Speak the Speech I Pray You...!

Irish Jesuit Province

Speak the Speech I Pray You...!Review by: Gabriel FallonThe Irish Monthly, Vol. 65, No. 771 (Sep., 1937), pp. 622-629Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20514191 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 22:41

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Irish Jesuit Province is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Irish Monthly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.56 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 22:41:19 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ijp

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20514191?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


622

Sitting at the 1lay.

"Speak the Speech I Pray You...!"

By GABRIEL FALLON.

"sTz EAN'S tones are still ringing in my ears, though a

J'a quarter of a century must have elapsed since I heard

them. Thus wrote George Henry Lew'is, one

of the most honest as well as the most severely critical of critics. C. E. Montague, speaking of the great Coquelin, said: c In his mouth the French dramatic couplet, that stumbling block of English youth, was a thing transfigured.

Not that its own build and movement, so joltsome or

jig-jog to some foreign ears, were disguised. They were revelled in, joyously championed. He practised on the verse a kind of double magic. First he shed over the stiff-seeming lines such colour, diversity, warmth, colloquial quickness, that hearers to .whom these French alexandrines had seemed to fall far short

of human vivacity, half wondered whether perhaps the usw of

rhymed couplets was what human sueech, in its longing for heightened expression at crises of feeling, had really been groping for always till now. How apt a fire they had, in Coquelin's

mouth, to Cyrano's burning love! In the great speech below Roxane's window, clause sprang out of clause and line flowed

into line with a kind of passionate logic; the way every phrase was given made some place in your mind ache to be filled by the next. And yet-other half of the magic-all the metrical and rhythmic structure of Rostand's verse, or of Moliere's, was there.



" SPEALK THE SPEECH I PRAY YOU !F' 628

Its stately march was beaten out, like some steadying and forti fying bass, behind the more free and various melody of the eager Fpoken word . "

Yes, that was how the actor spoke in our fathers' early time. Two things should be noted, firstly the fact that Coquelin's speak ing them made the rhymed couplets seem to be the measure and the tone of human speech, and, secondly, the fact that all the

metrical and rhythmic structure of the verse was there.

Hear now Elsie Fogarty, herself principal of the London Central School of Speech and Drama, describe the speech-craft of the great actor Got. " The actor had stumbled through the scene, an inert mass of rags, never once really showing his face to the audience, till the moment of the challenge came, and the beggar came forward as sponsor for the knight. Amid the roar of the mocking Thanes his name was demanded. There was a long pause, and the shambling figure grew before our eyes to the lofty stature of the actor himself. The face seemed to model itself visibly into the grandeur of a Roman effigy, and then there thundered ouit the terrific alexandrine of his name

' Fre6deric Barberousse, Empereur d'Allemagne.'

A moment or two after, the cowed rebels were listening to what is possibly the longest ' tirade ' in French drama. It lasted, I

was told, some seven minutes as Got delivered it, at full speed, and is little more than a catalogue of names and achievements. From the beginning growing excitement seemed to grip the house. Names, epithets, events formed it great instrumental symphony in our ears, and the thunder of the last line, never loud but always working to a predestined climax, seemed merely to echo in such applause as can only be heard to-day at the end of art operatic mnasterpiece."

What of speech-craft in the theatre to-day? In what round



624 THE IRISH MONTHLY

terms would Hamlet address our players? Ernest Newman, distinguished musician and critic, asks: " Is there any school in England in which actors can be taught, at any rate, some of the rudimeentary differences between prose and poetry, and the elements of the art of casting blank verse lines into a perceptible rhythm without impeding the flow of the sense? Most of them gabble verse as if it were a paragraph from a newspaper."

Said Henry Irving: " The first duty of an actor is to make himself heard." May we add: The second duty of an actor is to learn to 3peak prose clearly and correctly. So many well

meaning beginners try first of all to speak it (as one of them honestly admitted to me) beautifully, forgetting, of course, that if clarity and correctness are sought after and secured, beauty

will take care of herself. To make oneself heard, to speak prose clearly and correctly, may be the work of a lifetime; it will at

least occupy the first twelve years of an actor's apprenticeship. To speak poetry, dramatic poetry, as dramatic poetry should be spoken, calls not only for prolonged and intensive training but

necessitates a special vocation as well.

