CHAPTER XV.

PERSONATION.

A knowledge of the bounds of personation is of vast importance. Many otherwise fair elocutionists 'o'erstep the modesty of nature' by trying to be several persons at the same time. As rules which must be ob

served, we insert the following:

I.

Personation is not allowed unless the direct speech

of a person is given. In such a sentence as,

"She tore from braids of long black hair

The gems that gleamed like star-light there," etc., you are not allowed to go through a motion indicative of tearing them from your own hair. In the fol owing example, notice the personation does not commence till you arrive at the direct speech. Then raise the hand as if grasping a scepter, and point, at the same time assuming majestic voice.

From Heart of Bruce.

The king sighed slightly, and his eyelids sank:
Later his eyes unclosed: and with strong voice
And hand half raised as if it grasped a scepter,
He spake; "Yon case of silver is a reliquary-
Seal thou therein my heart when dead I lie;
In the Holy Land inter it."

Aubrey De Vere.

In speaking of another's limbs, face, mouth, etc., do not point or refer to your own; e. g.,

2.

From The Two Interpreters.

The father looked, and, with a pang

Of love and strange alarm.

Drew close the little eager child

Within his sheltering arm:

From out the clouds the mother looks

With wistful glance below,

She seems to seek the treasure left

On earth so long ago;

She holds her arms out to her child,

His cradle song she sings:

The last rays of the sunset gleam
Upon her outspread wings.

In vain the bright stars, one by one,

On the blue silence start,

A dreary shadow rests to-night

Upon the father's heart.

Adelaide A. Procter.

Personation is often in place where, although no direct speech is used, the selection is intensely dramatic. This is on account of our sympathy with the situation. We see some one we love in a terrible crisis, and we involuntarily portray his actions, allow him to speak, as it were, through our organs of expression. As an example of this, Copee's Night Watch" will serve. Irene de Grandfief sees lying wounded before her the man who murdered her lover. She must tend him and administer a potion regularly to prevent fever. Her wrongs burn within her, and, for a time, she hesitates. After a terrible struggle, she ovecomes self, and with eyes ever bent on her crucifix fu.fils her duty. Though

much of the latter part of the piece is not in direct speech, still personation would be proper on account of the dramatic intensity.

Examples.

From A Sketch.

The tenement was ablaze. The clang of the fire bells, the shouts of the spectators, the roaring of the flames above, and of the engines below in the streets was deafening. Suddenly there appeared far above, out of reach of the ladders, a WOman holding an infant. Flames were licking the casement of the window below. In a few moments she would be enwrapped in them. The eyes of the crowd are upon her. Their hearts go out to her in her terrible peril. Oh for a means of saving her and her precious burden! And is she to be made a holocaust to the fire-king? A moment more and that creeping red flame will be around her! Oh God! is there no hand to snatch her from that hell around?- Williams.

From The Odyssey.

With speed the bark they climb; the spacious sails
Loosed from the yards invite the impelling gales.
Past sight of shore, along the surge they bound,
And all above is sky, and ocean all around;
When lo a murky cloud the Thunderer forms

Dull o'er their heads, and blackens heaven with storn s.
Night owells o'er all the deep: and now outflies

The gloomy west, and whistles in the skies.

The mountain-billows roar! the furious blast

Howls o'er the shroud, and rends it from the mast:

The mast gives way and, cracking as it bends,

Tears up the deck; then all at once descends:
The pilot by the tumbling ruin slain,

Dashed from the helm, falls headlong in the main.

Pope's Translation.

From Too Strange not to be True.

D'auban ran towards the river, and sprang into the canoe of the barge with which one of his boatmen remained the night before. Cutting with a knife the rope that fastened it to the shore, both began to row for their lives. The natives pursued them. They had sworn by the great Sun that not a white man should escape. Arrows whizzed in the ears of the pursued, and the savages were gaining upon them. For one instant-it was a desperate expedient-d'Auban laid down the oars, and seized the fowling-piece lying at the bottom of the barge. He levelled it at them. The pursuers, terrified at the sight of the gun, dashed aside and slackened their speed. -Lady Georgiana Fullerton.

3. The character may be personated when we have the direct speech, but we are not permitted to use accessories. The elocutionist is not allowed the liberties of the actor. In reciting the lines of Falstaff, directed to the grand jurors, whom he has waylaid, we are not allowed the use of a sword. We may stab at the imaginary juror as he lies trembling on the ground, but Falstaff's mighty weapon must be relegated to the property man. Leave such portrayal to the actor. Elocution calls for no properties.

4. Where a personation occurs within a personation, the speaker is not allowed to drift from one into the other. The subordinate one is to be spoken in the manner in which the principal personation is characterized. In the selection, "The Old Surgeon's Story." by Eleanor C. Donnelly, an old surgeon tells of a youth's interview with his mother. In rendering this selection, it would be ridiculous for the reciter to use the tones of voice of the mother or child. The old surgeon is the one who speaks, even where he brings in the direct words of

the mother and child. His personality can not be lost sight of during the entire selection. It is the prominent character. Assuming the voice or action of any other party would be a mistaken interpretation of the poem.

GENERAL EXAMPLES.

From Hamlet. Act 111.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke 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. O, 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-shows and noise. I could have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to Nature: to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy of, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players, that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor Turk, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.—Shakespeare.