Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

GESTURE AND ATTITUDE.

19

of passages where a corrective or deprecatory idea is to be expressed; or of passages moderately emphatic. It would properly accompany such passages as the following:

I will not do them wrong; I'd rather choose
To wrong the dead-to wrong myself or you-
Than I would wrong such honorable men.

SHAKSPEARE.

I have undertaken this prosecution, fathers, not that I might draw envy upon that illustrious order of which the accused happens to be, but with the direct design of clearing your justice and impartiality before the world. CICERO v. VERRES.

Not that I doubt the honorable gentleman's disposition to do rightfar from it!

Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. - WEBSTER.

[graphic][merged small]

Diagram 3. -This diagram represents positions suitable for the delivery of a highly emphatic sentiment. The arm should be gradually raised from the position shown in diagram 1, until the hand is at the level of the head, the palm of the hand being presented flat, or nearly so, towards the audience (diagram 3, a); the arm should

then be brought, suddenly and with decision, to the position shown in diagram 3 (b). Care must be taken that the body is maintained in a straight line with the leg on which it bears, and not suffered to lean to the opposite side. The attitudes represented in this diagram would be suitable for the delivery of passages similar to these:

I'll keep them all;

By heaven! he shall not have a Scot of them;

No, if a Scot would save his soul, he shall not:
I'll keep them by this hand!

SHAKSPEARE.

If we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight; I repeat it, sir, we must fight !-HENRY.

If I were an American, -as I am an Englishman,

while a foreign

troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms— never never! never!

CHATHAM.

The blood-thirsty prætor, deaf to all he could urge in his own defense, ordered the infamous punishment to be inflicted. - CICERO v. VERRES.

[ocr errors]
[merged small][subsumed][merged small][graphic][merged small]

Diagram 4.-The invocatory position should be used when the speaker has to make a vehement appeal to Heaven; or when senti

GESTURE AND ATTITUDE.

21

ments of a very elevated or patriotic character have to be delivered, as is frequently the case in the perorations of the orators of antiquity. It must be remembered, also, that the eyes, and the countenance generally, should be directed upwards, following, as it were,

the

[blocks in formation]

lead of the hand. But, in directing the attention of any person to an object supposed to be visible, the eye will first merely glance towards it, and then fix itself on the person addressed, while the finger continues to point. The position represented in diagram 4 would be proper in delivering such passages as follow:

Hail, holy light! offspring of heaven first-born.

Rise, O, ever rise!

MILTON.

Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills, -
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great Hierarch!

COLERIDGE.

O, liberty!-0, sound once delightful to every Roman ear! O, sacred privilege of Roman citizenship! once sacred, now trampled upon CICERO.

Diagram 5.-Figures a and b in this diagram represent two speakers in a dialogue; the former in an attitude of entreaty, and the latter of denial. The positions may be applicable to passages like the following:

[blocks in formation]

66

Sir John. Away! "I do desire we may be better Archy. Nay, Sir John, hear what I have to say. five minutes.

DRYDEN.

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][graphic][merged small]

Diagrams 6, 7.-Diagram 6 shows one of the positions in which a speaker may stand who is being addressed by another. It also shows a position of the opposite speaker-such a position as he would be likely to assume in putting an interrogatory, or describing an event. A speaker who delivers himself singly to an audience. and one who addresses another speaker in view of an auditory, are under very different predicaments. The first has only one object to

GESTURE AND ATTITUDE.

23

address; the latter has two; for, if a speaker were to address the person to whom he speaks, without any regard to the point of view in which he stands with respect to the audience, he would be apt to turn his back on them, and to place himself in ungraceful positions.

[graphic][ocr errors][subsumed][merged small]

In a dialogue, each speaker should stand obliquely, for the most part, except in passages not directly addressed to the other. The party to the dialogue who is listening should, as a general rule, let his arms hang naturally by his sides, or with hands approaching (as in diagram 7), unless what is said by the other is of a character to excite agitation or surprise; or he may, with propriety, occasionally stand with arms folded (see diagram 7), or with the right hand in the left breast, or the reverse, as shown in diagram 6.

Where more than two speakers are introduced, as in some extracts from plays, the speakers should be arranged in a picturesque manner, agreeably to the laws of perspective; and it is in these scenes that the positions of repose, represented in diagram 7, and by one of the figures in diagram 6, may be most properly introduced.

After all that art can do to devise rules, it may be said, in regard to vocal delivery as well as to gesticulation, that all constraint upon

« ZurückWeiter »