words but tarry and 
 else should be gone over quite trip- 
 pingly. Then the first six words of 
 the second line should be spoken In 
 like manner, a pause being made after 
 them of sufficient length to enable the 
 reader to take a full, deep breath, 
 which should be mainly expended on 
 the word blood — the turning point in 
 Shylock's fortunes. In the fourth line, 
 
156 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 I should emphasize take In both clauses 
 very strongly, but should not empha- 
 size pound. In the fifth line, I should 
 ignore the first comma, since observ- 
 ing it retards the movement necessary 
 to produce the effect the speech should, 
 and always will, produce if properly 
 handled. Shed^ one and Christian 
 should not be emphasized. Emphasiz- 
 ing these words takes from the snap, 
 the movement, the earnestness — in a 
 word from the naturalness — of the de- 
 livery, which always has been, and for- 
 evermore will be, the only legitimate 
 thing to consider in making one*s elo- 
 cution effective. But it is in the last 
 two lines that our author's reading of 
 this speech is singularly weak. He 
 leaves unmarked the two most em- 
 phatic words in the whole eight lines, 
 the two words that the skillful Portia 
 specially depends on for her climax, 
 and for the round of applause that she 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 157 
 
 IS sure to get — confiscate and state. 
 To emphasize laws in the seventh line 
 would be to suggest a meaning not in- 
 tended. The whole clause should be 
 tripped over lightly. Before and after 
 the word confiscate, the reader should 
 take a full breath ; the first he should 
 expend on confiscate, the second almost 
 wholly on state. It matters little 
 whether the last two words are heard 
 or not. Here is the way I should 
 mark the speech : 
 
 Tarry a little; there is something else. 
 This bond doth give thee here — no jot of blood. 
 The words expressly are — 2i pound oi flesh. 
 Then take thy bond ; take thou thy pound oi fleshy 
 But in the cutting 'w, if thou dost shed 
 One drop of Christian bloody thy lands diud goods 
 Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate — 
 Unto the state of Venice. 
 GrATIANO. — O upright judge I Mark, Jew \ A learn/a 
 
 To emphasize so much is to empha- 
 size nothing at all. To my thinking, 
 
1 5 8 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 upright, marky and learnM are the 
 only emphatic words. 
 
 Shylock. — Is that the law? 
 
 Portia. — Thyself sYidM see the act. 
 
 For, as thou nrgest justice, be assured 
 Thou shalt have justice, more than thou 
 desirest, 
 
 I should ignore the comma after y^r, 
 should emphasize urgest, should trip 
 lightly over assured^ and should not 
 emphasize justice in the third line. 
 Urge and have seem to me to stand in 
 direct contradistinction. 
 
 Gratiano. — learned judge ! Mark, ]gw\ A learned 
 judge ! 
 
 Three words only should I empha- 
 size in this line — learnid, marky and 
 learned, 
 
 Shylock. — I take his offer, then ; pay the bond thrice. 
 
 And let the Christian go, 
 Bassanio. — Here is the money, 
 
 I should certainly not emphasize 
 bondy nor should I mark anything in 
 Bassanio's speech for emphasis. 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 
 
 159 
 
 P0RTlA,--5'^/if/ 
 
 The Jew shall h.2i^^ all justice ; soft! no haste ! 
 He shall have nothing but ihQ penalty » 
 
 Nothingy not but, is the word to em- 
 phasize in this last line. Indeed noth- 
 ing is the most emphatic word in the 
 speech. 
 
 Gratiano. — O Jew! an upright judge! a learned 
 judge I 
 
 The two adjectives seem to me to be 
 the only words that should be made at 
 all emphatic. 
 
l6o THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 XII. 
 
 Incorrect emphasis always preverts the sense, and 
 to the hearer it is like directing a traveler in the 
 wrong road. — Bronson. 
 
 Portia. — 
 
 1. Therefore, /r^/^r^ thee to cut off the flesh, 
 
 2. ShedX\io}x no blood; nor cut thou less nor morcy 
 
 3. ^Viljust z. pound oi flesh. If thou tak'st more 
 
 4. Or less than z. just pound — be it but so much 
 
 5. As make it light or heavy ^ in the substance^ 
 
 6. On the division of the twentieth part 
 
 7. Of one poor scruple ; nay, if the scale do turn 
 
 8. But in the estimation of a hair — 
 
 9. Thou diest and all thy goods are confiscate. 
 
 If I were to mark any word in the 
 first line of this speech for emphasis, it 
 would be the first. The words our 
 author marks should not, it seems to 
 me, be made at all emphatic. The ef- 
 fect of the comma after therefore em- 
 phasizes it sufficiently, which was 
 doubtless our author's thought when 
 he left it unitalicized. 
 
