"PURE ENGLISH."

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3039, 23 March 1881, Page 4

"PURE ENGLISH."

A DXI _>'(._ OL> AMKBICAN PBCCNTCfCIATION,

A writer in the London Daily News says : In your interesting article upon Shakespeare played by foreign actors you remark that "Americanintonations and modulations are, amongst the educated, the chief points of difference from English people in speaking their common tongue." And you add : " How far these may affect our estimate of Mr Booth's acting of Shakespeare remains to be seen." "In this case," you say, "you may look for more particularity and elaborate care in his pronunciation than we are generally accustomed to." In Mr Booth's case you will certainly find particularity and elaborate care in anything he does, and you will also find some slight difference, though not much, in intonation and pronunciation from that to which we are accustomed on the English stage. Whether his performance of " Hamlet" the approval here which it has will »_ " United States and Canada done in to* '" 1,; le it will probably remains to be s66il i >*-_ ' l ° if he plays be admitted that in certain p»j-_. "> of themj—" lago," for instance, as ov»w them—it would be difficult indeed to excel him. But is tt not open to question whether a difference in intonation or modulation should be an element in determining the merits of an American actor s performance ? The strong Continentalisms of Feehter and Stella Colas, to whom you allude, undoubtedly greatly marred their performance of Shakespeare, though the genius of Feehter enabled him for a long time to contend with the difficulties he could not overcome ; hut in tho case of an American actor it does not seem to be quite as open to take exeception to any difference in intonation between an Englishman and an American is not greater than between two educated persons natives of different parts of the British Isles ; that even if they were all alike, their intonation and modulation would differ from that of their grandfathers; that as Shakespeare is a classic common to Englishmen and Americans, changes of intonation and modulation in the language in which his playes were written are faults, and that the fashion that may at the moment be current in England is not, therefore, the standard by which all affiliated nations should be measured. There are 50,000,000 people on the American continent, and several millions in Australasia, besides the greater part of 30,000,000 at home, who all speak the English language with a different intonation or modulation from that accepte d by the cultured of England, and it cannot quite be said that this circumstance renders imperative the establishment of a standard for the i preservation of pure English, because,_ both lin speaking and'writing, that which is received as pure English is constantly changing. It is not infrequently believed tbat many so-called "Yankee" words and expressions are inventions of Americans, and are laughed at as American slang, whereas ;in most cases they are old English terms j that have fallen into desuetude here, but have been preserved over there. As an example, the expression, "It is too thin," 1 applied to a statement not calculated to be successful in deceiving any one, is here _ re- , garded as a horrible piece of " American slang," and yet I find it used in the same sense by Shakspeare, and in the mouth of no less a person than the King of England (Henry VII). Many other expressions might be mentioned if necessary. Mr Booth, if he had occasion to mention a certain vessel, will say a " vase," instead of a "vahse" ; if he has to speak of a person's anger, he will say '• wrath," instead of '• rorth," as we hear it so often in England ; and if he abbreviates the expression declari ing inability he will say " can't" instead of ' " carn'V An examination of the whole : subject might give color to the claim preferred by the cultured in America that they use purer English than the majority of educated persons in England. I am very far from offering an opinion on such a subject ; all that I desire to say is that it would seen not only fairer and more generous to a stranger, but more logical, to judge Mrlßooth's performances, or those of an American, by their artistic and scholarly merits without allowing any slight • peculiarity of nationality to bias our judgment.