The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Art of Story-Telling, by Marie L. Shedlock This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: The Art of Story-Telling Author: Marie L. Shedlock Commentator: Professor John Adams Release Date: February 8, 2020 [EBook #61340] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ART OF STORY-TELLING *** Produced by MFR, Eleni Christofaki and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) Transcriber's Note. A list of the changes made can be found at the end of the book. THE ART OF STORY- TELLING cover title THE ART OF STORY-TELLING By MARIE L. SHEDLOCK WITH A PREFACE BY Professor JOHN ADAMS CHAIR OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1915 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CONTENTS. PAGE Preface vii Introduction 1 Chapter I. The Difficulties of Story-Telling connected with Libraries and Clubs 6 ” II. The Essentials of Story-Telling 25 ” III. The Artifices of Story-Telling 32 ” IV. Elements to Avoid 42 ” V. Elements to Seek 61 ” VI. How to Obtain and Maintain the Effect 89 ” VII. Questions and Answers 117 ” VIII. List of Stories Told in Full 138 List of Titles of Individual Stories and of Collections of Stories 210 Index 235 PREFACE. By Professor John Adams, Chair of Education, University of London. Those who do not love schoolmasters tell us that the man who can do something supremely well contents himself with doing it, while the man who cannot do it very well must needs set about showing other people how it should be done. The masters in any craft are prone to magnify their gifts by maintaining that the poet—or the stove-pipe maker—is born, not made. Teachers will accordingly be gratified to find in the following pages the work of a lady who is at the same time a brilliant executant and an admirable expositor. Miss Shedlock stands in the very first rank of story- tellers. No one can claim with greater justice that the gift of Scheherazade is hers by birthright. Yet she has recognised that even the highest natural gifts may be well or ill manipulated: that in short the poet, not to speak of the stove-pipe maker, must take a little more trouble than to be merely born. It is well when the master of a craft begins to take thought and to discover what underlies his method. It does not, of course, happen that every master is able to analyse the processes that secure him success in his art. For after all the expositor has to be born as well as the executant; and it is perhaps one of the main causes of the popularity of the born-not-made theory that so few people are born both good artists and good expositors. Miss Shedlock has had this rare good fortune, as all those who have both read her book and heard her exemplify her principles on the platform will readily admit. Let no one who lacks the gift of story-telling hope that the following pages will confer it. Like Comenius and like the schoolmaster in Shakespeare, Miss Shedlock is entitled to claim a certain capacity or ingenuity in her pupils, before she can promise effective help. But on the other hand let no successful story-teller form the impression that he has nothing to learn from the exposition here given. The best craftsmen are those who are not only most able but most willing to learn from a fellow master. The most inexperienced story-teller who has the love of the art in his soul will gather a full harvest from Miss Shedlock's teaching, while the most experienced and skilful will not go empty away. The reader will discover that the authoress is first and last an artist. “Dramatic joy” is put in the forefront when she is enumerating the aims of the story-teller. But her innate gifts as a teacher will not be suppressed. She objects to “didactic emphasis” and yet cannot say too much in favour of the moral effect that may be produced by the use of the story. She raises here the whole problem of direct versus indirect moral instruction, and decides in no uncertain sound in favour of the indirect form. There is a great deal to be said on the other side, but this is not the place to say it. On the wide question Miss Shedlock has on her side the great body of public opinion among professional teachers. The orthodox master proclaims that he is, of course, a moral instructor, but adds that in the schoolroom the less said about the matter the better. Like the authoress, the orthodox teacher has much greater faith in example than in precept: so much faith indeed that in many schools precept does not get the place it deserves. But in the matter of story-telling the artistic element introduces something that is not necessarily involved in ordinary school work. For better or for worse modern opinion is against the explicitly stated lesson to be drawn from any tale that is told. Most people agree with Mark Twain's condemnation of “the moral that wags its crippled tail at the end of most school-girls' essays.” The justification of the old-fashioned “moral” was not artistic but didactic. It embodied the determination of the story-teller to see that his pupils got the full benefit of the lesson involved. If the moral is to be cut vii viii ix out, the story-teller must be sure that the lesson is so clearly conveyed in the text that any further elaboration would be felt as an impertinent addition. Whately assures us that men prefer metaphors to similes because in the simile the point is baldly stated, whereas in the metaphor the reader or hearer has to be his own interpreter. All education is in the last resort self-education, and Miss Shedlock sees to it that her stories compel her hearers to make the application she desires. In two other points modern opinion is prepared to give our authoress rein where our forefathers would have been inclined to restrain her. The sense of humour has come to its proper place in our schoolrooms—pupils' humour, be it understood, for