TEACHERS OF SPEECH

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 84, 7 January 1928, Page 11

TEACHERS OF SPEECH

MR. JOHN MASEFIELD AS JUDGE. At the Society of Arts Rooms in London recently, Mr. John Masefield acted as judge iu the Senior and Upper Intermediate divisions in the annual versespeaking competition of the Association ot Teachers of Speech. The competition has special interest this year, which marks the twenty-first anniversary of the founding of the school. Air. Alasetield, in making his awards, took into consideration veijse interpretation, meaning, ami dramatic variety in ballad speaking, and criticised the competitors iu regard to sustained tone, clear marking of rhyme, quality in speech, and power of suggesting atmosphere. Commenting on the first pieces—selected for competitors between fourteen and seventeen years of age—the composite Scottish ballad, "Fair Margaret’’—he said it was originally a mixture of two or three well-known ballads, which the poet had run together to suit, his own fancy. There were other and better versions, which had much more of the story about the fair Margaret; but <*.at particular version canre into print about a hundred years ago. It had been wandering about in the imagination of the Scottish people long after it was originally made, and the feeling for ghosts had faded, and Calvinism bad become a ruling passion. He thought that a good Scottish ballad poet would have made his poem about the deadly sins which the Fair Alargaret committed, or were committed for her sake; and a second-best Scottish poet would have made a ballad about the beauty of the Fair Margaret. But this poet made it about morality. “And I think,” said Air. Alasefield, “that a poet bad better keep clear of morality . In their lives they often do.” (Laughter.) When he listened to the ballad, he felt that the poet was on the wrong side, and his own sympathies were on the side of the Fair Margaret all through. Tiie second piece selected for competition was Milton’s sonnet. “The Nightingale”; and for the seniors over seventeen years, the selection fell on Gray’s “Elegy” and John Keats’s Ode to Sleep.