Ernest Newman is right. In the theatre to-day verse is gabbled as if it vere a paragraph from a newspaper. One of its gabblers, on being asked why he spoke Shakespeare's lines in such a fashion, condescendingly replied that he did so " in order to make them intelligible to the audience ". Villainous, of course, and a most

pitiful ambition in the fool that used it! Hamlet couldn't say more. There is little distinction between the speaking of verse and prose in the theatre to-day. There is no distinction about speech in the theatre to-day. Sometimes a poor audience thanks

Heaven if even there be distinctness. * * *

Where does the fault lie? To a great extent the theatre itself



"SPEAK THE SPEECH I PRAY YOU ! 625

is to blame. It was not for nothing that actors of the old school called the members of the Moscow Art Theatre Company " the whisperers ". Stanislavsky's pupils were the forerunners of the "c naturalistic " actors of to-day. They did not "; play to the public" but lived the lives of their characters as if behind a fourth wall. And despite those expressive silences and movements, despite the acting ensemble or team-work which Stanislavsky's methods helped to emphasise, the loss sustained in "6 theatri cality "and im speech-craft was almost irreparable. The success of the Moscow Art Theatre Company gave the impetus to those battalions of young actors who ever since have been troubling the world with weak reproductions of their own inner selves in theatres which are conveniently called " intimate " simply because they have been reduced to the size of large rooms to suit the weakness of the system. Far, very far indeed, is all this

;intimacy and whispering and gabbling from the theatre of the Greeks where audiences of thirty thousand (according to Plato) democratically insisted (like our gallery-ites of yesteryear) on hearing every word spoken by the actors. In such a theatre acting, as we understand it-even as Kean or Coquelin or Got

understoo4 it-was impossible. Nevertheless, the exercise of standing on stilts and bellowing through a hole in a bronze mask is to be commended. It would help to cure or kill much of our

modern slovenliness in speech. Unfortunately most of the anti-naturalistic movements moved

to an extreme. The French Symbolists began with good inten tions but ended by contendinig foolishness. Nevertheless, to one

who was soul-weary of naturalism in the theatre the manifesto written by Pierre Quillard (Revue d'Art Dramatique, 1891) must have brought more than a little balm. " Let them (the actors) wear old frock-coats-and they will remain kings if Aeschylus or Shakespeare has created them, and the purple which is absent




from their shoulders will no longer be lacking when they speak their lines. A whole universe unfolds around them with greater griefs and more magnificence than of that in which ve live-and the ridiculous canvas scenery becomes for the spectators the dream-like architecture which it has pleased the poet to suggest to themn. The spoken word creates the de'cor as it does all else."

The most determined, and, at the same time, the most sensible attack on the naturalistic theatre came from the theories and practice of Georg Fuchs, whose opinions may be found in his

book, Die Bevolution des Theaters, published in 1909. Fuchs

strenuously opposed " nmonkey-like "imitations of everyday life in acting. He wrote:

, Trhe more often one goes to the modern

theatre the stronger the feeling assails one: it won't be very long before there is not a single actor who can speak German dramatic verse properly on the stage. Trhe task of an actor in inodern plays is to smoke, spit, cough, blow his nose, snuffle, belch, and to mouth revolting or commonplace gibberish. Such action destroys the creative art of the actor which is essential for the genuine draiia. A sharp division must at least be. made betwreen dramatic art in the real sense, and literary, novelistic, -sthetic, lyrical, and dialogised psychology."'

