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Nature herself has assigned to every motion of the soul its peculiar cast of the countenance, tone of voice, and manner of gesture, through the whole person; all the features of the face and tones of the voice answer, like strings upon musical instruments, to the impressions made on them by the mind. Thus the sounds of the voice, according to the various touches which raise them, form themselves into an acute or grave, quick or slow, loud or soft, tone. These too may be subdivided into various kinds of tones, as the gentle, the rough, the contracted, the diffuse, the continued, the intermitted, the broken, abrupt, winding, softened, or elevated. Every one of these may be employed with art and judgement; and all supply the actor, as colours do the painter, with an expressive variety.

Anger exerts its peculiar voice in an acute, raised, and hurrying sound. The passionate character of king Lear, as it is admirably drawn by Shakspeare, abounds with the strongest instances of this kind.

-Death! Confusion!

Fiery! what quality?-why Gloster! Gloster!
I'd speak with the duke of Cornwall and his wife.
Are they inform'd of this? my breath and blood!
Fiery! the fiery duke!-

-&c.

Sorrow and complaint demand a voice quite dif ferent; flexible, slow, interrupted, and modulated in a mournful tone: as in that pathetical soliloquy of cardinal Wolsey on his fall.

• Farewell!—a long farewell to all my greatness!
This is the state of man!to day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls as I do.'

We have likewise a fine example of this in the whole of Andromache in The Distrest Mother, particularly in these lines

I'll go, and in the anguish of my heart
Weep o'er my child-
Is wrapt in his, I shall not long survive,
'Tis for his sake that I have suffer'd life,
Groan'd in captivity, and out-liv'd Hector.
Yes, my Astyanax, we'll go together!
Together to the realms of night we'll go;
There to thy ravish'd eyes thy sire I'll show,
And point him out among the shades below."

-If he must die, my life

Fear expresses itself in a low, hesitating, and abject sound. If the reader considers the following speech of lady Macbeth, while her husband is about the murder of Duncan and his grooms, he will imagine her éven affrighted with the sound of her own voice while she is speaking it.

'Alas! I am afraid they have awak'd,

And 'tis not done; th' attempt and not the deed,
Confounds us-Hark!-I laid the daggers ready,
He could not miss them. Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I had done it.'

Courage assumes a louder tone, as in that speech of Don Sebastian.

• Here satiate all your fury;

Let fortune empty her whole quiver on me;
I have a soul that like an ample shield

Can take in all, and verge enough for more.'

Pleasure dissolves into a luxurious, mild, tender, and joyous modulation; as in the following lines in Caius Marius.

'Lavinia! O there's music in the name,

That softening me to infant tenderness,

Makeş my heart spring like the first leaps of life.'

And perplexity is different from all these; grave, but not bemoaning, with an earnest uniform sound of voice; as in that celebrated speech of Hamlet.

To be, or not to be!

-that is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind so suffer
The stings and arrows of outrageous fortune;
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die. to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ach, and a thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to; 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd! To die, to sleep!-
To sleep; perchance to dream! Ay, there's the rub;
For, in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause- -There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrongs, the proud man's contumely,
The
pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardles bear,
To groan
and sweat under a weary life?
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather choose those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of.'

As all these varieties of voice are to be directed by the sense, so the action is to be directed by the voice, and with a beautiful propriety, as it were, to enforce it. The arm, which by a strong figure Tully calls the orator's weapon, is to be sometimes raised and extended; and the hand, by its motion, sometimes to lead, and sometimes to follow, the words as they are uttered. The stamping of the foot too has its proper expression in contention, anger, or absolute command. But the face is the epitome of

the whole man, and the eyes are as it were the epitome of the face; for which reason, he says, the best judges among the Romans were not extremely pleased even with Roscius himself in his mask. No part of the body, besides the face, is capable of as many changes as there are different emotions in the mind, and of expressing them all by those changes. Nor is this to be done without the freedom of the eyes; therefore Theophrastus called one, who barely rehearsed his speech with his eyes fixed, an 'absent actor.'

As the countenance admits of so great variety, it requires also great judgement to govern it. Not that the form of the face is to be shifted on every occasion, lest it turn to farce and buffoonery; but it is certain that the eyes have a wonderful power of marking the emotions of the mind; sometimes by a stedfast look, sometimes by a careless one now by a sudden regard, then by a joyful sparkling, as the sense of the word is diversified: for action is, as it were, the speech of the features and limbs, and must therefore conform itself always to the sentiments of the soul. And it may be observed, that in all which relates to the gesture there is a wonderful force implanted by nature; since the vulgar, the unskilful, and even the most barbarous, are chiefly affected by this. None are moved by the sound of words but those who understand the language; and the sense of many things is lost upon men of a dull apprehension: but action is a kind of universal tongue: all men are subject to the same passions, and consequently know the same marks of them in others, by which they themselves express them.

Perhaps some of my readers may be of opinion that the hints I have here made use of out of Cicero are somewhat too refined for the players on our theatre; in answer to which,I venture to lay it down

as a maxim, that without good sense no one can be a good player, and that he is very unfit to personate the dignity of a Roman hero who cannot enter into the rules for pronunciation and gesture delivered by a Roman orator.

There is another thing which my author does not think too minute to insist on, thought it is purely mechanical; and that is the right pitching of the voice. On this occasion he tells the story of Gracchus, who employed a servant with a little ivory pipe to stand behind him, and give him the right pitch, as often as he wandered too far from the proper modulation. Every voice,' says Tully, has its particular medium and compass, and the sweetness of speech consists in leading it through all the variety of tones naturally, and without touching any extremë. Therefore,' says he, leave the pipe at home, but carry the sense of custom with you.'

N° 542. FRIDAY, NOV. 21, 1712.

Et sibi præferri se gaudet

OVID. Met. ii. 430.

-He heard,

Well pleas'd, himself before himself preferr'd.

ADDISON.

WHEN I have been present in assemblies where my paper has been talked of, I have been very well pleased to hear those who would detract from the author of it observe, that the letters which are sent to the Spectator, are as good, if not better, than any of his works. Upon this occasion many letters of mirth are usually mentioned, which some think the

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