One of the most delightful ways to spend a social evening, is to devote it to dramatic literature. Invite only guests who read well, or who are really interested listeners, and select a play, or scenes from several plays, and cast the parts among your guests. All jealousy must be put aside, and to-night's Hamlet must condescend to direct Richard to
"Stand by, my lord, and let the coffin pass,"
to-morrow.
After a few meetings, the peculiar talent of each reader will be recognized, and you can select your tragedy hero, comedy hero, queen, chambermaid, and other members of the force, with a view to the display of each one's best powers. Vary the entertainment by reciting monologues and dialogues. A whole play will often be found tiresome; it is best to select several scenes, keeping up the thread of the plot, and introducing the best characters, and leave out what is mere interlude, and dispense with some of the subordinate characters.
Leave one end of the room entirely vacant for the readers. You will find it more interesting to have the readers stand, and use some little motion; the words will flow more easily, the expressions come more forcibly if the appropriate gesture is made. Love scenes will, of course, require delicate handling, and embracing can be easily omitted; neither would I recommend the action of a dueling scene, or a murder, but merely to add gesture enough to give interest to both readers and audience.
You will find some little difficulty from bashfulness, and the "don't like to" people at first, but soon you will discover with delight how many of your friends possess the talent for reading well, and never knew it themselves.
You will do well to take a few lessons in elocution, but you need not fear to read if you have never made the accomplishment a study. With a correct knowledge of your own language, and a love for fine writing, you will soon read well.
Give to every part you undertake, the full effect intended by the writer. Do not throw all your energy, your whole soul, into a leading part at one time, and slight a subordinate character at another. If you have but five words to read, read them as they would be spoken were you the character you represent for the time. To hear a splendidly written, tragic burst of passion read in a weak, whining voice, is no worse than to have a few simple words from a servant's lips delivered with the gesture and emphasis suited to a Medea or Lady Macbeth.
I shall be condemned by many serious and well-judging persons, if I say one word in favor of private theatricals; yet, as it appears to me, there are in these diversions some advantages which are not to be found to excuse the waltz, or the polka, or the ballet, or the hunting field. In private theatricals there is the possibility of some benefit. The study of the finest dramatists, especially of Shakespeare, is not likely to demoralize the mind, or to cool the enthusiasm for what is good. We can scarcely know too well those works which have tended more to form character than any collection of any kind whatsoever.
Shakespeare, Sheridan, Bulwer,—but I cannot go through the list of fine dramatic writers whose works elevate the mind and taste. The plays of Sheridan, Knowles, and Bulwer, are, in most instances, well adapted for private representations—the most exquisite delineations of female character may be found in the dramatic library, and high, pure, manly thoughts, may be traced, line after line, to the same source.