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INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

ON

DECLAMATION.

THE PROMINENT PRINCIPLES OF GESTURE.

DECLAMATION, as an academic exercise designed to prepare the student for the practice of public speaking, includes, properly, a course of training in gesture, or the attitude and action of the body, as well as the cultivation and discipline of the voice. The necessity of educational training is as great, obviously, in the former of these departments of oratory as in the latter. In both cases, the actual business of public life calls on the individual to do what he has not been accustomed to, in the relations of private life, viz.—to exert his vocal organs and his whole bodily action on a much larger scale, and in a much more forcible style of expression, than occurs in the communications of the domestic or the social circle. It is this unwonted demand upon his energies that embarrasses, and impedes, and, perhaps, utterly baffles the novice in public speaking; and it is to do away such hindrances that academic exercises are prescribed, by which the young speaker may become accustomed to the new circumstances in which he is placed, when endeavoring so to mould his voice, and regulate his bodily attitude and action, as to attain full utterance and appropriate gesture, when addressing a numerous audience in a large apartment.

The inspiration of genius may enable a highly favored individual to break through all restraints, and intuitively do what reflection, and study, and careful practice prescribe. But it is only such individuals who can rationally claim the indulgence

of dispensing with cultivation. The greatest and the best speakers of ancient and modern times, of European or American birth, have uniformly placed their reliance on assiduous application and thorough training. The teacher, or the author, who decries educational culture in speaking,—although he may be personally a model of eloquence and of scholarship as distinguished as Whately himself,-unfortunately misleads those whom he should guide, and favors that "generous neglect" of which ignorance and indolence are ever so fond. Nor can the student ever fall into an error more absurd or more fatal than that nature, without cultivation, will eventuate otherwise, in the intellectual field untilled, than in the thorns and thistles of the waste, or the weeds of the sluggard's garden. "Give me the thing to say," said once a self-confident youth, solicited to pay attention to his elocution, "and I will find the way to say without the aid of elocution!" So thought not Demosthenes, nor Cicero, nor Chatham, nor Fox, nor Clay, nor Webster. Day and night, and year after year, it was their study, their strenuous endeavor, to find the way to say the thing which was already familiar to the mind. None of these great orators undervalued instruction; and one of the most distinguished of them searched the world to find it.

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The student of noble aims and true ambition will never despise that branch of self-culture which gives him readiest and surest access to the minds of his fellow-men, for sympathy and mutual benefit, for intellectual and moral progress, and associated effort in every form of social and benevolent action, whether in the relations of private or of public life.

The volume to which the present remarks are designed as an introduction, being properly limited to the furnishing of materials for exercises in declamation, and the number of works on the vocal part of elocution being large, while that of manuals on gesture is comparatively small; it was deemed preferable to restrict the following suggestions to the visible part of oratory, that which has to do with the attitude and action of public speaking. This course seemed the more advisable on account

of the general neglect, comparatively, into which this branch of oratorical training is permitted to fall.

While urging, however, the importance of gesture as an indispensable aid to expression, no teacher would wish to inculcate a mechanical and artificial style of action. The true speaker

must have a true manner; and of the five great attributes of genuine expression in attitude and action, TRUTH stands first, followed by FIRMNESS, force, FREEDOM, and PROPRIETY. Grace, which is sometimes added as a sixth, is, in all true manly eloquence, but another name for the symmetry which flows from appropriateness; and, in masculine expression, should never be a distinct object of attention.

If naturalness of manner, in attitude and action, has been omitted in the enumeration of the qualities of good style, it is not because that property is deemed unimportant; but because we are so accustomed to hear the word "natural" applied to what is merely habitual, that it becomes one of the most fruitful sources of error, both in theory and practice. We too often hear persons say of a speaker's manner, that it is "natural," even when it is marked by the nasal twang, and the narrow, sharp, angular gestures, and stiff attitudes so prevalent in New England, or by the boisterous voice and extravagant action of Southern oratory,-merely because the observer is accustomed to such a style. A truly natural manner is free from local faults it is formed on broad views and general principles: it is true to nature as a whole-not to some confined or accidental part of it. It is enlightened by comprehensive judgment, and refined by pure taste. In claiming nature as our standard, we are too prone to forget that habit becomes a second nature, and, that to judge correctly, we must see beyond its narrow limits, and reach to principles and laws recognized by all cultivated minds, and applicable everywhere.