there always was scope enough claimed for the humour of the teacher. So with the imagination. The time is past when this “mode of being conscious” was looked at askance in school. Parents and teachers no longer speak contemptuously about “the busy faculty,” and quote Genesis in its condemnation. Miss Shedlock has been well advised to keep to her legitimate subject instead of wandering afield in a Teutonic excursion into the realms of folk- lore. What parents and teachers want is the story as here and now existing and an account of how best to manipulate it. This want the book now before us admirably meets. JOHN ADAMS. x INTRODUCTION. Story-telling is almost the oldest Art in the world—the first conscious form of literary communication. In the East it still survives, and it is not an uncommon thing to see a crowd at a street-corner held by the simple narration of a story. There are signs in the West of a growing interest in this ancient art, and we may yet live to see the renaissance of the troubadours and the minstrels whose appeal will then rival that of the mob orator or itinerant politician. One of the surest signs of a belief in the educational power of the story is its introduction into the curriculum of the Training-College and the classes of the Elementary and Secondary Schools. It is just at the time when the imagination is most keen—the mind being unhampered by accumulation of facts—that stories appeal most vividly and are retained for all time. It is to be hoped that some day stories will only be told to school groups by experts who have devoted special time and preparation to the art of telling them. It is a great fallacy to suppose that the systematic study of story-telling destroys the spontaneity of narrative. After a long experience, I find the exact converse to be true, namely, that it is only when one has overcome the mechanical difficulties that one can “let oneself go” in the dramatic interest of the story. By the expert story-teller I do not mean the professional elocutionist. The name—wrongly enough—has become associated in the mind of the public with persons who beat their breast, tear their hair, and declaim blood-curdling episodes. A decade or more ago, the drawing-room reciter was of this type, and was rapidly becoming the bugbear of social gatherings. The difference between the stilted reciter and the simple story- teller is perhaps best illustrated by an episode in Hans C. Andersen's immortal story of the Nightingale.[1] The real Nightingale and the artificial Nightingale have been bidden by the Emperor to unite their forces and to sing a duet at a Court function. The duet turns out most disastrously, and whilst the artificial Nightingale is singing his one solo for the thirty-third time, the real Nightingale flies out of the window back to the green wood —a true artist, instinctively choosing his right atmosphere. But the bandmaster—symbol of the pompous pedagogue—in trying to soothe the outraged feelings of the courtiers, says, “Because, you see, Ladies and Gentlemen, and, above all, Your Imperial Majesty, with the real nightingale you never can tell what you will hear, but in the artificial nightingale everything is decided beforehand. So it is, and so it must remain. It cannot be otherwise.” And as in the case of the two nightingales, so it is with the stilted reciter and the simple narrator: one is busy displaying the machinery, showing “how the tunes go”—the other is anxious to conceal the art. Simplicity should be the keynote of story-telling, but (and here the comparison with the Nightingale breaks down) it is a simplicity which comes after much training in self-control, and much hard work in overcoming the difficulties which beset the presentation. I do not mean that there are not born story-tellers who could hold an audience without preparation, but they are so rare in number that we can afford to neglect them in our general consideration; for this work is dedicated to the average story-tellers anxious to make the best use of their dramatic ability, and it is to them that I present my plea for special study and preparation before telling a story to a group of children—that is, if they wish for the far-reaching effects I shall speak of later on. Only the preparation must be of a much less stereotyped nature than that by which the ordinary reciters are trained for their career. Some years ago, when I was in the States, I was asked to put into the form of lectures my views upon the educational value of telling stories. A sudden inspiration seized me. I began to cherish a dream of long hours to 1 2 3 be spent in the British Museum, the Congressional Library in Washington and the Public Library at Boston—and this is the only portion of the dream which has been realized. I planned an elaborate scheme of research work which was to result in a magnificent (if musty) philological treatise. I thought of trying to discover by long and patient researches what species of lullaby were crooned by Egyptian mothers to their babes, and what were the elementary dramatic poems in vogue among Assyrian nursemaids which were the prototypes of “Little Jack Horner,” “Dickory, Dickory Dock,” and other nursery classics. I intended to follow up the study of these ancient documents by making an appendix of modern variants, showing what progress we had made—if any—among modern nations. But there came to me suddenly one day the remembrance of a scene from Racine's “Plaideurs” in which the counsel for the defence, eager to show how fundamental is his knowledge, begins his speech:— “Before the Creation of the World”—And the Judge (with a touch of weariness tempered by humour) suggests:— “Let us pass on to the Deluge.” And thus I, too, have “passed on to the Deluge.” I have abandoned an account of the origin and past of stories which at the best would only have displayed a little recently-acquired book-knowledge. When I thought of the number of scholars who could treat this part of the question so infinitely better than myself, I realized how much wiser it would be—though the task is much more humdrum—to deal with the present possibilities of story-telling for our generation of parents and teachers, and, leaving out the folk-lore side, devote myself to the story itself. My objects in urging the use of stories in the education of children are at least five-fold: First, to give them dramatic joy, for which they have a natural craving. Secondly, to develop a sense of humour, which is really a sense of proportion. Thirdly, to correct certain tendencies by showing the consequences in the career of the hero in the story. (Of this motive the children must be quite unconscious, and there must be no didactic emphasis.) Fourthly, by means of example, not precept, to present such ideals as will sooner or later (I care not which) be translated into action. Fifthly, to develop the imagination, which really takes in all the other points. So much for the purely educational side of the book. But the art of story-telling, quite apart from the subject, appeals not only to the educational world or to parents as parents, but also to a wider outside public, who may be interested in the purely human point of view. In great contrast to the lofty scheme I had originally proposed to myself, I now simply place before all those who are interested in the Art of Story- telling in any form the practical experience I have had in my travels across the United States and through England; and, because I am confining myself to personal experience which must of necessity be limited, I am very anxious not to appear dogmatic or to give the impression that I wish to lay down the law on the subject. But I hope my readers may profit by my errors, improve on my methods, and thus help to bring about the revival of an almost lost art—one which appeals more directly and more stirringly than any other method to the majority of listeners. In Sir Philip Sidney's “Defence of Poesy” we find these words: “Forsooth he cometh to you with a tale, which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner, and pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue even as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste.” MARIE L. SHEDLOCK. FOOTNOTES: 4 5 [1] See p. 138. [1] CHAPTER I. The Difficulties of the Story. I propose to deal in this chapter with the difficulties or dangers which beset the path of the Story-teller, because, until we have overcome these, we cannot hope for the finished and artistic presentation which is to bring out the full value of the story. The difficulties are many, and yet they ought not to discourage the would-be narrators, but only show them how all-important is the preparation for the story, if it is to have the desired effect. I propose to illustrate by concrete examples, thereby hoping to achieve a two-fold result: one to fix the subject more clearly in the mind of the student—the other to use the Art of Story-telling to explain itself. I have chosen one or two instances from my own personal experience. The grave mistakes made in my own case may serve as a warning to others, who will find, however, that experience is the best teacher. For positive work, in the long run, we generally find out our own method. On the negative side, however, it is useful to have certain pitfalls pointed out to us, in order that we may save time by avoiding them: it is for this reason that I sound a note of warning. These are:— I.—The danger of side issues. An inexperienced story-teller is exposed to the temptation of breaking off from the main dramatic interest in a short exciting story, in order to introduce a side issue, which is often interesting and helpful, but should be reserved for a longer and less dramatic story. If the interest turns on some dramatic moment, the action must be quick and uninterrupted, or it will lose half its effect. I had been telling a class of young children the story of Polyphemus and Ulysses, and, just at the most dramatic moment in it, some impulse prompted me to go off on a side issue to describe the personal appearance of Ulysses. The children were visibly bored, but with polite indifference they listened to my elaborate description of the hero. If I had given them an actual description from Homer, I believe that the strength of the language would have appealed to their imagination (all the more strongly because they might not have understood the individual words) and have lessened their disappointment at the dramatic issue being postponed; but I trusted to my own lame verbal efforts, and signally failed. Attention flagged, fidgeting began, the atmosphere was rapidly becoming spoiled, in spite of the patience and toleration still shown by the children. At last, however, one little girl in the front row, as spokeswoman for the class, suddenly said: “If you please, before you go any further, do you mind telling us whether, after all, that Poly ... (slight pause) that (final attempt) Polyanthus died?” Now, the remembrance of this question has been of extreme use to me in my career as a story-teller. I have realized that in a short dramatic story the mind of the listeners must be set at ease with regard to the ultimate fate of the special “Polyanthus” who takes the centre of the stage. I remember too the despair of a little boy at a dramatic representation of “Little Red Riding-Hood,” when that little person delayed the thrilling catastrophe with the Wolf, by singing a pleasant song on her way through the wood. “Oh, why,” said the little boy, “does she not get on?” And I quite shared his impatience. This warning is only necessary in connection with the short dramatic narrative. There are occasions when we can well afford to offer short descriptions for the sake of literary style, and for the purpose of enlarging the vocabulary of the child. I have found, however, in these cases, it is well to take the children into your confidence—warning them that they are to expect nothing particularly exciting in the way of dramatic event: they will 6 7 8 then settle down with a freer mind (though the mood may include a touch of resignation) to the description you are about to offer them.