THE ART OF RECITATION.
“READERS or reciters," says Madame de Navarre. still popularly known as Mary Anderson, in her winsome and unaffected book, "are as a rule wearisome. They look to the right when they speak the woman's part, to the left when the man speaks, or vice-versa. There is often in their efforts an ostentatious attempt at acting; and when, as frequently happens, the right and left become confused, the listener is in a fog as to who is really speaking." It would be difficult to sum up this painful and laborious art more tersely. Add to the summary that many of the sinners are apt to deliver their women's speeches in a falsetto, and you have the effect as a whole. Yet the increase of the professors of the irregular art is remarkable. Scarcely a family at the present day but numbers in its ranks at least one aspirant, male or female as the case may be, who is "so much better than any professional, you know." A piece of recitation is as popular a dish at a party as a song or a passage of music. New ballads are written and old collections made to gratify this taste alone, and the endless number of heroes, no longer unsung, who save somebody from a fire or a pit's mouth with unselfish heroism and in uncultured verse, makes up a muster-roll of its own. Yet it is strange how very short has been the list of successful reciters who have been able to hold an audience for themselves, and create a following which must be sought outside the walls of theatres, a vague feeling of wren guess still clinging to these last, from which halls and platforms are for some obscure reason free. Recitation, of course, was an early art, best illustrated to us by the Homeric ballads, parts of which even nowadays the reciter might with advantage get translated for his purposes. Their spirit survives best in Macaulay's Lays, or in the writings of Scott and Aytoun, too much neglected for their worth. In our own times Fanny Semble, who disliked acting, cultivated the reading of Shakespeare as an especial art. But she used her book, and read seated. We had not the advantage of hearing her our- selves, but tradition credits her with a great power of impressing her bearers, and a wonderful variety of facial and vocal expression. She is reputed to have been par- ticularly successful with her reading of Falstaff. To read well when seated is a, rare but great accomplish- ment, which has served the term of more than one dramatist when reading his new play to his company ; and Mary Anderson credits Tennyson and Lady Martin (Helen Faucit) with great power in this respect. "He was not an elocutionist," she says of the first, "and therein lay one of his great charms as a reader." Thaekeray need to read his lectures through standing, and his untrained sim- plicity had a rare charm of its own. Dickens recited always
and vividly,—too dramatically at times, for he was a great actor by taste and training ; while the Shakespeare readings (only given before friends, as far as we know) of Thackeray's friend, Mr. Brookfield, the well-known clergyman, are not likely to be forgotten by those who heard them. Shylock and Hamlet were his favourites ; and though in his readings of the latter character he fell at times into staginess—a fault which, in dealing with the Prince of Denmark, it is almost impossibly difficult always to avoid—he had a power of bringing out some of the lesser characters which should have been immensely suggestive to actors. His Polonius was a delightful reality ; and the delicate discrimination with which he brought before us two distinct types of courtier, in his Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, was alone enough to make a night in his company memorable.
That more irregular cleric, Bellew, was for years a reciter by profession, but charlatanism lay at the root of his system and adorned all he did. He was a kind of Jullien at the reciter's desk. Once he gave Hamlet to the public, in Lang. ham Place as we think, with dummies moving about in the background to suggest the characters as he read ; and we have heard him deliver the famous "Bridge of Sighs" at Malvern in thiswise:— " One more unfortunate, weary of breath,
Rashly importunate, gone to her death."
The passionate and sonorous emphasis which Bellew threw upon the im had quite a world of mystic meaning, suggesting all that the poor lady must have been whilst she was " portunate." Brandram was the real master amongst reciters, successful as he deserved. He had always been easily chief amongst amateur comedians, with an amount of practice which almost gave him the right to rank with professionals, and a variety which ranged from Harlequin, which he enacted in the famous amateur pantomime of many years syne, to Sir Anthony Absolute, a part in which we have not seen his equal. When he became a reciter he gave selections but rarely, preferring to deliver a whole play of Shakespeare from memory, in itself a great feat, though he once told the present writer that he found no difficulty in it, and learned his words, always and only, whilst he was dressing in the morning, with his open Shakespeare on the table. But his consequent readiness was curious. He had once been announced to give a reading for some schools at a seaside town, and walking down to the hall with his clerical host after luncheon, said suddenly, " By-the- bye, what's the play I do ? Hamlet, isn't it ? "—" Good gracious, no!" was the alarmed answer. "It's announced as Twelfth Night."—" Oh, all right. It's the same, as long as I know." His readings were a real treat to the Shakespearian, though his introduction of the falsetto for his women was worrying. He used two different cadences, the maid's shriller than the mistress's, for Portia and Nerissa in the Merchant. And his leading characters—his Hamlet, or Shylock, or Macbeth—were a little monotonous and stagey in delivery. But he was a master in grave declamatory parts like King Henry the Fourth, or the Friar, or Prospero ; while in their cunning contrast and infinite variety his comic characters were supreme. The drinking-bout in Twelfth Night was a masterpiece of personation, all the humours being as marked as they were distinct; and the singular effort by which he made Falstaff live for us upon the platform, in ordinary dress and of slight appearance as he was, was the climax of the reciter's art. He would have been very great on the roll of comic actors, with just the grip of gravity which marks the best of them. So definite a feature in the world of entertainment was his work, that he has left a blank behind him which is difficult to fill. The class of audience to which this kind of—what shall we say ?- unlicensed acting appeals is so peculiar and so vast in number. When Toole played for a week in a ball in cleric and scholastic Eastbourne, before the days of theatres, it was crowded. When he went again to open a theatre hardly any- body went. It became wrong at once. When the late Arthur Cecil went first to sing at German Reed's, he was struck by the prominence of the female element in the audience, and then by a gentle sibilant sound which went round the room when he thought he had made a hit. This unexpected hissing alarmed him till he found that the sound only meant "how s—lily!" the form in which his auditors expressed to each other their highest sense of pleasure. These hall-goers represent a power in the land, and the ingenious way in which the German Reeds gradually beguiled them into playgoing pure and simple was a masterpiece of craft. We have ourselves a certain dread of the half-baked drama, preferring with Madame de Navarro to hear a quiet reading, or a recital like Sir Henry Irving's, when he quietly " speaks " "Eugene Aram" from his chair at the supper-table. But the visitors to Queen's Hall in Langbana Place had their opportunity last week in listening to Mr. Allen Beaumont, the Professor of Elocution at the Guildhall. School of Music, who with an actor's training combines rare gifts both of voice and scholarship, which would help him to- take up Brandram's succession if he should make that his aim, as he seems to emulate him in the gift of memory. Good old " Horatins " had the true Homeric ring, while the in- valuable humour which ought never to be wanting at these readings, but generally is, found play in a characteristic Americanism about George Washington, and a delicious piece of Calverley, whose memory we should pray to keep green. The general audience seemed to find a piece of sentiment about one " Jem " most to its taste. But the rare pleasure which Mr. Beaumont's recitation afforded a casual visitor has. led him into these vague recollections of a peculiar art, con- nected in his earlier memories with Albert Smith's odd com- pound of song and story and recital, which once acclimatised Mont Blanc in the Egyptian Hall.
Previous page
