THE PRINCIPLES OF ELOCUTION.

THE PRIMARY VOCAL ELEMENTS.

Every vocal utterance-every syllable, however slight or however freighted with thought or emotion, and whether articulate or inarticulate,—is a composite, made up of four elements, viz.:

1. TIME,

2. FORCE,

3. QUALITY,

4. PITCH.

To these Doctor Rush added,

5. ABRUPTNESS;

which is now considered by most writers on elocution as a special mode of Force.

Reading-good reading, effective reading, interpretative reading, is an art; it does not, as wise Dogberry thought, 'come by nature.' Artistic reading is essentially dependent on the skillful, thoughtful, and sympathetic employment of the above four, or five, elements. Every phrase, every word, every syllable, has some mental, emotional, or rhythmic value of its own, and has some relation to other phrases, words, and syllables; and to express value and relation, it must have a definite kind and degree of time, force, quality, and pitch. These absolute and relative values, when justly expressed in the utterance, constitute good reading; while in bad reading they are distorted and unsymmetrical, or altogether ignored.

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Each of these primary elements has a principal inherent meaning and office. By this it is not meant that each is restricted to one sole meaning; but that, while each helps all the others in their functions, it has one principal, especial office of its own.

TIME.

Time-which comprehends Quantity, Pause, Grouping, and Rhythm, expresses the mind's Measurement, Estimate, or Judgment, of the importance or unimportance of the thought uttered.

Slow Time indicates important or weighty ideas; Moderate Time, the matter-of-fact or commonplace; and Quick Time, the unimportant, trite, subordinate, incidental, repetitious, or collateral.

In narrative and description, Slow Time typifies slow motion, or what moves slowly, and, by analogy, ideas of hugeness, vastness, solemnity, and awe; and Quick Time, rapid motion, or what moves swiftly, whether material or spiritual.

FORCE.

Force is determined by the energy with which the organs of breathing and voice act; and their action, in turn, is regulated by the energy of the mental and emotional conditions. Vocal Force, then, represents and embodies the mind's Energy.

Force is of various forms and degrees:-Abrupt, Smooth; Loud, Soft; Special, Sustained; Impassioned, Suppressed, Moderate, and Subdued.

Stress is a Special Force, applied to the accents of emphatic words, so that the syllable is changed from the normal dynamic form, the equable concrete. It contributes much to the variety and significance of speech.

QUALITY.

Quality timbre, tone-color,-is the vocal element that is essentially and specifically Emotional. Without it, poetry

and eloquence are dumb. Whether the reader, speaker, or actor actually and necessarily experiences at the moment the feeling he portrays, has long been a disputed question, and one not likely ever to be satisfactorily settled.

The artist must have emotion, no doubt of that, and abundance of it; but in the supreme artist, in his happiest mood, is it not rather the raw material-emotional 'stuff'-which, in the joy of work' and by conscious, sympathetic skill, he molds into what immediate form he will?

PITCH.

Pitch-including Inflection and Melody, expressive and inexpressive, represents the mind's Motive, Intention, or Purpose. This may coincide with the literal sense of the words spoken; or it may enhance, qualify, question, or even contradict it.

Thus, inflection and melody often make a request, while the words are a positive command, or vice versa; and it is a fact of daily observation that words of compliment are spoken with an intonation that turns them into disparagement, ridicule, or contempt. So assent, condition, exception, suggestion, ellipsis, warning, reservation, certainty, uncertainty, surmise, etc., are indicated by 'turns of voice', or 'tunes', whose meaning every ear interprets; while only a student now and then, 'by divine ambition moved,' notes and classifies them, with a view to their artistic application.

ABRUPTNESS.

Doctor Rush gave Abruptness a separate place as an element; not only because of its remarkable character in the explosion of radical stress, but especially because it is heard, however delicately, yet distinctly, at the opening of every correctly uttered syllable: as will be more fully set forth under the head of 'The Equable Concrete.' (See p. 178.)

TIME:

QUANTITY, PAUSE, GROUPING, AND RHYTHM.

In the utterance of especially significant thought, vast, weighty, important, we naturally dwell upon the words of emphasis, as the mind dwells upon the ideas they stand for; and the Time is increased, at need, and the emphasis enhanced, by Pause, before, or after, often before and after, such words. By obvious analogy, the solemn, the stately, the sublime, and kindred moods, are voiced in long quantity and deliberate sequence. Important words that cannot be extended in pronunciation are eked out by pauses of silence. Slow action or movement, mental or physical, is stated or described with lingering enunciation, and with correspondingly long pauses between groups and before and after emphatic words. Distance, vagueness, tenuity, are expressed in slight volume, thin quality, and spun-out utterance.

Dash, impetuosity, eagerness, gaiety; celerity of thought, action, or motion,-are vocally pictured by short syllabic quantity, rapid syllabic succession, and pauses accordingly brief.

Plain, unexcited thought is neither slow nor quick; the pauses should be sufficiently marked, but in neither extreme of long or short.

Monotony in the element of Time is one of the commonest and most serious faults of the reader and the speaker. Indeed, mastery of Time is considered as the most difficult, the last, and perhaps the consummate attainment in the art of elocution. Let us, then, deal with it in detail, studying in turn, and then all together, Quantity, Pause, Movement, and Rhythm.