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Show FUNDAMENTAL VISUALIZATIONS shown. 21 How could the poor audience be expected to imagine change of scene, or realize that the young man went into the house and upstairs, when they saw before them this same young man talking to an empty chair! H0W could they be expected to when this same young man knelt on the stage, that he was imagine no more talking to the supposed man in the empty chair, but to a Their imagination had not been called into corpse on the floor! play before, and was not on the alert when it was needed. Classification. Such performances as these are neither acting, reciting, reading, nor interpretation-neither "flesh, fish, nor fowl." The sense which the author intended to be given is destroyed and the unity of the selection is lost by such treatment. Such exhibi tions can only be understood by assuming the attitude that teachers of that kind have not understood their business and are attempting to ape the stage, but fail because they know neither reading nor acting. Yet, so called readers exploit themselves as imitators of bells, bugles, birds, beasts; they give their readings to the accom paniment of music, they costume a piece of literature merely for the sake of astonishing audiences with the startling, the extraordinary, the unusual, the marvelous. Their aim is always that of personal display. Happily, in things of literary worth there are few, if any, opportunities to exploit one's ability as such an entertainer. Imi tators must, therefore, entertain their audiences with "new pieces," monologues, and such like, and avoid anything of literary excellence. One of the foremost of such entertainers-a high priced bureau at traction-s-placed only one bit of literature on her program-Kip ling's "If." Why she chose this selection, which is a straight piece of difficult reading, one long involved sustained sentence, and just the kind of material that such an impersonator can never handle, is a question. Her rendition would indicate that she was ignorant of its difficulty. Imitations. Let us turn our attention to specific literary forms to get at the matter from another angle. In the lyric, the thought is set to rhythm, or in other words, to a series of wave lengths. This rhythm is in accord with the sense of the poem as opposed to the meter, the latter being often out of harmony with the idea. The fitting of sound to sense in the lyric does not demand an imitative was a |
