And dare me to the desert with thy sword; The baby of a girl. Hence, horrible shadow, Instructions for acquiring low Tones of Voice, As few voices are perfect,-those which have a good bottom often wanting a top, and inversely, care should be taken to improve by practice that part of the voice which is most deficient: for instance; if we want to gain a bottom, we ought to practise speeches which require exertion, a little below the common pitch; when we can do this with ease, we may practise them on a little lower note, and so on till we are as low as we desire; for this purpose, it will be necessary to repeat such passages as require a full, audible tone of voice in a low key: of this kind are those which contain hatred, scorn, or reproach; such as the following from Shakspeare, where Lady Macbeth reproaches her husband with want of manliness: O proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fears: A woman's story, at a winter's fire, Authoris'd by her grandam. Shame itself! You look but on a stool. Or when Lady Constance, in King John, re proaches the Duke of Austria with want of Courage and spirit: -Thou slave! thou wretch! thou coward! Thou ever strong upon the stronger side! To teach thee safety! Thou art perjur'd too, Thou wear a lion's hide! Doff it for shame, Or where the Duke of Suffolk, in Henry the Sixth, curses the objects of his hatred: Poison be their drink, Gall, worse than gall, the daintiest meat they taste; Instructions for acquiring high Tones of Voice. WHEN We would strengthen the voice in a higher note, it will be necessary to practise such passages as require a high tone of voice; and if we find the voice grow thin, or approach to a squeak upon the high note, it will be proper to swell the voice a little below this high note, and to give it force and audibility, by throwing it into a sameness of tone approaching the monotone. A passage in the Oration of Demosthenes on the Crown will be an excellent praxis on this tone: What was the part of a faithful citizen? of a prudent, an active, and honest minister? Was he not to secure Eubœa, as our defence against all attacks by sea? Was he not to make Boeotia our barrier on the midland side? the cities bordering on Peloponnesus our bulwark on that quarter? Was he not to attend with due precaution to the importation of corn, that this trade might be protected through all its progress up to our own harbour? Was he not to cover those districts which we commanded by seasonable detachments, as the Proconesus, the Chersonesus, and Tenedos? to exert himself in the assembly for this purpose? while with equal zeal he laboured to gain others to our interest and alliance, as Byzantium, Abydos, and Euboea? Was he not to cut off the best and most important resources of our enemies, and to sup ply those in which our country was defective?And all this you gained by my counsels and my administration. Leland's Demosthenes on the Crown. It will naturally occur to every judicious reader, that this series of questions ought to rise gradually in force as they proceed, and therefore it will be necessary to keep the voice under at the beginning; to which this observation may be added, that as the rising inflexion ought to be adopted on each question, the voice will be very apt to get too high near the end; for which purpose it will be necessary to swell the voice a little below its highest pitch; and if we cannot rise with ease and clearness on every particular to the last, we ought to augment the force on each, that the whole may form a species of climax. Instructions for the Management of the Voice. As the voice naturally slides into a higher tone, when we want to speak louder, but not so easily into a lower tone, when we would speak more softly; the first care of every reader and speaker ought to be to acquire a power of lowering the voice when it is got too high. Experi ence shows us, that we can raise our voice at pleasure to any pitch it is capable of; but the same experience tells us, that it requires infinite art and practice to bring the voice to a lower key when it is once raised too high. It ought therefore to be a first principle with all public readers and speakers, rather to begin under the common level of their voice than above it. Every one, therefore, who would acquire a variety of tone in public reading or speaking, must avoid, as the greatest evil, à loud and vociferous beginning; and for that purpose it would be prudent in a reader or speaker to adapt his voice as if only to be heard by the person who is nearest to him: if his voice has natural strength, and the subject any thing impassioned in it, a higher and louder tone will insensibly steal on him; and his greatest address must be directed to keeping it within bounds. For this purpose, it will be frequently necessary for him to recall his voice, as it were, from the extremities of his auditory, and direct it to those who are nearest to him. This it will be proper to do almost at the beginning of every paragraph in reading, and at the introduction of every part of the subject in discourse. Nothing will so powerfully work on the voice, as supposing ourselves conversing at different intervals with different parts of the auditory. If, in the course of reading, the voice should slide into a higher tone, and this tone should too often recur, care must be taken to throw in a variety, by beginning subsequent sentences in a lower tone, and, if the subject will admit of it, in a monotone; for the monotone, it is presumed, is the most efficacious means of bringing the voice from high to low, and of altering it when it has been too long in the same key. This may appear paradoxical to those who have not studied the subject; but if every sentence begins high and ends low, or inversely, though the sentences singly considered will have a variety, yet, if considered collectively, they will have a sameness; so, by commencing sometimes with a monotone, though this monotone may have a sameness, yet, as associated with other tones, it will certainly augment the variety. Grand, solemn, awful subjects, admit best of the monotone: a beautiful example of this offers itself in Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination, on power of Novelty : the What need words To paint its pow'r? For this the daring youth To him who robb'd the widow, and devour'd At ev'ry solemn pause the crowd recoil, Each trembling heart with grateful terrors quell'd. |