OF ELOCUTION. i6i 
 
 In the second line I should empha- 
 size only three words — blood, less, and 
 more. The emphasizing of shed and 
 cut seems to me utterly indefensible. 
 Here, it seems to me, is as good an 
 example as we could well have of that 
 unreasonable, trip-hammer delivery 
 that has brought the very name of 
 elocution into disfavor. To read after 
 this fashion, a modicum of intelligence 
 and a pair of stilts for the voice are 
 the sum of all that is required. 
 
 In the third line, in addition to the 
 words italicized, I should emphasize 
 fieshy and that, too, much more strong- 
 ly than any other word in the line. The 
 reason: Shakespeare, I take it, with 
 the words, *' But just a pound of flesh,'* 
 imposes on Portia the task of making 
 supremely prominent a very important 
 fact that does not appear in the naked 
 words, namely, the fact that this pound 
 of flesh must be made up of flesh only 
 
l62 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 — no blood, no bone, nothing but flesh. 
 This is the letter of the bond; the 
 spirit of the bond, it is conceded, Portia 
 studiously ignores. Now this thought, 
 which adds greatly to the import and 
 effectiveness of the half dozen words, 
 can only be brought out by a peculiar 
 and very strong emphasis oxi flesh. 
 
 In the fourth line, I should not em- 
 phasize y/^i*/, so or mucky but I should 
 emphasize potmd. The word justy it 
 will be perceived, can be dispensed 
 with without any loss to the thought 
 or to the effect. 
 
 The most emphatic word in the fifth, 
 sixth, and seventh lines is divisiofiy 
 which, it would seem, our author would 
 not have us emphasize. The thought, 
 if I do not err, is this: '' Makes it eith- 
 er light or heavy in the whole, or even 
 in apart, of the twentieth of a scruple,*' 
 which appears only when division is 
 strongly emphasized. 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 1 63 
 
 In the seventh and eighth lines, I 
 should not emphasize scale, turfiy but or 
 estimation; pooVy however, I should 
 emphasize as strongly as the words be- 
 fore and after it. 
 
 There might be something in the 
 context that would justify the em- 
 phasis on all in the ninth line; as it is, 
 however, the emphatic word is goods. 
 
 GrATIANO. — A second Daniel! A Daniel y Jew ! 
 NoWy injidely I have thee on the hip. 
 
 In the first line, I should emphasize 
 neither second nor Jew. If Gratiano, in 
 the second line, would intimate that 
 the Jew has had his opponents on the 
 hip, which I think is the traditional 
 rendering, he should not emphasize 
 hip; if this be not his thought, he 
 should trip over thee and emphasize 
 hip. In neither case, should both words 
 be emphasized. If Gratiano would 
 taunt Shylock with being an infidel, 
 
164 T^^ ESSENTIALS 
 
 the word infidel s\io\}\di be emphasized, 
 not otherwise. 
 
 Portia.— Why doth the Jew pause ? Take l\iy for- 
 feiture, 
 Shylock. — Give me my principal ?ind let me go. 
 Bassanio. — I have it ready for thee. Here it is. 
 Portia. — He hath refused it in the open court. 
 
 He shall have merely justice ^ and his dond, 
 Gratiano. — A Daniely still say I ; a second Daniel! 
 
 I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word, 
 Shylock. — Shall I not have barely m.y principal? 
 Portia. — Thou shalt have nothinghut the forfeiture. 
 
 To be so taken at thy perils Jew. 
 Shylock. — Why then, the Devil give him good oi it! 
 
 I'll stay no longer question. 
 
 My marking of these eight speeches 
 would not differ materially from that 
 of our author. Why in the first speech, 
 that and word in the fifth, and good 
 in the last I should, probably, have 
 left unmarked. In marking the em- 
 phatic words of prose or verse, it is 
 better to err on the side of marking 
 too few words than on the side of too 
 many. I am by no means sure, for 
 example, that as devil, in the last 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 165 
 
 speech, is so very much more emphatic 
 than any other word in the speech, 
 the italicizing of the one word would 
 not suffice. 
 
 Portia. 
 
