CLIMAX.
Climax, or cumulative emphasis, consists of a series of particulars or emphatic words or sentences, in which each successive particular, word, or sentence rises in force and importance to the last.
INFLECTIONS.
The inflections of the voice, consist of those peculiar slides which it takes in pronouncing syllables, words, or sentences.
There are two of these slides, the upward and the downward. The upward is called the rising inflection, and the downward the falling inflection, and when these are combined it is known as the circumflex.
The rising inflection is used in cases of doubt and uncertainty, or when the sense is incomplete or dependent on something following. The falling inflection is used when the sense is finished and completed, or is independent of anything that follows.
Indirect questions usually require the falling inflection.
Falling inflections give power and emphasis to words. Rising inflections give beauty and variety. Rising inflections may also be emphatic, but their effect is not so great as that of falling inflections.
1.
I am`.
Life is short`.
Eternity is long`.
If they return`.
Forgive us our sins`.
Depart thou`.
2.
What' though the field be lost`?
All` is not` lost`: the unconquerable will`,
And stud`y of revenge`, immor`tal hate`,
And cour`age nev`er to submit` or yield`.
3.
And be thou instruc`ted, oh, Jeru`salem', lest my soul depart` from thee; lest I make thee' des`olate, a land not' inhab`ited.
If the members of a concluding series are not emphatic, they all take the rising inflection except the last, which takes the falling inflection; but if emphatic, they all take the falling inflection except the last but one, which takes the rising inflection.
The dew is dried up', the star is shot', the flight is past', the man forgot`.
He tried each art', reproved each dull delay', allured to brighter worlds' and led the way`.
They will celebrate it with thanksgiving', with festivity' with bonfires', with illuminations`.
He was so young', so intelligent', so generous', so brave so everything', that we are apt to like in a young man`.
My doctrine shall drop as the rain', my speech shall distill as the dew', as the small rain upon the tender herb' and as the showers upon the grass`.
THE CIRCUMFLEX OR WAVE.
The Circumflex is a union of the two inflections, and is of two kinds; viz., the Rising and the Falling Circumflex. The rising circumflex begins with the falling, and ends with the rising inflection; the falling circumflex begins with the rising, and ends with the falling inflection.
Positive assertions of irony, raillery, etc., have the falling circumflex, and all negative assertions of doubled meaning will have the rising. Doubt, pity, contrast, grief, supposition, comparison, irony, implication, sneering, raillery, scorn, reproach, and contempt, are all expressed by the use of the wave of the circumflex. Be sure and get the right feeling and thought, and you will find no difficulty in expressing them properly, if you have mastered the voice. Both these circumflex inflections may be exemplified in the word "so," in a speech of the clown, in Shakespeare's "As You Like It:"
"I knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel; but when the parties were met themselves, one of them thought but of an If; as if you said so, then I said sô. Oh, hô! did you say so*? So they shook hands, and were sworn friends."
The Queen of Denmark, in reproving her son, Hamlet, on account of his conduct towards his step-father, whom she married shortly after the murder of the king, her husband, says to him, "Hamlet, you have your father much offended." To which he replies, with a circumflex on you, "Madam, yô*u have my father much offended." He meant his own father; she his step-father. He would also intimate that she was accessory to his father's murder; and his peculiar reply was like daggers in her soul.
In the following reply of Death to Satan, there is a frequent occurrence of circumflexes, mingled with contempt: "And reckon's thou thyself with spirits of heaven, hell-doomed, and breath'st defiance here, and scorn where I reign king*?—and, to enrage thee more, th*y king and lord!" The voice is circumflexed on heaven, hell-doomed, king, and thy, nearly an octave.