The Art of the Story-Teller

by Marie L. Shedlock

I would advise all teachers to revise their stories with a view to introducing the judicious pause, and to vary its use according to the age, the number, and, above all, the mood of the audience. Experience alone can insure success in this matter. It has taken me many years to realize the importance of this artifice.

Among other means for holding the attention of the audience and helping to bring out the points of the story is the use of gesture. I consider, however, that it must be a sparing use, and not of a broad or definite character. We shall never improve on the advice given by Hamlet to the actors on this subject: "See that ye o'erstep not the modesty of Nature."

And yet, perhaps it is not necessary to warn story-tellers against abuse of gesture. It is more helpful to encourage them in the use of it, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, where we are fearful of expressing ourselves in this way, and when we do the gesture often lacks subtlety. The Anglo-Saxon, when he does move at all, moves in solid blocks —a whole arm, a whole leg, the whole body—but if one watches a Frenchman or an Italian in conversation, one suddenly realizes how varied and subtle are the things which can be suggested by the mere turn of the wrist or the movement of a finger. The power of the hand has been so wonderfully summed up in a passage from Quintillian that I am justified in offering it to all those who wish to realize what can be done by a gesture:

"As to the hands, without the aid of which all delivery would be deficient and weak, it can scarcely be told of what a variety of motions they are susceptible, since they almost equal in expression the power of language itself. For other parts of the body assist the speaker, but these, I may almost say, speak themselves. With our hands we ask, promise, call persons to us and send them away, threaten, supplicate, intimate dislike or fear; with out hands we signify joy, grief, doubt, acknowledgement, penitence, and indicate measure, quantity, number and time. Have not our hands the power of inciting, of restraining, or beseeching, of testifying approbation? . . . So that amidst the great diversity of tongues pervading all nations and people, the language of the hands appears to be a language common to all men."[14]

One of the most effective of artifices in telling stories to young children is the use of mimicry—the imitation of animals' voices and sound in general is of never-ending joy to the listeners. However, I should wish to introduce a note of grave warning in connection with this subject. This special artifice can only be used by such narrators as have special aptitude and gifts in this direction. There are many people with good imaginative power but who are wholly lacking in the power of mimicry, and their efforts in this direction, however painstaking, remain grotesque and therefore ineffective. When listening to such performances, of which children are strangely critical, one is reminded of the French story in which the amateur animal painter is showing her picture to an undiscriminating friend:

"Ah!" says the friend, "this is surely meant for a lion?"

"No," says the artist (?), with some slight show of temper, "it is my little lap-dog."

Another artifice which is particularly successful with very small children is to insure their attention by inviting their coö peration before one actually begins the story. The following has proved quite effective as a short introduction to my stories when I was addressing large audiences of children:

"Do you know that last night I had a very strange dream, which I am going to tell you before I begin the stories? I dreamed that I was walking along the streets of —— [here would follow the town in which I happened to be speaking], with a large bundle on my shoulders, and this bundle was full of stories which I had been collecting all over the world in different countries; and I was shouting at the top of my voice: 'Stories! Stories! Stories! Who will listen to my stories?' And the children came flocking round me in my dream, saying: 'Tell us your stories. We will listen to your stories.' So I pulled out a story from my big bundle and I began in a most excited way, "Once upon a time there lived a King and a Queen who had no children, and they——' Here a little boy, very much like that little boy I see sitting in the front row, stopped me, saying: 'Oh, I know that old story: it's Sleeping Beauty.'

"So I pulled out a second story, and began: 'Once upon a time there was a little girl who was sent by her mother to visit her grandmother ——' Then a little girl, so much like the one sitting at the end of the second row, said: 'Oh! everybody knows that story! It's——'"