5. The next step is: Master the tale as form. This means that if the tale is in classic form, not only the message and the structure must be transmitted, but the actual words. Words are the artist's medium, Stevenson includes them in his pattern of style, and how can we exclude them if we wish to express what they have expressed? A tale like Kipling's The Elephant's Child would be ruined without those clinging epithets, such as "the wait-a-bit thorn-bush," "mere-smear nose," "slushy squshy mud-cap," "Bi-Colored-Python-Rock-Snake," and "satiable curtiosity." No one could substitute other words in this tale; for contrasts of feeling and humor are so tied up with the words that other words would fail to tell the real story. If an interjection has seemed an insignificant part of speech, note the vision of tropical setting opened up by the exclamation, "O Bananas! Where did you learn that trick?" This is indeed a tale where the form is the matter, the form and the message are one complete whole that cannot be separated. But it is a proof that where any form is of sufficient perfection to be a classic form, you may give a modified tale by changing it, but you do not give the real complete tale. You cannot tell Andersen's Tin Soldier in your own words; for its sentences, its phrases, its sounds, its suggestive language, its humor, its imagination, its emotion, and its message, are so intricately woven together that you could not duplicate them.
When the fairy tale does not possess a settled classic form, select, as was mentioned, that version in which the language best conveys the life of the story, improving it yourself, if you can, in harmony with the standards of literature, until the day in the future when the tale may be fortunate enough to receive a settled form at the hands of a literary artist. Sometimes a slight change may improve greatly an old tale. In Grimm's Briar Rose[1] the episode of the Prince and the old Man contains irrelevant material. The two paragraphs following, "after the lapse of many years there came a king's son into the country," easily may be re-written to preserve the same unity and simplicity which mark the rest of the tale. This individual retelling of an old tale demands a careful distinction between what is essential and internal and what may have been added, what is accidental and external. The clock-case in The Wolf and Seven Kids evidently is not a part of the original story, which arose before clocks were in use, and is a feature added in some German telling of the tale. It may be retained but it is not essential to the tale that it should be. Exact conversations and bits of dialogue, repetitive phrases, rhymes, concrete words which visualize, brief expressions, and Anglo-Saxon words—these are all bits of detail which need to be mastered in a complete acquirement of the story's form, because these are characteristics of the form which time has settled upon the old tales. Any literary form bestowed upon the tales worthy of the name literature, will have to preserve these essentials.
II. THE PRESENTATION OF THE TALE
In the oral presentation of the tale new elements of the teacher's preparation enter, for here the voice is the medium and the teacher must use the voice as the organist his keys. The aim of the oral presentation is to give the spiritual effect. This requires certain conditions of effectiveness—to speak with distinctness, to give the sense, and to cause to understand; and certain intellectual requirements—to articulate with perfection, to present successive thoughts in clear outline, and to preserve relative values of importance.
The production of the proper effect necessitates placing in the foreground, with full expression, what needs emphasis, and throwing back with monotony or acceleration parts that do not need emphasis. It requires slighting subordinate, unimportant parts, so that one point is made and one total impression given. This results in that flexibility and lightsomeness of the voice, which is one of the most important features in the telling of the tale. The study of technique, when controlled by these principles of vocal expression, is not opposed to the art of story-telling any more than the painter's knowledge of color is opposed to his art of painting. To obtain complete control of the voice as an instrument of the mind, there is necessary: (1) training of the voice; (2) exercises in breathing; (3) a knowledge of gesture; and (4) a power of personality.
(1) Training of the voice. This training aims to secure freedom of tone, purity of tone, fullness of tone, variety of volume, and tone-color. It will include a study of phonetics to give correct pronunciation of sounds and a knowledge of their formation; freeing exercises to produce a jaw which is not set, an open throat, a mobile lip, and nimble tongue; and exercises to get rid of nasality or throatiness. The art of articulation adds to the richness of meaning, it is the connection between sound and sense. Open sounds are in harmony with joy, and very distinct emotional effects are produced by arrangements of consonants. The effect created by the use of the vowels and consonants in The Spider and the Flea has already been referred to under "Setting." The open vowels of "Ón, little Drumikin! Tum-pä, tum-t[=oo]!" help to convey the impression of lightsome gaiety in Lambikin. The effect of power displayed by "Then I'll huff and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in," is made largely by the sound of the consonants ff and the n in the concluding in, the force of the rough u of huff and puff, and the prolonged o in blow. The effect of walking is produced by the p of "Trip, trap," and of varied walking by the change of vowel from [ui] to [ua]. The action of "I have come to gobble you up," is emphasized and made realistic by the bb of gobble and the p of up. Attention to the power of phonics to contribute to the emotional force and to the strength of meaning in the tale, will reveal to the story-teller many new beauties.
(2) Exercises in breathing. Training in breathing includes exercises to secure the regulation of proper breathing during speech and to point out the relation between breathing and voice expression. The correct use of the voice includes also ability to place tone.—Find out your natural tone and tell the story in that tone.—Many of the effects of the voice need to be dealt with from the inside, not externally. The use of the pause in story-telling is one of the subtlest and most important elements that contribute to the final effect. The proper placing of the pause will follow unconsciously as a consequence when the structure of the story is realized in distinct episodes and the proper emphasis given mentally to the most important details of action, while less emphasis in thought is given to subordinate parts. Therefore, the study of the pause must be made, not artificially and externally, but internally through the elements of the story which produce the pause. Tone-color, which is to ordinary speech what melody is to music—those varied effects of intonation, inflection, and modulation—is to be sought, not as a result from an isolated study of technique, but from attention to those elements in association with the complete realization of the life of the story. Genuine feeling is worth more than mere isolated exercises to secure modulation, and complete realization eliminates the necessity of "pretending to be." The study of the fairy tale as literature, as has been indicated in the chapter on "Principles of Selection," will therefore be fundamental to the presentation of the tale. Entering into the motives of the story gives action, entering into the thought gives form, and entering into the feeling gives tone-color to the voice. The sincere desire to share the thought will be the best aid to bring expression.
(3) A knowledge of gesture. The teacher must understand the laws of gesture. The body is one means of the mind's expression. There is the eloquence of gesture and of pose. The simplest laws of gesture may be stated:—
(a) All gesture precedes speech in proportion to the intense realization of emotion.
(b) All expression begins in the face and passes to some other agent of the body in proportion to the quality Of the emotion. The eye leads in pointing.