Bastard. Ha! I'll tell thee what;
Thou'rt damn'd as black—nay, nothing is so black;
Thou art more deep damn'd than Prince Lucifer:
There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell
As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child.
I fancy that Shakespeare had a fine voice. If he had not, it is quite certain that he had the highest estimate and appreciation of the voice as the organ of the soul. His creative spirit, too, attracted to itself the most effective vocabulary for the vocal expression of every kind of passion—the most effective by reason of their monosyllabic or their polysyllabic character, of their vowel or their consonantal elements. To him, language was for the ear, not for the eye. The written word was to him what it was to Socrates, 'the mere image or phantom of the living and animated word.' ([Note 8.])
The art of printing has caused language to be overmuch transferred from its true domain, the sense of hearing, to the sense of sight. The lofty idealized language of poetry is known, in these days, chiefly through the eye, and its true power is consequently quiescent for the generality of silent readers. In silent reading, an appreciation of matter and form must be largely due to an imaginative transference to the ear of what is taken in by the eye.
THE impression seems to be getting stronger and stronger, in these days of excessive teaching and excessive learning, that no one can do anything or learn anything without being taught,—without 'taking a regular course,' as the phrase is. This seems to be especially true in the matter of vocal cultivation. People go to schools of oratory with nothing within themselves which is clamorous for expression; not even a very 'still small voice' urging them to express something. Many who desire, or think they do, to be readers, as there are many who desire, or think they do, to be artists, evidently believe that if they be trained in technique they can be readers or artists.
But suppose some one is impelled to cultivate vocal power because of his desire to express what he has sympathetically and lovingly assimilated, of a work of genius: if he endeavor to give an honest expression, so far as in him lies, to what he feels, and avoid trying to express what he does not feel, and if he persevere in his endeavor, with always a coefficient ideal back of his reading, he may—in time, he certainly will—become a better reader than another could if he should set out, with malice prepense, to be an elocutionist, and with that malicious purpose, were to employ a mere voice-trainer who should teach him to perpetrate all sorts of vocal extravagances, to make faces, and to gesticulate when reading what does not need any gesture. Such an one, after passing out of the hands of his trainer, is most likely to go forth and afflict the public with his performances, which will be wholly a pitiable exhibition of himself.
Some of the best readers I have ever known have been of the former class, who honestly voiced what they had sympathetically assimilated, and did not strain after effect. But it seems that when one sets out to read, with no interior capital, he or she, especially she, is apt to run into all kinds of extravagances which disgust people of culture and taste. The voice, instead of being the organ of the soul, is the betrayer of soullessness.
Without that interior life which can respond to the indefinite life of a work of genius (indefinite, that is, to the intellect), a trained voice can do nothing of itself in the way of real interpretation. It may bring out the definite articulating thought, in a way, but the electric aura in which the thought should be enveloped, will be wanting; and where this is wanting, in the expression of spiritualized thought, the true object of reading is but imperfectly realized. What can be got through the eye, it is not the main function of the voice to deliver. There must be the requisite 'drift' and choral intonation—drift, the air, the pervading, ruling spirit, 'the dominant's persistence,' the prevailing tone color.
I am pleased to quote, in this connection, what Professor Edward Dowden writes in his article on 'The teaching of English literature,' contained in his recent volume, 'New Studies in Literature': 'Few persons nowadays seem to feel how powerful an instrument of culture may be found in modest, intelligent, and sympathetic reading aloud. The reciter and the elocutionist of late have done much to rob us of this which is one of the finest of the fine arts. A mongrel something which, at least with the inferior adepts, is neither good reading nor yet veritable acting, but which sets agape the half-educated with the wonder of its airs and attitudinizing, its pseudo-heroics and pseudo-pathos, has usurped the place of the true art of reading aloud, and has made the word "recitation" a terror to quiet folk who are content with intelligence and refinement. Happily in their behalf the great sense-carrier to the Empire, Mr. Punch, has at length seen it right to intervene. ([Note 9.]) The reading which we should desire to cultivate is intelligent reading, that is, it should express the meaning of each passage clearly; sympathetic reading, that is, it should convey the feeling delicately; musical reading, that is, it should move in accord with the melody and harmony of what is read, be it in verse or prose.'
A training of the organs of speech which brings them into complete obedience to the will and the feelings, and a perfect technique, important and indispensable as they are, cannot, of themselves, avail much in the interpretation of spiritualized thought. This must be mainly the result of such education as induces an inward preparedness for responding to and assimilating the essential life of a work of genius. Quicquid recipitur, recipitur ad modum recipientis (whatever is received, is received according to the measure of the recipient). And it is, or should be, the leading object of literary education to enlarge the spiritual measure of the recipient.