The rules of gesture submitted in subsequent paragraphs, are all, even when carried into the closest details of application, founded on the great principles which have been indicated under the five foregoing designations.

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Truth of GestURE.—The first of these principles, TRUTH, or simplicity, implies, of course, entire exemption from all traits of an artificial, fanciful, or whimsical character, fastidiously precise positions, dancing school attitudes, finical niceties of anatomical display of joint or member, gliding motions of the feet, obtrusive curvilinear sweeps of the arm, and gestures introduced because they are pretty or graceful.

FIRMNESS. The second feature of good style in gesture, FIRMNESS, is opposed to all feeble slackness, or yielding weakness, in the limbs, arms, and hands, or drooping positions of the head and neck. Firmness implies that one limb is firmly braced, as a steady support to the whole body; that the whole · mien is upright, even when, in earnest appeals to the speaker's audience, he inclines somewhat forward, that the chest is always well expanded and duly raised, and the head erect, unless the speaker happens to be placed much above his audience.

FORCE. The third characteristic of appropriate manner in gesture, is FORCE; which, as a prime attribute of man, can never be dispensed with. It forbids all feeble, shuffling, and unnecessary shifting of the feet, a curtseying motion of the kneejoints, an unmeaning swaying and rocking of the body, a feeble and timid half-stretching of the arm, and a niggardly halfopening of the hand in gesture; the elbow thus making an ungainly angle, and the hand held as if to receive something palpable from the audience, instead of sympathy and thought. Speaking, it should never be forgotten, is giving, not receiving; and the wide-open hand and free palm, not the contracted, pouch-like paw, are the proper visible language of nature in human speech. Force in gesture is utterly incompatible with any feeble, fluttering, or flapping motion of the arm and hand. The energy and heartiness of sincere expression demand the visible effect of an earnest will, in the just force with which action is performed. Impassioned eloquence often requires boldness in the movements of the limbs, as well as intensity in the decisive act of gesture. The Latin word "ictus," (blow,)

is not an inappropriate one for the terminating movement of vehement oratorical action.

FREEDOM.-The fourth trait of appropriate manner in speaking,-implies the absence of all timidity, constraint, bashfulness, awkwardness, frozen or rigid attitudes and postures; cramped and stiff movements; narrow, small, confined action; elbows pinned to the sides; flat and stiffened positions of the hand; fingers and thumb clinging together, the whole hand placed like a piece of board, without joint or division, no natural turn of the wrist, to give the hand an easy slope; all gestures made in zig-zag instead of flowing and curving lines, with no free sweep of the arm, even in the boldest passages of declamation; the whole person of the speaker rigid and motionless as a statue; the feet glued to the floor; the very features of the face apparently immovable and blank; the eyes fixed on vacancy, or on the floor, instead of communicating with the audience; the whole facial expression reminding an observer of the philosophic speaker in the "Sartor Resartus," who maintains the same unaltered, imperturbable gravity of look as the brass lion's head on the public fountain, indifferent whether it gives out little water or much.

Freedom, as an appropriate feature of manner in declamation, manifests itself in easy attitudes, calmness and self-possession in mien and aspect, natural, unembarrassed movement; free, flowing gesture; the elbow freely raised, the hand fully opened and naturally sloped, the thumb parted freely from the fingers, the fore and little fingers held free from contact with the others; the posture of the body varied from time to time, in correspondence with the spirit of the language in the compo sition; the features of the face giving natural life and warmth to the expression of the sentiment, and the eye directed, with an easy turn, to the eyes of the audience; the speaker's whole manner causing his hearers to feel that he is speaking to them, not at them, nor yet indulging in soliloquy or apostrophe, but winning their attention, and exciting their sympathies, by the genuine eloquence of expressive manner.

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