 1. Tarry ^ Jew: 
 
 2. The law hathyef another hold on you. 
 
 3. It is enacted in the laws of Venice^ 
 
 4. If it be proved against an alien, 
 
 5. That by direct or indirect attempts, 
 
 6. He seek the life of any citizen. 
 
 7. The party ^ 'gainst the which he doth contrive^ 
 
 8. Shall j^/^^ one ^fl!//^ his ^<7^^j.' the other half 
 
 9. Comes to the privy coffer of the state; 
 to. And the offender's life lies in the mercy 
 
 11. Of the Duke only 'gainst all other voice, 
 
 12. In VfYiich. predicament y I say, thou stand st, 
 
 13. For it appears, by manifest proceeding, 
 
 14. That, indirectly, and directly too, 
 
 15. Thou hast contrived 2i^2L.inst the very life 
 
 16. Of the defendant, and thou hast incurred 
 
 17. The danger formerly by me rehearsed; 
 
 18. Down, therefore, and beg mercy of the Duke, 
 
 In this speech our author empha- 
 sizes fifty words. I should emphasize 
 only thirty-two, twenty-nine that he 
 emphasizes and three that he does 
 not emphasize — 'gainst and which^ 
 
1 66 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 in the seventh line, and formerly, in 
 the seventeenth. I, then, so far as 
 emphasis is concerned, should read the 
 speech essentially thus : 
 
 1. Tarry ^ Jew: 
 
 2. The law hath yet another hold on you. 
 
 3. It is enacted in the lazus of Venice, 
 
 4. If it be proved against an alien, 
 
 5. That by direct or indirect attempts, 
 
 6. He seek the life of any citizen^ 
 
 7. The party Against the which he doth contrive, 
 
 8. Shall seize one half 'his goods : the other half 
 
 9. Comes to to the privy coffer of the state ; 
 
 10. And the offender's life lies in the mercy 
 
 11. Of the Duke only, 'gainst all other voice, 
 
 12. In which predicament, I say, thou stand* st, 
 
 13. For it appears, by manifest proceeding, 
 
 14. That indirectly and directly too, 
 
 15. Thou hast contrived against the very life 
 
 16. Of the defendant, and thou hast incurred 
 
 17. The didLVigQ^r formerly by me rehearsed; 
 
 18. Down, therefore, and beg mercy of the Duk^, 
 
 There is a point of law in this 
 speech, which none of the many Por- 
 tias I have seen seemed to see. Not 
 even Miss Terry, whom I have seen 
 three times in the part, seems to see 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 167 
 
 It. If she does see it, she, like the 
 others, fails to make it appear, which, 
 at the least is very good evidence that 
 she does not see it. If we look at the 
 language at all closely, it readily ap- 
 pears that under the Venetian law it 
 was one thing if an alien sought the 
 life of an alien, or a citizen sought the 
 life of a citizen, and quite another 
 thing if an alien sought the life of a 
 citizen. Here, as ever, if one would 
 read well, the first condition is to 
 know what the language means. 
 
 It will be seen that in the seventh 
 line, our author emphasizes party and 
 that I do not. The thought is brought 
 out, not by emphasizing the noun, but 
 by emphasizing the qualifying, limit- 
 ing, adjectival clause that follows it. 
 Would anyone think of emphasizing 
 the noun, if we resolve the limiting 
 clause into one word thus : The en- 
 dangered, or threatened party; or say, 
 
l68 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 the party threatened? It is really 
 thoughts that we emphasize, not 
 words ; and when a clause expresses 
 an emphatic thought, a thought 
 that perhaps might be expressed with 
 a single word, the stress is about 
 equal on the principal words, the last 
 word, usually, if we are true to nature, 
 being made slightly the most promi- 
 nent. In the reading, /^r/jj/ becomes 
 quite prominent, not however because 
 we emphasize it, but because of the 
 rhetorical pause that naturally follows 
 it. Our author's comma should not be 
 there ; we should not separate nouns 
 from words or clauses that limit or 
 qualify them. The pause after party 
 is purely rhetorical. 
 
 Students of the art of reading will, 
 I think, find it interesting, and per- 
 haps profitable, to study this speech 
 carefully. Though they may not 
 agree with either Canon Fleming, or 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 1 69 
 
 with me, a careful study of the speech 
 should tend to convince them, if not 
 already convinced, that to read well 
 one must do more than simply famil- 
 iarize one*s-self with the words. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 If we would read well, we must learn how. — Canon 
 Fleming. 
 
 There are those who think elocution worthless, be- 
 cause they have not studied it ; and they will not 
 study it, because they think it worthless. — Alfred 
 Ayres. 
 
 Our English author continues thus : 
 
 Duke. — That thou shalt see the difference oi ours-^ixiX. 
 \ pardon thee thy life before thou ask it. 
 For half thy wealth, it is Antonio's ; 
 The other half corals to ih^ general sia^tQ 
 Which humbleness may drive into a fine. 
 
 In the marking of this speech, our 
 author does not appear at his best. 
 Why emphasize our ? There is no 
 question of difference between any but 
 the Duke and the Jew. The thought 
 
1 70 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 being the difference between us, we 
 have only to emphasize difference and 
 spirit to bring it out. 
 
