DRAMATIC ART

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 138, 9 December 1930, Page 8

DRAMATIC ART

(To the Editor.) Sir,—On the 25th November there appeared in "The Post" a notice about the programme presented by my students at their annual recital, and I should like, with your permission, to make a few comments on that criticism. It is suggested therein tbut the characters 'of Dickens should be given a rest. 1 should like to point out that in. all leading _ academies of dramatic art at Home it is essential for all students to take the characters oi Dickens as part of their studies, for, since Shakespeare, no author has given us bettor studies of mankind. No less an authority that the Professor of English. Literature at the Cambridge XJal versity made the following statement re ceutly: "If it comes to the mere wonderwork of genius the creation of men and women on a page of paper who are actually more real to us than our daily acquaintances, as companionable in a crowd as even our best selected friends, as indir vidual as the most eccentric we know, yet as universal as humanity itself, I do not see what English writer we can choose to put second to Shakespeare other than Charles Dickens. Your critic was also amazed at the make-up of Mark Antony in Julius Caesar, Having toured the world as a character actor and elocutionist under engagement to the leading managers in the various parts of the Empire (and being specially noted for my ability in the art of makeup), I should like to point out that Antony's make-up was traditionally correct, although, like the firing of the gun at Elsinore in Shakespeare's "Hamlet," it is a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance. I am also quite aware th.it Dickens made Fagin, the Jew, a red-bearded man, but this is not necessarily characteristic of the Hebrew race. Theu, us to the reference to those "awful monologues," might I say that I have kaown very intelligent people who have a great appreciation for this form of entertainment, and it is true that the art of the monologist is indeed an art. ■ The characters of Shakespeare- and Dickens supply the foundation of dramatic art as far as the English literature is concerned; if anyone can tell me of any other author from whom 1 can better teach a. student the art of dramatic expression and character work I shall be delighted to know him, but, as the dean of a famous Cathedral once said of a new religion, "Until we find something better than what we nave by all means let us hold on to what we have got." I greatly fear that if we disregard the works of Dickens and Shakespeare in teaching the art of dramatic expression and characterisation the art of the drama will be poor indeed. It is poor enough now, as that grand old artist, the late Dion Bouceicault, said in his farewell speech in Wellington. Again your commentator was surprised, and almost annoyed, that the Poet Laureate was not represented on the programme, which contained selections from such authors as J. M. Barrie, John Drinkwater, A. A. Milne, Dickens, and Shakespeare. Surely that is representative enough. It was said by the old masters, Give a student a good grounding in Shakespeare and Dickens, and, granting he has a fair knowledge of the Bible, he need not worry about any other author, for in those works he will be tausht to understand all characters." There is too much "elocuting' in which naturalness is destroyed, in fact, it is the horror of the so-called word "elocution" that prevents many a person from studying the art of speaking. It is my opinion, and not mine only, that lifeless elocution has done more.to kill the worts of Shakespeare than anything else, for it robs the characters of all mentality, form, and life. Not only does the elocutionist elocute, he electrocutes, and there is no character, merely a succession of words. This art cannot be learned through the cold medium of books, there is only one school, the cold hard school of experience, only one book, humanity, and one author, the Creator.—l am, etc., • . CLEMENT MAY.