Arthur Burrell’s Tips for the Reciter

At the conclusion of “Recitation: The Children’s Art,” Arthur Burrell offers “a few practical suggestions for recitation.” These suggestions offer some insight into the practice of recitation in the 19th century, especially the movement towards a more ‘natural’ or ‘authentic’ (and ‘restrained’ and ‘dignified’ manner of recitation — note his concept of “repression” at the end).

“1.—If you know your room, speak at the person furthest from you. You can tell if you are heard. If not, don’t get loud, but go more slowly. You may look all about the room quite easily, and yet keep your voice at this angle with your body.
2.—If you don’t know your room, try it before your performance, and put a friend or two down in different parts of the room, to tell you whether you are audible.
3.—If your room is a good one, save your voice; this makes people listen.
4.—If your room is a bad one, get a long piece of bunting fixed on the wall opposite to your face. It deadens the echo.
5.—Save yourself. Only once of twice in a whole evening will you want to shout or toss your arms about. Tout artist qui se fatigue est un artiste médiocre.
6.—Begin quietly. Wait during noise, coughs, and interruptions of all kinds. This is only polite to the people who are listening.
7.—Practice standing still. Never run about the stage.
8.—Have a table in front of you, about three feet high.
9.—Never be so impertinent to your audience as to try to recite without having gone over every intonation, gesture, and look before your own glass, and before a friend.
10.—Mark whether or no telling passages fail; if they do, find out why afterwards.
11.—Wait till the laugh has quite subsided.
12.—If you see you have got hold of any particular part of the house, keep your eye on that part. This will encourage you.
13.—Remember, finally, that the most telling parts in good pieces are those in which you interpret the best thoughts in the best and quietest way; the whisper teaches more than the shout; the steady glance tells more than a badly-imitated maniac’s glare. You must always be in a state of repression, as if you could do no more, but will not [sic: this is what appears on the website, but it's clear it should read "as if you could do more, but will not"].”

I’m intrigued about the table. What was its function, I wonder? Something for further exploration.

“Recitation: The Children’s Art”

To continue with the topic of recitation and education, here is an article by Arthur Burrell, “Recitation: The Children’s Art,” from The Parent’s Review 1 (1890-1): 92-103, edited by Charlotte M. Mason. The article is on a website dedicated to the writings and teaching philosophy and practices of Charlotte Maria Shaw Mason (1842-1923), a British teacher and educational writer. Her works include Home Education (1886), A Liberal Education for All: The Scope of Continuation Schools (1919) and An Essay towards a Philosophy of Education (1923). (For more about Mason, see Barbara Caine, “Mason, Charlotte Maria Shaw (1842–1923),” rev., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com]).

Burrell’s article starts with a complaint that children are ‘natural’ reciters, but this ability is ruined through bad examples of recitation at school, home and church. In discussing the usefulness of recitation, he offers an interesting description of the exchange between the reciter and his/her audience, and a plea for recitation’s importance for the appreciation of literature:

“So magical is the power of a good reader that he can convey to an audience shades of meaning in his author which he himself does not suspect. Again and again a face in a hall will light up at some touch conveyed by a tone or a glance, and the very speaker will thank his hearers for lessons. As it would be with a picture, if by some unknown mechanism it could absorb the fancies of the faces that read its meaning, so it may be with the owner of a voice. More receptive than the mere canvas, the reciter watches the approving and disapproving glance; he sees the sympathy and he feels the silence; his audience may be receiving a lesson, but they are assuredly giving one.

And if such appreciation can be born when a good reader and a good audience meet, is it not worse than madness for us to look on English literature as mere work for the study, mere dictionary stuff? It was meant to be interpreted by the voice of life; there is only half the passion in the printed page. If there were more good reading round English firesides, do you suppose that the masterpieces of English thought would be studied, as they often are, merely with an eye to the examiners’ certificate?”