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Public Speaking. Clarence Stratton
Читать онлайн.Название Public Speaking
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isbn 4057664642684
Автор произведения Clarence Stratton
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Bookwire
Justin McCarthy: History of Our Own Time
In American history the greatest speeches were made by Abraham Lincoln. In Cooper Union, New York, he made in 1860 the most powerful speech against the slave power. The New York Tribune the next day printed this description of his manner.
Mr. Lincoln is one of nature's orators, using his rare powers solely to elucidate and convince, though their inevitable effect is to delight and electrify as well. We present herewith a very full and accurate report of this speech; yet the tones, the gestures, the kindling eye, and the mirth-provoking look defy the reporter's skill. The vast assemblage frequently rang with cheers and shouts of applause, which were prolonged and intensified at the close. No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience.
Shakespeare's Advice. Some of the best advice for speakers was written by Shakespeare as long ago as just after 1600, and although it was intended primarily for actors, its precepts are just as applicable to almost any kind of delivered discourse. Every sentence of it is full of significance for a student of speaking. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is airing his opinions about the proper manner of speaking upon the stage.
HAMLET'S SPEECH
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke 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-shows 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 unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the 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, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.
Oh, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready.
EXERCISES
1. 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff.
2. The first sip of love is pleasant; the second, perilous; the third, pestilent.
3. Our ardors are ordered by our enthusiasms.
4. She's positively sick of seeing her soiled, silk, Sunday dress.
5. The rough cough and hiccough plowed me through.
6. She stood at the gate welcoming him in.
7. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion.
8. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers: if Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where is the peck of pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked?
9. Theophilus Thistle, the thistle-sifter, sifted a sieve of unsifted thistles. If Theophilus Thistle, the thistle-sifter, sifted a sieve of unsifted thistles, where is the sieve of unsifted thistles that Theophilus Thistle, the thistle-sifter, sifted?
10.Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea!
11.The splendor falls on castle walls,
And snowy summits old in story.
12.Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.
13.The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmurings of innumerable bees.
14. The Ladies' Aid ladies were talking about a conversation they had overheard, before the meeting, between a man and his wife.
"They must have been at the Zoo," said Mrs. A.; "because I heard her mention 'a trained deer.'"
"Goodness me!" laughed Mrs. B. "What queer hearing you must have! They were talking about going away, and she said, 'Find out about the train, dear.'"
"Well, did anybody ever!" exclaimed Mrs. C. "I am sure they were talking about musicians, for she said, 'a trained ear,' as distinctly as could be."
The discussion began to warm up, and in the midst of it the lady herself appeared. They carried the case to her promptly, and asked for a settlement.
"Well, well, you do beat all!" she exclaimed, after hearing each one. "I'd been out in the country overnight and was asking my husband if it rained here last night."
15.
Learning condemns beyond the reach of hope
The careless lips that speak of sŏap for soap;
Her edict exiles from her fair abode
The clownish voice that utters rŏad for road;
Less stern to him who calls his coat a cŏat,
And steers his boat believing it a bŏat.
She pardoned one, our classic city's boast,
Who said at Cambridge, mŏst instead of most,
But knit her brows and stamped her angry foot
To hear a Teacher call a root a rŏot.
16.
Hear the tolling of the bells—
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people—ah, the people—
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone—
They are neither man nor woman—
They are neither brute nor human—
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls