Page:Shakespeare in the Class-Room, Weld, Shakespeariana, October 1886.djvu/8

444 Why not? What we see stirs us more than what we hear. It sinks deeper, stays longer and, and suggests more. While voice reveals thought and feeling in sound alone,—posture, attitude, gesture, manifold action, with expressions of face and feature diversified in countless phases, reveal them in lines, shapes, figures, hues and pictures, in lights and shades vastly more multiform. As thought and feeling reveal in voice their own sounds, so in gesture, posture and attitude they reveal their own shapes.

Why should these last be all ignored in our system, while the former are strictly enjoined? "What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." He has so blended mind with body, that earnest thought and feeling express themselves, not only by the tongue, but by the entire person. The eye speaks as well as the tongue and better too; clearer, louder, softer, more ravishing, awe inspiring and sublime. What fore-ground, play-ground and battle-ground, has the mind like that of the human face? Let one's soul be but kindled, and how light breaks, and fires flash from the dilated form. Then posture, gesture, presence, the head, the hand, the planted foot, the bearing, the whole person become mind visible, at once its glowing focus, and its flaming radiator.

I advocate then an adequate provision in our higher schools for the due education of the dramatic as well as the other powers of the pupils.

I advocate its development, not merely as a relaxation to relieve the monotony of study, and give zest to the intervals of sterner work, nor as a graceful accomplishment, giving ease, elegance, and dignity to manners—nor yet as an innocent and beautiful amusement, adding to the attractions of home, though in each of these respects it does invaluable service; nor do I advocate it for ostentatious display on days of, so called, public exhibition, but I plead for it as a most salutary, greatly needed, and almost utterly neglected mental discipline and culture. This neglect is the greater marvel because the dramatic art is initiatory to all art—the natural pioneer to each.

Seventh. Again, the study of Shakespeare stimulates general mental activity, luring almost constraining the pupil into habits of vigorous thought. The tendency of the pupil to slug and drone, is to the earnest teacher his "gorgon dire," seeming sometimes a very demoniacal possession, defying exorcism. If the demon be not deaf, dumb, blind, and besotted, as well as dead asleep, Shakespeare taught as he should be could hardly fail to cast the monster out.

His page is ever astir and aglow—thought quivers and flashes—pulses throb, and life leaps along the lines. Thoroughly plied with such forces, and inspirited by a skillful teacher, the pupils mind must be a marvel of matter, if not inspired to mental activity.

Eighth. Further, I advocate the study of Shakespeare in our higher schools because nothing in our literature so tends to beget in youth an earnest love of nature. In the good time coming to education, that