Vocal Expression: A Class-book of Voice Training and Interpretation

by Katherine Jewell Everts

I shall not discuss the interpretation of these sentences with you. I shall not interpret them for you. Such discussion and interpretation is your part in this study. But you are not to discuss them with a pencil on paper; you are to interpret them with your voice to another mind.

Let us stop here and consider together for a few moments this act which we call Vocal Interpretation (which might be more simply designated as Reading Aloud), and with which these first studies are concerned. What does it mean to vocally interpret a piece of literature—a poem, a play, a bit of prose; a paragraph, a sentence, or even a single word? It means that you, the interpreter, must transfer the thought contained in that word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph from the printed page to the mind of an auditor. It means that you must take the thought out of the safety vault and put it into circulation. That is your problem, and it presents three factors. You cannot slight any one of these factors and expect to successfully solve your problem. These factors are: your author's thought, your own voice, and your auditor's mind.

We shall concern ourselves in this first study with the last of these three factors—the mind of the auditor, or, to put it more definitely, your attitude toward the mind of your auditor. We shall make this our first concern, not because it is more essential to successful delivery than the other two elements of the problem, but because failure at this point is a fundamental failure. Such failure involves the whole structure in ruin.

Let me make this point explicit. Failure of the speaker to direct the thought toward a receiving mind—the mind of an auditor—results in blurred thought, robs the voice of all aim, and reduces the interpretation to a meaningless recital of words. Consider the first factor in the problem of interpretation—the thought of the author. Take these first two sentences:

Do you ask me, then, what is this Puritan principle?

The Puritan principle in its essence is simply individual freedom!

A wholly satisfying interpretation of these lines involves a knowledge of the speech from which they are taken, and a knowledge of the circumstances under which it was delivered. Complete possession of the thought, which alone insures perfect expression, requires a grasp of the situation out of which it was born and an appreciation of the mind which conceived it. But with no context and no knowledge of these conditions, and so only an approximate appreciation of the thought in all its fulness, the interpreter, under the stimulus of an intent to convince another of the truth contained in the detached sentence, may deliver the lines convincingly! And to carry conviction is the first and fundamental requisite of all good delivery.

So it is with the second factor in your problem. Your voice may fail at a dozen different points, but directed thought can employ so skilfully even an inefficient instrument that the resultant expression, while never satisfying, may still carry conviction.

But let the one who speaks these lines feel no responsibility toward another, let him fail to direct the idea toward another mind, and the most complete possession of the author's thought, plus the most perfect control of the voice, will fail to make the interpretation convincing. You must establish a relation with your auditor! You must have an aim. You must "have something to say," but you must also have some one "to say it at." You cannot hope to become an expert marksman by "shooting into the air."

Then once more I bid you approach the subject of Vocal Interpretation in a new spirit. Let your study of the thought in these sentences hold in its initial impulse this idea: "I have something I must tell you!" Try prefacing your interpretation with some such phrase as this: "Listen to me!" or, "I want to tell you something."