[2] II.—The danger of altering the story to suit special occasions. This is done sometimes from extreme conscientiousness, sometimes from sheer ignorance of the ways of children; it is the desire to protect them from knowledge which they already possess and with which they (equally conscientious) are apt to “turn and rend” the narrator. I remember once when I was telling the story of the siege of Troy to very young children, I suddenly felt anxious lest there should be anything in the story of the Rape of Helen not altogether suitable for the average age of the class—namely, nine years. I threw therefore, a domestic colouring over the whole subject, and presented an imaginary conversation between Paris and Helen, in which Paris tried to persuade Helen that she was a strong-minded woman, thrown away on a limited society in Sparta, and that she should come away and visit some of the institutions of the world with him, which would doubtless prove a mutually instructive journey.[3] I then gave the children the view taken by Herodotus that Helen never went to Troy, but was detained in Egypt. The children were much thrilled by the story, and responded most eagerly when, in my inexperience, I invited them to reproduce for the next day the tale I had just told them. A small child in the class presented me, as you will see, with the ethical problem from which I had so laboriously protected her. The essay ran: “Once upon a time the King of Troy's son was called Paris. And he went over to Greace to see what it was like. And here he saw the beautiful Helener, and likewise her husband Menelayus. And one day, Menelayus went out hunting, and left Paris and Helener alone, and Paris said: ‘Do you not feel dul in this palis?’ And Helener said: ‘I feel very dull in this pallice,[4] and Paris said: 'Come away and see the world with me.’ So they sliped off together, and they came to the King of Egypt, and he said: ‘Who is the young lady?’ So Paris told him. ‘But,’ said the King, ‘it is not propper for you to go off with other people's wifes. So Helener shall stop here.’ Paris stamped his foot. When Menelayus got home, he stamped his foot. And he called round him all his soldiers, and they stood round Troy for eleven years. At last they thought it was no use standing any longer, so they built a wooden horse in memory of Helener and the Trojans and it was taken into the town.” Now the mistake I made in my presentation was to lay particular stress on the reason for elopement by my careful readjustment, which really called more attention to the episode than was necessary for the age of my audience; and evidently caused confusion in the minds of some of the children who knew the story in its more accurate original form. Whilst travelling in the States, I was provided with a delightful appendix to this story. I had been telling Miss Longfellow and her sister the little girl's version of the Siege of Troy, and Mrs. Thorpe made the following comment, with the American humour whose dryness adds so much to its value: “I never realised before,” she said, “how glad the Greeks must have been to sit down even inside a horse, when they had been standing for eleven years.” III.—The danger of introducing unfamiliar words. This is the very opposite danger of the one to which I have just alluded; it is the taking for granted that children are acquainted with the meaning of certain words upon which turns some important point in the story. We must not introduce (without at least a passing explanation) words which, if not rightly understood, would entirely alter the picture we wish to present. I had once promised to tell stories to an audience of Irish peasants, and I should like to state here that, though my travels have brought me into touch with almost every kind of audience, I have never found one where 9 10 the atmosphere is so “self-prepared” as in that of a group of Irish peasants. To speak to them (especially on the subject of Fairy-tales) is like playing on a delicate harp: the response is so quick and the sympathy is so keen. Of course the subject of Fairy-tales is one which is completely familiar to them and comes into their every-day life. They have a feeling of awe with regard to fairies, which in some parts of Ireland is very deep.[5] On this particular occasion I had been warned by an artist friend who had kindly promised to sing songs between the stories, that my audience would be of varying age and almost entirely illiterate. Many of the older men and women, who could neither read nor write, had never been beyond their native village. I was warned to be very simple in my language and to explain any difficult words which might occur in the particular Indian story I had chosen for that night, namely, “The Tiger, The Jackal and the Brahman.”