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The student is liable to seek merely for skill, not for assimilation. He is apt to study objective differences and to imitate these. Thus imitation is substituted for assimilation; desiring representative contrasts and transitions, he seeks for them mechanically.

Again, students desire to rehearse dialogues merely. They learn every part mechanically, with little study or conception of character, little or no assimilation of the artistic spirit of the play, or the motives of the character they are to impersonate. They rehearse together, and trust for suggestion from stage managers or from the action of other characters. There is little characterization or dramatic instinct at present upon the stage. Rarely do we find such genuine assimilation as in Joseph Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle," Booth's" Hamlet," or the elder Salvini's " Othello. All dramatic expression is the manifestation of thought and passion. The processes of the mind must be revealed.

Another danger is the failure to distinguish between expression and exhibition. Dramatic art is considered as physical action simply. There is thus a failure to distinguish between show or theatrical display, and true expression. Dramatic art is directly antagonistic to show; it is not exhibition, but is a revelation of the mind, of spiritual force and life and movement.

Again, students often think that everything dramatic belongs to action, and hence endeavor to give exaggerated movements which are antagonistic to nature. They fail to realize that dramatic action is mental action; that action is dramatic only when it reveals the man; that dramatic action is not a superficial thing

In giving such transitions, for example, as these, there is no time allowed for the mind to act between the phrases, and hence the changes, if any are made, are mechanical, sudden, and unnatural.

HARK! how 'mid their revelry

They raise the battle-cry! — The clang of arms,
And war, and victory for me! Away

With idle dreams! Why, what to me are women?
Yet sheah! she is not like those at home,

Loaded with clumsy ornaments, happy in bondage,
With base caresses humbly seeking favor

Of their base lords.

Ingomar.

Knowles

Again, there is a failure to recognize the fact that all dramatic expression is instinctive. We speak of dramatic instinct, and not of dramatic reasoning. There is an unconscious element in all dramatic expression. It is not even wholly voluntary; there are involuntary elements. Dramatic action is the result of assimilation, of sympathetic identification of ourselves with some idea, situation, or character. It depends upon imaginative insight and

instinct.

Students often think that dramatic action consists in scenery, stage business, and odd make-ups; but that only is dramatic which is intense and true.

All true dramatic transitions are simple. Those writers, those speakers, who have been the most dramatic have been the simplest; declamatory speakers and stilted writers are never dramatic. Homeric simplicity, Shakespearian directness, and not oratorical display or declamation cause dramatic expression. Note, for example, Scott's "Maisie" (p. 349). How delicate, simple, and suggestive; these elements make it truly dramatic.

The chief requisites, then, of dramatic vocal expression are simplicity, genuineness, a vivid imaginative realization of the spirit of the thought. The whole nature must be fully responsive to every idea, thought, situation, and character.

There is a universal misunderstanding as to what is dramatic. When a man reads the Scriptures, for example, with very sudden transitions and exaggerated representation or personation of each character, he is called too dramatic. The fact is, he is not dramatic at all, but theatric. He employs imitation, not assimilation.

One important danger in dramatic work is the substitution of the lower power of representation for the higher one of manifestation; the elimination of the imaginative, of the sympathetic elements, and the introduction of the merely imitative.

Again, there is danger in certain emotions. Many have a misconception of the nature of assuming another character. Hence their emotions are not genuine. They think that to be dramatic is to be somebody else and not themselves; they entirely overlook the fact that the very first requisite to being truly dramatic is to be able to be one's self, and that no one can really and

truly assimilate another character until he has a certain conscious realization of his own. The higher the form of dramatic art the more this is true. The reader or the speaker must often be himself, and express himself as the chief character. He must be a sympathetic spectator of every event, and reveal his own point of view in contrast to that of others.

One of the great mistakes of public readers is that they eliminate all normal characters and accentuate the abnormal. This produces one-sidedness. The reader or impersonator in the arrangement of his program, or his abridgment of a play, must bear in mind that the abnormal has no place except in opposition to the normal, that the abnormal will itself fail to interest an audience deeply,, if not directly contrasted with the normal. The high dramatic deals with the normal as well as with the abnormal. That is farce which deals with the abnormal alone.

Render the following grotesque poem, giving the dialect and other peculiarities of the characters, but making the deep feeling and dramatic situation predominate over all objective elements.

DANNY DEEVER.

"WHAT are the bugles blowin' for?" said Files-on-Parade.
"To turn you out, to turn you out," the Color-Sergeant said.
"What makes you look so white, so white?" said Files-on-Parade
"I'm dreadin' what I've got to watch," the Color-Sergeant said.

