The Art of Story-Telling

THE ART OF STORY-TELLING
By MARIE L. SHEDLOCK
WITH A PREFACE BY Professor JOHN ADAMS CHAIR OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1915
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

By Professor John Adams, Chair of Education, University of London .
Those who do not love schoolmasters tell us that the man who can do something supremely well contents himself with doing it, while the man who cannot do it very well must needs set about showing other people how it should be done. The masters in any craft are prone to magnify their gifts by maintaining that the poet—or the stove-pipe maker—is born, not made. Teachers will accordingly be gratified to find in the following pages the work of a lady who is at the same time a brilliant executant and an admirable expositor. Miss Shedlock stands in the very first rank of story-tellers. No one can claim with greater justice that the gift of Scheherazade is hers by birthright. Yet she has recognised that even the highest natural gifts may be well or ill manipulated: that in short the poet, not to speak of the stove-pipe maker, must take a little more trouble than to be merely born.
It is well when the master of a craft begins to take thought and to discover what underlies his method. It does not, of course, happen that every master is able to analyse the processes that secure him success in his art. For after all the expositor has to be born as well as the executant; and it is perhaps one of the main causes of the popularity of the born-not-made theory that so few people are born both good artists and good expositors. Miss Shedlock has had this rare good fortune, as all those who have both read her book and heard her exemplify her principles on the platform will readily admit.
Let no one who lacks the gift of story-telling hope that the following pages will confer it. Like Comenius and like the schoolmaster in Shakespeare, Miss Shedlock is entitled to claim a certain capacity or ingenuity in her pupils, before she can promise effective help. But on the other hand let no successful story-teller form the impression that he has nothing to learn from the exposition here given. The best craftsmen are those who are not only most able but most willing to learn from a fellow master. The most inexperienced story-teller who has the love of the art in his soul will gather a full harvest from Miss Shedlock's teaching, while the most experienced and skilful will not go empty away.