Theatre-goers will have deep cause io thank Mr. Bernard Shaw if his slashing attack on the bad speaking prevalent in the theatre to-day brings an improvement C.B.5. had sent a written message to a conference of the Association of Teachers of Speech and Drama at University College. Here are some extracts:
"N you want to hear slovenly speech "that" conveys nothing tothe Unfortunate' audience, and wastes the labour of the author the theatre alone can provide you wh it "There are dramatic schools all over the place; and yet to-day all the professions speak English better for Buble purposes that the "dramatic murdered the Liturgy so scandalounly "About 50 years ago the der that I protested "publicly a candidate for Holy Orders Being. ordained until he. the difference Between a Collect and a gargle.
"The only technically perfect speak-ex in those days was Queen, Victoria, Mere would probably "deserts ers would probably de The "parsonic voice" has now almost disappeared; political tub-thumpers "may talk nothing but nonsense but at least they articulate clearly" telephone girls "speak so deary that they are not only eficient but peremptory and terri the "ineatre) is that our dramatic One reason (for slovenly speech i schools and our producers are so distracted by the other aris which the theatre exercises—the "lighting, me colouring, the dressing and the, stage fashion in. wi "express Sionism" and "which mostly, nothing but sheer, folly-that they Rave no time left for the central art of speech on which all plays that have any brains in them depend."
These charges are perfectly true, The contrast between the average actor and actress and such speakers as John Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft, Ralph Richardson, Charles Laughton, Diana Wynyard and the few remaining members of the old Benson Company is appalling. I don't attempt to conceal the fact that I can't hear as well as I once could, but my daughters, who have ears like a hare and who would naturally support their own generation, fully bear me out. Of course it is. not a question of shouting; Miss Ellis Jeffreys could make a whisper run all round the house; but of elocution, of "making consonants come like pistol as Forbes Robertson used to Most theatrical artists now seem ave, not consonants, but months full of balled potatoes. handle the despatch of trains.
Mo bridge seems to have been damaged. I observed one that had been bombed four times, fifteen bombs falling very near, but the long bridge was still intact and trains passing over it. Occasionally a rail is hit and twisted but it is rapidly replaced and the trains go on. Locomotives seem specially difficult to hit from the air.
Macadam roads have been built, even near the present fighting lines. They are the best roads I have yet seen in the interior, and of course were built for military purposes. Large numbers of well equipped troops from the far west are going steadily to the front.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.