bands of metal.

66

'Magics, magics everywhere," mimed the little Prince of the Lone Star.

From time to time I explained a gesture for the benefit of the audience, most of whom had never seen a mime before. But except in a few cases, where our signs conventional appeared, the spectators assured me they were able to follow it all quite easily without interpretation. And why not? For I, the intrepreter, had myself never seen these particular gestureexpressions in use before. However strange all this may seem, however remotely connected with what is ordinarily regarded as educational method, I feel it to be important that the incidents of this out-of-school play should be described as they actually happened. Here was a room divided in two by a curtain, now drawn open. On one side, in the dark, sat a group of men, women, and boys, and on the lighted side stood this boy of twelve in a green cloak and with a brass circlet on his head. In his hand was an undecorated drinking-horn, and without using any words the boy, by his skill in the art of expressive gesture, was keeping the whole company of onlookers thoroughly interested and highly amused by his fearful discovery of totally imaginary demons pictured upon the drinking-horn. The more we laughed the more ready was the little prince to discover further shapes of sorcery. His crowning touch was the finding of a little grinning gargoyle at the very tip of the horn at the moment of the lady's re-entrance. At once he hushed his apprehensive soliloquy and became a model of courtesy, though wary still.

The inexperience of the lady-player as a mimist, and the backwardness of the boy-player because he did not quite know how to set about making love to her, rendered the rest of this scene rather weak as a stage in the story. In fact I had to break silence at this point to give a spoken direction. But if the two had rehearsed together a few times, this scene would soon have become the best in the play, for the lady and the Littleman would not have been long in coming to intimate terms with one another.

The rest of the mime requires no particular description. The elder brother, Prince of the Three Stars, after some peeping and skirmishing behind the curtains, made a dash into the

chamber, smote his younger brother, seized the cup from his hands, and fled. The scene of the wonderful cure, wherein the lady, assisted by the page, brewed magic charms in a smoking cauldron, was played in a dim light and was quite effective. But, as there was little speech-gesture in it, this scene had no especial virtue as part of a mime. I told the players afterwards that a cinema could have done as much. For the rest, as time was now growing short, the players briefly followed the directions I had given at the start. The Prince of the Three Stars was exposed before the king, his father, just as he was about to drink off a bumper of wine from the golden cup. He was ignominiously banished; and the Prince of the Lone Star and his magic lady were received as the rightful heirs to the kingdom. May they live happily ever after.

The mime of the Golden Cup lasted fully three-quarters of an hour, with none of those London intervals between the scenes. Thus did the Littlemen spend the evening, after we had persuaded the lady director of the singing that it was too wet to go out on a round of carols. It was not by any means that we did not love to go trooping round the town and singing folk-carols by the light of swinging lanterns. But one has moods.

In connexion with performances such as the one just described, the boys might be encouraged to make short ballads for miming. There are, unfortunately, no examples of the boys' work in this; but the following verses which I made to fill a chap-book will perhaps afford some hints. There is, however, no plot in this. It is rather an exercise in simple stage design than a story.

KING ROLDO AND HIS LITTLE PAGE

Mister came forth in a purple gown

Before the green curtain,

He bowed and told us some of his play,
Then he went in again.

There came two little beadles

And drew the curtain back;

The stage was grey with purple hangings,

And the walls dead black.

The king came out in a crimson cloak
With a crown upon his head;
He called to him his little wee page
He hearken what he said.

The page he did him in a purple tunic,
Bordered it was of gold;

Courteous he bowed and seemed right quick
To do as the king him told.

The king he bade bring a taper
And a bowl of wine to drink ;
And soon he called for a parchment
And a pen and a horn of ink.

And he wrote a proclamation

To the folk of his meadow-land;

And ever the page in his gold and purple
Stood fair at his right hand.

The king he sipped of the bowl and thought, And anon he wrote a line,

Till the whole was writ and he put his seal And finished the bowl of wine.

And the king he read it over,
And nodded upon the scroll;
And the page blew out the taper
And took up the empty bowl.

And the king stood up in his crimson,
And went forth out of the hall;
And the little page followed him after
So the place was empty all.

CHAPTER IX

PLAYMAKING

Play out the Play.-FALSTAFF

THE chapters on the Acting of Shakespeare and on Miming the traditional ballads have sufficiently shown how young boys can be taught to appreciate literature in dramatic form. In connexion with those studies certain elements of play construction were mentioned, such as the alternation of scenes, the excellent craftsmanship of suiting the word to the action, and the necessity of making the plot self-explanatory without adventitious aids. We are now to consider how the boys may put into practice what they have learnt, in the making of original plays.

But in this chapter we must also consider the necessity of setting a high standard of literary workmanship. When the boys are acting Shakespeare all the poetry is waiting for them; they have only to appreciate its worth and give due expression to it. But in playmaking the plot and the poetry and the acting have all to be fashioned by the boys themselves. It is therefore necessary for the master to set before them the very best material and models, and to keep their work up to a high standard of literary taste.

Now as touching originality, it is, I think, a mistake to encourage boys to invent the story and characters for themselves. They will be too apt to lay the scene in the cellar of a London bank, or in a Wild West cañon, or in the boarding-house of a public school; and to choose for their protagonist a detective, or a bushranger, or one of those caricatures of boyhood who strut and fret their hour in magazines written for schoolboys, and then are heard no more. This side of the boys' interests should not by any means be neglected in school-work. But

we have always found place for the crude expression of this youthful taste in preliminary exercises, and in "asides " from the main business. In the oral exercises, for instance, with which our study of prose composition began-soliloquy, description, narrative, and dialogue—the boys were not only permitted but encouraged to choose subjects which had an immediate interest for them. There were at first no restrictions. The main purpose was that the boys should exercise themselves in "oral composition" of some kind, until they should become ready speakers. Early practice was not hampered by an exacting literary taste; nor was self-expression at first conditioned by the quest of "art forms." But after a time the boys came to feel the inadequacy and superficiality of their exercises based upon commonplace. They were then easily persuaded to use craft in selection and condensation. They began with some feeling to say things with an artistic intention, and to express where before they had been content to describe. The soliloquy of a man in a dentist's chair, or the description of a crowded railway station, were all very well as first exercises; but these preliminaries were succeeded by prose studies which had the merit of style.*

Similarly, in our miming experiments, after a few introductory lessons under the master's direction the boys were allowed to practise in exercises of their own devising for a week or two. The feeble mimes of the Shoeing Forge and the Church Service have been mentioned, but there were many other boyish ventures of a similarly poor standard. But by following this natural course of gradual training we were able after a while to mime a whole ballad story as a play.

The same course should be followed in playmaking. Boys should not be plunged at once into the deeps of an expressive art without some preliminary paddling on the margin. A boy's desire to try his hand at some new thing without tiresome direction (vividly, if crudely, expressed in the words "Let's have a go!") may be allowed free play before sober and studious business is put under way. Football, a game played in obedience to strict rule, never begins without a free and easy kicking * For examples, and an account of a full course of lessons in prose composition by the play-method, see Perse Playbooks, No. 4.