EIGHTH STEP IN RENDERING.

SLIDES OF THE VOICE.

In the Slides of the Voice lies the music of speech. The slides make the tune to which a thing is said. This tune discloses unconsciously, the most subtle, innermost thought and feeling. The slides, tune or running commentary on the words is a language in itself the nearest to music, which is the universal language. The slides are often more significant and expressive than the words themselves.

This music of speech not only reveals thought and feeling, but clothes the language with beauty and makes it attractive. Slide is to speech what ornamentation is to architecture. By it beauty is added to utility. The decoration in architecture is found in arches, window tracery, parapet and pinnacles overlaid with elaborate carvings etc.

All that is attractive and beautiful in any art is the product of thought. This is particularly so in the music of speech. Through thought and feeling only, may the voice attain attractive, musical elements.

A piece of common cloth may be enriched and made attractive with elaborate embroidery or used as a canvas for a costly work of art. The value of the cloth is increased by the amount of thought put into it: so may a common, every-day voice become beautiful and attract

ive by enriching the mind and heart. Try to get out of a study all there is in it. Beautiful slides in the voice do not come by chance but from inherent beauty of spirit and a full appreciation of the matter given. Learn to come sympathetically in touch with the great minds of literature, get their thoughts. Do not go out of self to do this but add others to self, then the music will come, not enforced, but true. Make all persuasive rather than argumentative. Persuasion is more effective than argument. Argument is often a challenge to a quarrel and to strike back. Persuasion leaves the mind free from antagonism, ready to follow on in the thought.

HAMLET'S INSTRUCTION TO THE PLAYERS.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,— trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spake my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh! it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious, periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags,- to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb show and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant: it out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.

Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word; the word to the action; with this special observance- that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing; whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature; scorn her own image; and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. Now this, overdone or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theater of others.

Oh! there be players, that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, or man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought that some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably! "HAMLET. "

SHAKESPEARE,

PORTIA'S PLEA FOR MERCY.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd
It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven,
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd,
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown :
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above his sceptered sway,

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,—
That in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;

Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.
SHAKESPEARE.

"MERCHANT OF VENICE. "

POLONIUS' ADVICE TO LAERTES.

Farewell. My blessing with you:

And these few precepts in thy memory

Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,

Bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:

Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy:

For the apparel oft proclaims the man:

And they in France, of the best rank and station,

Are most select and generous, chief in that.

Neither a borrower, nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all,- to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
"HAMLET. "

SHAKESPEARE.

THANATOPSIS.

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware.

When thoughts

Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,

And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart,--
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around-
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air-
Comes a still voice:-

Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form is laid with many tears,