[6] It happened that the older portion of the audience had scarcely ever seen even the picture of wild animals. I profited by the advice, and offered a word of explanation with regard to the Tiger and the Jackal. I also explained the meaning of the word Brahman—at a proper distance, however, lest the audience should class him with wild animals. I then went on with my story, in the course of which I mentioned the Buffalo. In spite of the warning I had received, I found it impossible not to believe that the name of this animal would be familiar to any audience. I therefore went on with the sentence containing this word, and ended it thus: “And then the Brahman went a little further and met an old Buffalo turning a wheel.” The next day, whilst walking down the village street, I entered into conversation with a thirteen-year-old girl who had been in my audience the night before, and who began at once to repeat in her own words the Indian story in question. When she came to the particular sentence I have just quoted, I was greatly startled to hear her version, which ran thus: “And the priest went on a little further, and he met another old gentleman pushing a wheelbarrow.” I stopped her at once, and not being able to identify the sentence as part of the story I had told, I questioned her a little more closely. I found that the word Buffalo had evidently conveyed to her mind an old “buffer” whose name was “Lo” (probably taken to be an Indian form of appellation, to be treated with tolerance though it might not be Irish in sound). Then, not knowing of any wheel more familiarly than that attached to a barrow, the young narrator completed the picture in her own mind—which, doubtless, was a vivid one—but one must admit that it had lost something of the Indian atmosphere which I had intended to gather about it. IV.—The danger of claiming the co-operation of the class by means of questions. The danger in this case is more serious for the teacher than the child, who rather enjoys the process and displays a fatal readiness to give any sort of answer if only he can play a part in the conversation. If we could depend on the children giving the kind of answer we expect, all might go well, and the danger would be lessened; but children have a perpetual way of frustrating our hopes in this direction, and of landing us in unexpected bypaths from which it is not always easy to return to the main road without a very violent reaction. As illustrative of this, I quote from “The Madness of Philip,” by Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon, a truly delightful essay on Child Psychology, in the guise of the lightest of stories. The scene takes place in a Kindergarten—where a bold and fearless visitor has undertaken to tell a story on the spur of the moment to a group of restless children. She opens thus: “Yesterday, children, as I came out of my yard, what do you think I saw?” The elaborately concealed surprise in store was so obvious that Marantha rose to the occasion and suggested “an el'phunt.” “Why, no. Why should I see an elephant in my yard? It was not nearly so big as that—it was a little thing.” 11 12 13 “A fish,” ventured Eddy Brown, whose eye fell upon the aquarium in the corner. The raconteuse smiled patiently. “Now, how could a fish, a live fish, get into my front yard?” “A dead fish,” says Eddy. He had never been known to relinquish voluntarily an idea. “No; it was a little kitten,” said the story-teller decidedly. “A little white kitten. She was standing right near a big puddle of water. Now, what else do you think I saw?” “Another kitten,” suggests Marantha, conservatively. “No; it was a big Newfoundland dog. He saw the little kitten near the water. Now, cats don't like water, do they? What do they like?” “Mice,” said Joseph Zukoffsky abruptly. “Well, yes, they do; but there were no mice in my yard. I'm sure you know what I mean. If they don't like water, what do they like?” “Milk,” cried Sarah Fuller confidently. “They like a dry place,” said Mrs. R. B. Smith. “Now, what do you suppose the dog did?” It may be that successive failures had disheartened the listeners. It may be that the very range of choice presented to them and the dog alike dazzled their imagination. At all events, they made no answer. “Nobody knows what the dog did?” repeated the story-teller encouragingly. “What would you do if you saw a little kitten like that?” And Philip remarked gloomily: “I'd pull its tail.” “And what do the rest of you think? I hope you are not as cruel as that little boy.” A jealous desire to share Philip's success prompted the quick response: “I'd pull it too.” Now, the reason of the total failure of this story was the inability to draw any real response from the children, partly because of the hopeless vagueness of the questions, partly because, there being no time for reflection, the children said the first thing that comes into their head without any reference to their real thoughts on the subject. I cannot imagine anything less like the enlightened methods of the best Kindergarten teaching. Had Mrs. R. B. Smith been a real, and not a fictional, person, it would certainly have been her last appearance as a raconteuse in this educational institution. V.—The difficulty of gauging the effect of a story upon the audience. This rises from lack of observation and experience; it is the want of these qualities which leads to the adoption of such a method as I have just presented. We learn in time that want of expression on the faces of the audience and want of any kind of external response does not always mean either lack of interest or attention. There is often real interest deep down, but no power, or perhaps no wish, to display that interest, which is deliberately concealed at times so as to protect oneself from questions which may be put. I was speaking on one occasion in Davenport in the State of Iowa. I had been engaged to deliver a lecture to adults on the “Fun and Philosophy” of Hans C. Andersen's Fairy Tales. When I arrived at the Hall, I was surprised and somewhat annoyed to find four small boys sitting in the front row. They seemed to be about ten years old, and, knowing pretty well from experience what boys of that age usually like, I felt rather anxious as to what would happen, and I must confess that for once I wished children had the useful faculty, developed in adults, of successfully concealing their feelings. Any hopes I had conceived on this point were speedily shattered. After listening to the first few sentences, two of the boys evidently recognised the futility of bestowing any further attention on 14 15