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IV.

RECITING AND RECITATIVE.

SELECTION OF PIECES.

I HAVE been often asked to publish a volume of the pieces I recite. I should like to have done so. But I have always found it to be impracticable. A good half of my repertory could not be published, as the requisite permission from authors and publishers in question could not be obtained. Messrs. Charles William Deacon & Co. have, however, faced the difficulties and overcome them in a way that I cannot too highly praise; sparing neither time nor money to get together a large number of the pieces I recite. Certainly in no other volume are so many of my recitations to be found.

One of the chief difficulties a reciter has to face, and one of the most onerous parts of his work, is the successful selection of pieces adapted to recitation. The choice of such pieces is a task requiring greater judgment and thought than would be supposed. The difficulty is not lessened from the fact that it must after all be almost entirely a matter of personal taste and judg

ment. Actors, singers, instrumentalists, have at least one-half of their work in combination with other artists. As a rule, the responsibility of the choice of material on these occasions rests with no one of them in particular. But a reciter is wholly and absolutely responsible alike for manner and matter.

There is a temptation to speak certain poems or passages of prose because one loves them. But that is one of the worst reasons for choosing them. The test must be, Do they gain by dramatic recitation? Many poems of great beauty, and even of great drama, do not gain by being spoken dramatically. They rather lose by the process. The chief beauty of the poem may be its form and music, and both may be somewhat jarred and disturbed by exhibitions of personal emotion and dramatic utterance. Or the drama may be taken from the literary point of view, and its very excellencies judged thence may be mistakes from the declamatory point of view. Or the drama may be impossible for a public audience.

Certainly the reciter has in English Literature a fine field. In every department of his art-save perhaps on that of delicate humour, in which I must own I think England has been lacking-he will find ample material. The difficulty lies in selection, in striking a nice and just balance between the claims of his own art and those of Literature. They are often far removed from one another, yet he should have an open mind to both. To take the Literary point of view alone would be to court failure and deservedly. For he stands up, not as a man of letters, or as a lecturer, but as a reciter and public entertainer. Yet to lose sight of the Literary point of

view, would be to sink the level of his repertory to mere popularity and cheap "sensationalism "-and that in its turn would work a just Nemesis of failure.

"NEW" PIECES FROM OLD PAGES.

The great stock pieces for recitation, both for drama and for humour, have by this time become too hackneyed to be very useful. The reciter must be always on the look-out for new recitations. Yet when I (6 say new" I by no means mean necessarily pieces written to-day-or "new" in the sense of publication. Some of my most effective "new" pieces have been taken from old pages. I do not think anyone had ever attempted George Eliot, Carlyle, or Matthew Arnold until I gave recitations from their works. Yet on mere popularity and dramatic effect many of their passages are far and away ahead of many of the pieces "written for recitation " nowadays. So, too, with respect to authors as well known to reciters as Tennyson and Browning, I would advise a passing aside of the over-strained popularity of "The Charge of the Light Brigade," or of "How they brought Good News from Ghent "-and can attest to the welcome an audience invariably gives to "Amphion," "The Brook," "A Toccata of Galluppi's,” and "Abt Vogler."

Humourous pieces are very difficult to find, especially if the reciter's comedy lies more in the direction of what on the stage is technically known as "Light

Comedy" than to the broader fun called "Low Comedy." English literature must be considered somewhat deficient in the element of this delicate and refined humour. To many of us the "Trial from Pickwick," or "The Jackdaw of Rheims" represent only one side of comedy, and the side we least care for. There are, however, less well-known passages from Dickens's works which are admirable bits of "light comedy," such as "Mr. Silas Wegg" and "Mr. Harold Skimpole," and there is nothing more effective in all my repertory than "The Christmas Carol." In Thackeray and George Eliot I find admirable material, although scenes from novels are always difficult to treat as disjointed recitations, as they often require a long preface of explanation. Such Prefatory Notes have been furnished in many instances in the present volume.

THE NEW HUMOUR.

There are several authors nowadays who are supplying excellent humour of the light kind, notably Mr. Anstey, Mr. Jerome K. Jerome, and Mr. Anthony Hope. I have a very firm belief myself that humour, in its social and colloquial aspect, is a thing each age grows for itself. Of course, there are certain broad living lines of humour, and certain masterpieces of comedy, which remain true and fresh for all time; but in its lighter and everyday vein humour varies, I think, for each generation We hear a good deal nowadays about the rival claims of the new humour" and "the

old humour," but I suspect the feeling of which the present discussion is an expression is one that obtains in every age. The humour of a bygone time must always appear as old-fashioned to the next generation as the coat of the humourist who wrote it would look in a modern assembly. Those little social, colloquial touches of fun which an audience value so highly are ephemeral things which must be taken fresh and living, and are made from material that is "in the air." And to find pieces that give opportunities of touching an audience thus, the reciter must search the pages of men of his own day. Of such pages there is a growing supply nowadays.

THE GENIUS OF HUMOUR.

And above all a recitation, whether grave or humourous, must be submitted to a fiery ordeal of possible humour. Reciting is perilously girt about with opportunities for sinning against the Genius of humour. And he is a god whom it is dangerous to sin against, for his revenges are cruel and punctual. He is a great god and a powerful, a merry god and a kind-in his way. But he is withal absolutely indifferent and ruthless, and he knows well that he can never assert himself more triumphantly than when he is forgotten. He leaps around the class-room; he pops up in church; he has appeared at funerals; he is in the prompter's box at all tragedies; and he sits in the front row of every recital. His laughter rings out in derision with alarming promptitude. He has no pity. I know no

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