By the Ven. Archdeacon Diggle, M.A.
Reading aloud is more commonly regarded as an accomplishment than an art. In truth, it is both. It is an art in that it cannot be left to its own guidance, but requires both an acquaintance with rules and familiarity with their practice to bring it to perfection. It is an accomplishment in that it is a means of completing our equipment for happy social life. Good reading yields not only profit but pleasure to others. It is one means of throwing brightness into home-life to gather the children together and read really well to them. And what a sweet delight it is in the ward of a hospital, or among the inmates of a workhouse, or by the bedside of some dearly loved invalid, to be able, by reading in soft, gentle, refreshing tones, to charm away the monotony and the weariness, perhaps for awhile to relieve even the pain, of the lonely and the suffering! We might shed sunshine into the darkness of many a life if, instead of spending our leisure hours in ennui on ourselves, we devoted them to reading aloud to others.
Reading aloud is good for ourselves both physically and morally. It is good morally, for if we never read anything unfit for reading aloud we shall not be likely to read anything morally deteriorating. And physically, reading aloud is a benignant exercise. It widens the chest, opens the lungs, strengthens the throat, and does good to all the breathing organs. It is a mistake to suppose that using the voice weakens it. Abuse or misuse of the vocal organs, as of any other organs, injures them; but by proper use and exercise they are strengthened and improved. Speakers and preachers have bad throats not because they use their throat too much, but because they use it badly. They force and torment it, instead of training it to natural action and giving it free, full play. And who shall blame them? At school they were taught to spell and mind their stops; but how to breathe and manage the voice when reading, they probably were not taught a single rule. In many instances teachers themselves are wholly ignorant of the art and therefore incapable of teaching it. And so it comes to pass that, unless either outward circumstance or innate common-sense turn our attention in later life to the management of the vocal organs, we never learn to read aloud without weariness and with pleasure. It is mainly through lack of early training that, of all useful and delightful accomplishments, the art of reading aloud is one of the least practised and most rare.
(Photo: Russell and Sons, Baker Street, W.)
ARCHDEACON DIGGLE.
Yet it is an art which, in some degree, may be acquired by the majority of people; very many could, by a little training and perseverance, even excel in it. Of course, the art admits of many degrees of excellence. But without reaching the splendid summits of the art, attainable only by the highly gifted few, ordinary persons may learn to read sufficiently well to gratify both themselves and others, if they will take pains to learn and practise a few simple rules.
The first requirement is to master the physics of the art: to learn to breathe in through the nostrils and out through the mouth, never to speak on an inflowing breath, quickly to fill the lungs and slowly to empty them, never to gasp or strain after sound, not to attempt the higher notes until the lower have been completely mastered, to rely more on the lower than the higher notes, to teach the lips and front portion of the mouth to do their fair share of work equally with the larynx and the vocal cords. A moustache is an impediment to easy and distinct reading. It hinders the air from passing in free, full flow up the nostrils, and it troubles the waves of sound as they issue from the mouth; causing indistinctness, more or less flat and thick, in enunciation.
Clearness of enunciation ranks next in importance after easy, natural, flexible production of voice, and largely depends on it, for there can be no clear, crisp, distinct enunciation of words, unless the tools by which words are made, viz. the organs of voice, are kept sharp and well burnished. Moreover, for the attainment of limpid and finely articulated enunciation careful training is required both in the melody and modulation of sounds.