ἀλλ ̓ ἐμ - έ γἁ στον-ό- εσσ ̓ ἄρ -αρ - εν

ther felt ;

φρένας,

Dear - er to me

is that mourn - er un-wearied who

Ιτ-υν, αἰ ὲν Ιτ-υν ὀλ- οφ - ύρ - ετ - αι,

Sor row-ful bird that is ev - er Zeus' mes - sen - ger

ἰὼ παντλάμων Νιόβα, σὲ δ ̓ ἔγωγε νέμω θεόν, pp

And so wails Mourning Niobe I at least hail her, divinest Queen,

From the Greek have derived, at long distance, forms of opera and ballet, and one attempt was made to do for the epic cycle of Germany what the Greek dramatists did for the stories of Agamemnon and Edipus: Wagner's Nibelungenlied. If we ask ourselves why it remains a glorious and colossal failure and not as he would have it be a new art form-the answer seems to be, first, lack of proportion in the elements of sight and sound; but above all the fact that then, as now, the true art of the theatre was not in existence; once the master stepped outside his province as a musician, he was in the position of a magnificent improvisor, trying to play an instrument of which he knew nothing; but on his creation may yet rise the music-drama of the future. For the moment two elements, music and movement alone, are being combined, with the words left out, and so we are given the kaleidoscope of Russian ballet, nearer, at its best, as we saw it when Mordken and Pavlova danced the Bacchanal, to recapturing the primal glory of Dionysiac art than any modern drama.

Of our Shakespeare and the Elizabethan drama as a whole, it is useless to speak in general terms, only remembering that its poetry primarily interprets character and circumstance, and shows, through them and through their clash, the poet's interpretation of life. While in France the accidents rather than the essentials of both give us the comedy and the keenly barbed satire which, later on, in the hands of our Restoration dramatists, were to drive all poetic form from the theatre.

in the Secre Unquestionably poetry cannot sustain itself there, without the strength of the most universal appeal, such an appeal for instance as Shakespeare makes in a play like Twelfth Night, and since the days of Ben Jonson the theatre has become only sectional: to please here is to be despised elsewhere; and so the topical

element, which is the destruction of poetry, has predominated more and more; again, poets are rarely men of the theatre and so cannot write plays. Such splendid exceptions as Barker and Housman's Prunella, Drinkwater's Lincoln, or above all Hardy's Dynasts only serve very effectually to prove the rule. One other exception must be made-the "Little Theatre" in Abbey Street, Dublin, where Yeats and Synge found in the love of Ireland, and even in the satirising of her follies, the dayspring from on high which is needed for poetic drama. Guarding themselves fastidiously from the influences whose very strength and beauty of past accomplishment militate against the revival of dramatic poetry in England, they found an art delicate, lyric, single in its appeal, and in their varying ways did restore poetry to the stage.

To-day we are faced more and more with the sectional break-up of dramatic forms; here the pleasure of the eye alone, and here the mocking spirit of cynical satire: here magnificent realistic achievement; here jejune and precious poetic efforts; but though the cinema has ousted drama from the majority of our provincial theatres, I believe we are in view of a revival. Drama is coming again from the people themselves; and their insistent demand is for a theatre which shall get back to fundamentals; which shall re-create and interpret life for them in terms of the theatre, but with universal appeal to the truth and validity of human experience.

Perhaps the only general remark that can be made on verse-speaking in the theatre to-day is a criticism of its lack of sense of distinction. I believe nothing would help here so much as practice in those delicate satyric forms which have survived in French dramatic poems and which form the most perfect school for diction. I shall speak later of Clifford Bax's experiments in this direction.

X

CHAPTER V

THE ELEMENTS OF VERSE-SPEAKING

THE greater part of the elaborate directions, "rules" and "methods" devised by teachers of "elocution" to help speakers of verse, are nothing but attempts to find a substitute for true understanding and love of poetry and for natural taste and distinction in utterance,

Those who need such rules are not ready to speak verse at all; they often attain worse and more unendurable results in proportion as they are pedantic and exact in observing the rules they have been taught; as vulgar and pretentious people grow more unbearable when they affect a meticulous care for elegance.

The more persuaded we are that poetry, like all art, is the result of a direct and spontaneous inspiration of the singer, that the poet is not fettered by the thousand rules of the metrist, that these are, in fact, rather deduced from the practice of the poet than imposed on him by authority, the more certain we become that as in colour, in music, in sculpture, the laws which the poet unconsciously obeys are not the outcome of ingenious devising, or of social convention, but are fundamentally connected with the essential laws of movement and of construction.

It is only by a deeper understanding of the significance of rhythm that this synthesis can be effected.

The creative force of the poet is his perception and love of beauty. The patterns he creates conform to eternal laws which we are only beginning to perceive,

laws conditioned, as in all other art, by the nature of his medium. And that medium is speech, the speech which is his mother-tongue.

It is then certain that there is no possible substitute for intelligence, significance and personal taste in the speaking of poetry; that an appreciation of content as well as form is essential; yet many scholars have been conspicuous by their inability to express a single line of verse adequately in utterance. Even the poets themselves, with rare and brilliant exceptions, are unable to convey to an audience audible significance, or any rhythm beyond a monotonous and metric scansion. Within their own minds they know their intention, but they cannot bring it out in utterance for others. What is the nature of our speech in utterance?

i. It is a musical instrument having for its source of power the breath, for its vibratory element the note, for its resonator the vowel.

ii. It is the instrument of logical expression through speech, by gradation of power, pitch or quality, by clarity, by articulation, by richness of vocabulary and by clear phrasing.

iii. It is an interpretative instrument, blending these two opposed elements in unconscious emotional or artistic expression and so gaining control and perfect transparency of expression.

The first and most important element in training utterance is the voice. In regard to what is generally called voice production it is not proposed to enter into detailed analysis or instruction in this book: not from any uncertainty in regard to method, but because it is impossible to teach these things except orally. No description, symbol or definition, no diagram or