PART FOUR
Oratoric Reading and the Art of Public Speech
Discussion of forceful speech in making history. Value of forceful speech. Practice selections.
HAMLET’S INSTRUCTION TO THE PLAYERS
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,—trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spake my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. Oh! it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters,—to very rags,—to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb show and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.
—Shakespeare.
CHAPTER XIII
ORATORIC READING AND THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEECH
Upon this important subject of public speaking, and the interpretation of the addresses made by others, great men have thus expressed themselves: Dr. Charles W. Eliot, formerly President of Harvard University, says: “Have we not all seen, in recent years, that leading men of business have a great need of a highly trained power of clear and convincing expression? Business men seem to me to need, in speech and writing, all the Roman terseness and the French clearness. That one attainment is sufficient reward for the whole long course of twelve years spent in liberal study.” Abraham Lincoln likewise said: “Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he can not make a speech.”
Every thinker knows what a vital part eloquence plays in national as well as individual welfare. If at first thought effective speaking seems a simple thing and a superficial part of education, on mature thought and consideration it will be found to be one of the most complex, vital and difficult problems that education has to meet. And yet, notwithstanding this complexity of the problem, the teacher is cheered by the delightful assurance of giving the student a consciousness of his latent talents and the ability to reveal and make use of them for the proper influencing of his fellow men.