 In the second line, I see but two em- 
 phatic words — life and ask. 
 
 In the third line, I should emphasize 
 wealth and Anto7iids, If a discussion as 
 to what should be done with Shylock's 
 fortune had taken place and this were 
 the resulting decision, our author's em- 
 phasis would be correct. Portia simply 
 tells what the law is ; no discussion is 
 even suggested. 
 
 Why emphasize ^^;^^r^/ in the fourth 
 line ? There is no question anywhere 
 of any private state. Indeed, general 
 adds nothing to the thought ; it's used 
 only to pad out the line. Being used, 
 it may be said to coalesce with state in 
 expressing what state would fully ex- 
 press unaided, and thus come in for a 
 sort of subordinate emphasis ; the 
 strong emphasis properly goes to the 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 1 71 
 
 noun. I see no reason for emphasizing 
 half. 
 
 If the Duke means to say in the last 
 line, Which humbleness mayy possibly, 
 which I think he does, then mayy by a 
 good deal, is probably the most em- 
 phatic word in the whole speech. I 
 should italicize y?;^^. 
 
 Portia. — Ay, for the state; not for Antonio. 
 
 In the last clause, Antonio, if I do 
 not err, is the word to emphasize. 
 
 Shylock. — Nay, take my life and all; pardon not 
 that : 
 You take my house when you do take the prop 
 That doth sustain my house ; you take my life 
 When you do take the means whereby I live. 
 
 The emphasis on take, in the first 
 line, is indefensible. If the Duke had 
 said Shylock^s life should be taken, 
 Shylock could say, for example. Very 
 well, proceed, take my life. As it is, 
 Shylock virtually says this : If you 
 take my goods, take my life and all. 
 
1 72 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 I should mark the last words of the 
 last line thus : means — whereby — I- — live. 
 
 It is more difficult to realize the pos- 
 sibilities of this speech than it is to 
 realize the possibilities of any other 
 speech in the whole play. It is doubt- 
 ful whether four lines could be found 
 anywhere that are susceptible of being 
 made more pathetic. 
 
 Portia. — What mercy can you render him, Antonio ? 
 Gratiano. — A halter gratis ; nothing else^ for 
 Heaven^ s sake. 
 
 I can see no reason for emphasizing 
 either mercy or nothing. 
 
 Antonio. — 
 
 1. So please my lord the Duke and all the courts 
 
 2. To quit the fine for one- half oi his goods, 
 
 3. I am content, so he will let me have 
 
 4. The other half in use, to render it, 
 
 5. Upon his death unto the gentleman 
 
 6. Th.dillSiX.Qly stole his daughter ; 
 
 7. And that he do record a gift, 
 
 8. Here int he court, of all he dies possessed 
 
 9. Unto his son, Lorenzo, and his daughter. 
 
 True, the Duke is a part of the 
 
OF ELOCUTION. 1 73 
 
 court; but that hardly justifies the 
 author's reading. The language means 
 no more than : If it please the Duke 
 and the court, hence court and not all 
 is the word to emphasize. 
 
 I should mark no word for emphasis 
 in the second line, but in reading the 
 line I should always take out one and 
 of, since with them the line is prose, 
 while without them its rhythm is per- 
 fect. Neither thought nor idiom suffers 
 by the omission. 
 
 Half, in the fourth line ; stole, in the 
 sixth, and record, in the seventh, are 
 words I should not emphasize. If I 
 fully understand what Antonio would 
 say, the adverbial clause. Here in the 
 court, must be emphasized in order to 
 make him say it. 
 
 Duke. — He shall do this, or else I do recant 
 The J>ari/on that I late fronounc/d here. 
 
 Were I to mark this speech for em- 
 
174 THE ESSENTIALS 
 
 phasis, I should mark only one word — 
 the first do. 
 
 Portia. — Art thou contented^ Jew ? * What dost thou 
 
 say ? 
 S H YLOCK. — I-^am — content, 
 Portia. — Clerk, draw a deed of gift. 
 Shylock. — I pray you, give me leave to go from 
 hence ; 
 I am not well. Send the deed after me 
 And I will sign it. 
 Duke. — Get thee ^^one^ but do it. 
 
 The wAai in Portia^s speech is not 
 emphatic ; nor does the leave in Shy- 
 lock's speech seem to me to be em- 
 phatic. I should read : I am — noi — 
 well. Then, I should emphasize qfler, 
 sign, and do. 
 
 This is as far as Canon Fleming 
 goes in *' The Merchant of Venice/* 
 and here I reluctantly take leave of 
 him. 
 
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