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Show 44 HANDBOOK FOR TEACHERS OF INTERPRETATION the ordinary, the commonplace, the usual. For this reason many professional readers and actors are able to give character sketches, selections in ordinary conversation, but fail utterly when they attempt any of the classics, particularly Shakespeare. The printed page becomes like boarding-house viands-everything tastes alike. Most pupils accept the printed page as the same printed fare, and The printed make it a boarding house hash when they read it. be must never be it must page questioned, it must accepted ; be attacked aggressively, with subtle, appreciative reaction to 'each variation of idea: This procedure wHl develop the right quality of tone. Importance of Good Voices. The task of awakening the school public and, through them, the masses, to the importance of a good voice rests upon the teachers of interpretation. That the teacher have a pleasing voice, is most vital in the public schoolroom where the high pitched, nasal, raspy, hard, uncontrolled voices of the "school marms" are reproducing themselves in the children. More over, bad voices are also causing nervous disorders in the pupils. A teacher with an uncontrolled voice is as dangerous to the spirit ual and nervous make-up of the pupil as a teacher afflicted with a contagious disease is to the physical welfare of the pupil; perhaps more dangerous, for pupils may recover from physical disease (mortality is not high) but they may never recover from the effects of strained, nervous irritability and bad vocal habits. It is difficult to arouse people with vocal defects to any effort to improve them. If the face has nothing more than a slight blemish on it, people will search heaven and earth to find a remedy. But the public consciousness has not yet been awakened to the serious ness of a bad voice, the influence of which, for good or ill, in life-in fact all relations of life-cannot be social, public domestic, over estimated. |
