Successful Recitations

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Successful Recitations

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Successful Recitations, by Various,
Edited by Alfred H. Miles
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Title: Successful Recitations
Author: Various
Editor: Alfred H. Miles
Release Date: December 22, 2005 [eBook #17378]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
SUCCESSFUL RECITATIONS***
E-text prepared by Roy Brown

SUCCESSFUL RECITATIONS
Edited by
ALFRED H. MILES
1901

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on
the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief
the town-crier spoke my lines."--Hamlet. SHAKESPEARE.

London: S. H. Bousfield & Co., Ld., Norfolk House, Norfolk Street
W.C. London: Printed by H. Virtue And Company, Limited. City Road.

PREFACE.
Many things go to the making of a successful recitation.
A clear aim and a simple style are among the first of these: the
subtleties which make the charm of much of the best poetry are lost in
all but the best platform work. The picturesque and the dramatic are
also essential elements; pictures are the pleasures of the eyes, whether
physical or mental, and incident is the very soul of interest.
The easiest, and therefore often the most successful, recitations are
those which recite themselves; that is, recitations so charged with the
picturesque or the dramatic elements that they command attention and
excite interest in spite of poor elocution and even bad delivery. The
trouble with these is that they are usually soon recognized, and once
recognized are soon done to death. There are pieces, too, which,
depending upon the charm of novelty, are popular or successful for a
time only, but there are also others which, vitalised by more enduring
qualities, are things of beauty and a "joy for ever."

But after all it is not the Editor who determines what are and what are
not successful recitations. It is time, the Editor of Editors, and the
public, our worthy and approved good masters. It is the public that has
made the selection which makes up the bulk of this volume, though the
Editor has added a large number of new and less known pieces which
he confidently offers for public approval. The majority of the pieces in
the following pages are successful recitations, the remainder can surely
be made so.
A.H.M.

THE ROYAL RECITER.

PREFATORY.
True Patriotism is the outcome of National home-feeling and
self-respect.
Home-feeling is born of the loving associations and happy memories
which belong to individual and National experience; self-respect is the
result of a wise and modest contemplation of personal or National
virtues.
The man who does not respect himself is not likely to command the
respect of others. And the Nation which takes no pride in its history is
not likely to make a history of which it can be proud.
But self-respect involves self-restraint, and no man who wishes to
retain his own respect and to merit the respect of others would think of
advertising his own virtues or bragging of his own deeds. Nor would
any Nation wishing to stand well in its own eyes and in the eyes of the
world boast of its own conquests over weaker foes or shout itself
hoarse in the exuberance of vainglory.
Patriotism is not to be measured by ostentation any more than truth is

to be estimated by volubility.
The history of England is full of incidents in which her children may
well take an honest pride, and no one need be debarred from taking a
pride in them because there are other incidents which fill them with a
sense of shame. As a rule it will be found that the sources of pride
belong to the people themselves, and that the sources of shame belong
to their rulers. It would be difficult to find words strong enough to
condemn the campaign of robbery and murder conducted by the Black
Prince against the peaceful inhabitants of Southern France in 1356, but
it would be still more difficult to do justice to the magnificent pluck
and grit which enabled 8,000 Englishmen at Poitiers to put to flight no
less than 60,000 of the chosen chivalry of France. The wire-pullers of
state-craft have often worked with ignoble aims, but those who suffer
in the working out of political schemes often sanctify the service by
their self-sacrifice. There is always Glory at the cannon's mouth.
In these days when the word Patriot is used both as