For they're hangin' Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead March play, The regiment's in 'ollow square they 're hangin' him to-day; They've taken of his buttons off an' cut his stripes away,

An' they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.

"What makes the rear-rank breathe so 'ard?" said Files-on-Parade.
"It's bitter cold, it's bitter cold," the Color-Sergeant said.
"What makes that front rank man fall down?" says Files-on-Parade.
A touch o' sun, a touch o' sun," the Color-Sergeant said.

They are hangin' Danny Deever, they are marchin' of 'im round,
They 'ave 'alted Danny Deever by 'is coffin on the ground;
An' 'e'll swing in 'arf a minute for a sneakin' shootin' hound-
O they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'!
"'Is cot was right-'and cot to mine," said Files-on-Parade.
"'E's sleepin' out an' far to-night," the Color-Sergeant said.
"I've drunk 'is beer a score o' times," said Files-on-Parade.
"'E's drinkin' bitter beer alone," the Color-Sergeant said.

They are hangin' Danny Deever, you must mark 'im to 'is place, For 'e shot a comrade sleepin' - you must look 'im in the face; Nine 'undred of 'is county an' the regiment's disgrace, While they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'. "What's that so black agin the sun?" said Files-on-Parade. "It's Danny fightin' 'ard for life," the Color-Sergeant said. "What's that that whimpers over'ead?" said Files-on-Parade. "It's Danny's soul that's passin' now," the Color-Sergeant said.

For they 're done with Danny Deever, you can 'ear the quickstep play,
The regiment's in column, an' they 're marchin' us away;

Ho! the young recruits are shakin', an' they'll want their beer to-day,
After hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.

Rudyard Kipling.

It is easier to explain the nature of thought than of emotion. To find an adequate method of developing noble feeling is one of the most difficult problems of education. The same difficulty meets us in the vocal expression of emotion.

Definiteness in emotional expression is not considered necessary by many. Those who are most punctilious in regard to pronunciation or the use of words, or who would condemn themselves very severely if they did not make an adequate definition of any thought, often fail to recognize the fact that they rarely, if ever, express a feeling with any truthfulness. Many educated men will read a psalm which is inherently joyous in a mournful tone, without any situation, and without any response to a true emotional point of view.

Among speakers the command of emotion is very inadequate. Many of them have practically no feeling, but give everything from a neutral or negative point of view. Some have one emotion which colors every thought they express; some have two, which alternate in a crude and meaningless fashion. Many sway from one emotional condition into another, independent of thought.

One method of developing the power to express emotion definitely and truthfully is to secure genuineness and simplicity in transitions. There must be no pretence of feeling. Each thought, each successive conception of the mind, must be felt simply and directly, and given with the most truthful actions of the voice.

The reader or speaker should especially avoid drifting. When once emotion has arisen, it is supreme for the time, and only by securing definite thought and imaginative action can the current of feeling be controlled and directed into new channels. Emotion acts naturally and re-acts rhythmically; hence the true imaginative or conceptive action of the mind causes variations in a current of emotion.

There must be

Every emotion has one subtle characteristic. such an imaginative conception of a situation as will awaken feeling, and such genuine artistic insight as will enable the reader or speaker or actor to express definitely this one characteristic. This can be obtained only by careful, earnest, and long-continued practice. The expression of emotion must not be mechanical; it must be a free, natural, and spontaneous outflow.

The combat deepens. On, ye Brave who rush to glory, or the grave !
Wave, Munich, all thy banners wave, and charge with all thy chivalry!
Few, few shall part, where many meet! The snow shall be their winding-sheet,
And every turf beneath their feet shall be a soldier's sepulchre.

Hohenlinden.

Campbell.

There is a tendency in the transition of emotion to make changes which are not true; for example, in the preceding lines, there is no change of place; it is the same battle; only in the first lines, we are placed before the battle, and in the last two, after the battle. In the first two we sympathize with the heroic struggle, with the enthusiastic exhortation, we rejoice to see the march forward, we share the spirit of endeavor; but in the second, we gaze pathetically upon the fallen.

Now, in reading these lines there will be a tendency to make the first scene large and the last small, to make the first declamatory and impersonal, the second limited and personal. The right rendering of both keeps the scene as large in one case as in the other. The picture does not change in size, it only changes in character, causing thus a definite change in feeling. The imagination is called upon to sustain certain elements and to change others. The tendency of an inartistic reader will be to change everything, and to give up the control of his power. This leads to chaotic and untruthful feeling and expression.