As usuial, truith lies in the nmiddle way. The theatre is not life, nor is its concern with " nionkey-like " imitations of it. It did not begin with Noel Coward, nor will it end with George Shiels. For two thousand five hundred years it has endured through ages of indifference and hostility, through periods of splendour anrd misuse. It maya not hav-e yet seen middle age. Speech is not

everything in the theatre, buit speech in the theatre is an all

important thing. U-rntil plays come to be written in scenery, expressed in lights, or offered in variations of movement and facial expression, speech-craft will remain the nmost essential skilfulness in the actorts art. Kean and Coquelin alnd Got were



" SPEAK THE SPEECH I PRAY YOU !" 627

actors who were artists, and our mutterers and gabblers of to-day are young people whom the theatre could well do without.

* * *

To what extent does the fault lie outside the theatre? I have interrupted the writings of these notes in order to turn on the radio, to eavesdrop upon the frontiers of that domain where speech, where sound is everything.. The result has not been

inspiriting.. In a thirty-minute spell of casual listening I have heard (1) a cultured Englishman speak of an " idea-r "; (2) an experienced Irish actor address his companion as " Sir

Hen-e-ry ", and (3) twice-from the home station-I have heard mention of that mysterious country " Aahland ". Now surely it is an unnecessarily laborious mode of speech that carries " idea-rs " and addresseis itself to " Sir Hen-e-ry ". Yet such speech is common, in the theatre and out of it, on the air and off it. As for that strange bourne, "Aahland," we have had news of it ere now. For it is the land where live all the old enemies of Mr. St. John Ervine, the speakers of X; reffatted " speech, the haunt of" Si-uperior people, who sit and sip their " glawses ev wane" and congratulate themselves on an indiscriminate appropriation of the liquid " u ". (I have very distinct recollec tions of being told by one of these " Aahlanders " in a play by

G. B. S., that-in character, of course-my presence was "rawther incongri-uous ".

Now, much of this " refaned " speaking springs from an honest but misdirected intention, from an intention to speak well, to escape " accent." AAvoiding one we know we fly to another

horror we know not of. Said a young pupil-actor to me: " I object strongly to the idea which seems prevalent with some people to-day (unfortunately mostly Irish) that Irish people are unable to speak English without a hearth-side brogue. " A




noble objection surely. But hardly an excuse for " Aahland ". In that excellent booklet, Ulster Speaks, published by the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Rev. W. F. Marshall says: " In between these two classes, the rustic speakers and the educated speakers, there's a third class-the semi-educated-a very worthy class, in many ways, with solid characteristics of its own, to which Ulster owes a great deal of its position in the Empire and the world. Many people in this class are anxious to speak politely, but they won't take the trouble to find out what really polite speech is. Through no fault of their own, they are ignorant of the history of Englisb, and, perhaps more than any others, they scorn our rustic speech. They're verv anxious to avoid sounding countrified, and it's nearly enough for a rustic speaker to pro nounce a word in a certain way to make them believe that that

must be the wrong way. "

Now the foundation on which the good speaking of Fnglish is built is what the Rev. Mr. Marshall calls " rustic " speech, and,

my young actor friend, a " hearth-side brogue." Much harm is done by ignorant teachers who endeavour to tear away that very musical rise and falt of " rustic " speech which is called "accent " and attempt to set in its place all the vileness of "refanement ". One of the best speakers of English in the world to-day is Mr. George Bernard Shaw. He has never forgotten nor has he completely lost-his Dublin accent.

To speak prose clearly and correctly. What are our schools doing? Have they done away with the " reading " lesson of our youth? Page sixty-three, slowly and distinctly, pausing for commas, semi-colons, colons, and full-stops. Holding the book thus, the head thus, deep-breathing, yet at ease. Clear and correct speech is graceful speech. Graceful speech, a necessity on the stage and platform, is a pleasant adornment to everyday life, its cultivation a gentle and essential discipline.



" SPEAK THE SPEECH I PRAY YOU !" 629

'ro speak verse beautifully, to speak it that- it may seem to be the measure and the tone of human speech, to speak it thus while preserving its metrical and rhythmic structure. That is the busi ness of the actor. That was the business of Kean and Coquelin and Got. It is time the actor of to-day learned his business. Else-let the town-crier speak his lines!



Documents

Speak the Speech I Pray You...!