The story-teller must wholly take into himself the life of
which he speaks, must let it live and operate in himself freely.
—FROEBEL.
The story-teller must himself possess the story before attempting to give
it to another. This sounds obvious, but it is not granted in practice.
Much poor schoolroom story-telling is evidently “unprepared.” People born
with a natural turn for story-telling, and those who in their childhood
heard real story-telling, need to make less preparation than others; but
all story-tellers need to make preparation. Much of the story-telling
masquerading as such is quackery, showing neither genius nor study.
Even in the very early days when formal instruction in story-telling
was unknown, the wandering story-teller watched constantly to make his
performance tell, modifying his method in the light of its effect upon
his hearers. Later on, in the Middle Ages, the court story-teller was
professionally trained (and also handsomely remunerated and given the
place of honor at the banquet). Intellectual study of the story will not,
by the way, destroy spontaneity. It may dash it temporarily. Coleridge
tells us that his professor in poetics did not hesitate to subject to
the scrutiny of the microscope the most delicate flowers and fruits
of fancy. (English in the schools has suffered from the results, in
its teachers, of the “literary affectation,” which condemns attempt at
definite English scholarship.) Let us give all outlet possible to natural
ability, and to the inspiration of time and audience; but let us not
neglect the forethought of preparation. Shakespeare did not, Sir Henry
Irving did not, Duse does not. Some teachers fall back on reading the
story; this has its own place, but it cannot take the place of telling.
The belief that story-telling should be studied is gaining ground in a
most convincing quarter, the home. The office of motherhood is deeply
associated with things done instinctively right; but the mother herself
at mothers’ clubs and elsewhere is seeking instruction in this chief
mother art.
To get the story, relax your imagination and sympathy and let them go out
to it. Sit down with it and read and re-read it, or listen to it, and
brood upon it until you absorb its life, until you think and feel and
move in its being. Conjure up its scene and people and happening.
Some may find imagining difficult. Perhaps it was neglected in their
training. Let them not be discouraged; each succeeding attempt to realize
scene and person and action will make the task easier.
You may, by the way, study the story in either of two places: a lovely
natural spot, where under the lure of century-wisdomed tree, or amid
sweet smells, or flash of birds, or beckonings of shadows, you may catch
the glamour of the old-world setting in the stories; or in a city street
swarming with children, old-faced before their time. The environment
in the second studio, far from destroying your effort to grasp the
wonder-world of the story, will make special appeal to you. Here you will
feel divine compulsion to make child life more abundant: to bring from
story land bright hosts of gay fairies and gentle children and brave
knights and real as well as fiction heroes as saving company for the
little worldlings, to make them chuckle with a child’s hearty glee at
trick of goblin or sprite, or quake with delicious tremor at the tread of
the terrible giant. You will find that the “toughest,” most crabbed city
urchin will succumb to the witchery of the fairy folk, to the charm of
beauty and the fair play of kindness and honesty.
The child’s world reflected in the story is the right of the child in the
city tenement district, and society’s hope for him. It is, by the way, no
less the right of the rich child and no less society’s hope for him.
After you have let the story take possession of you, take possession of
it. To take possession of the story,
(1) _Seek its spirit and intention._
(2) _Grasp its elements; its setting, its action, its
characters._
(3) _Master its workmanship, or its composition and style._
_Its spirit and intention._ Students of folklore hesitate to impose on
the folk tales ethical or æsthetical motive; but they would not object to
our seeing in them, in addition to certain primitive ideas, this or that
playful fancy or more serious reflection of life; in “The Elves and the
Shoemaker,” for example, hearty testimony to the worth of honest effort,
the record raised to some degree of æsthetic merit by the charm of elfin
appreciation; in “Star Dollars,” crude sketch of childlike goodness and
faith, the picture touched into beauty by the benediction of heaven;
lovely symbol of gentle living, like “Diamonds and Toads”; sweet blossom
of immortal beauty and goodness blighted by the withering poison of
envy, yet triumphantly blooming, like “Snow White;” simple appreciation
of kindness of heart, like the “Hut in the Wood;” idyl of the beauty
and integrity of goodness, like “Beauty and the Beast;” in “The Straw,
the Coal, and the Bean,” naïve history of a merry-tragic situation; in
“The Wolf and the Seven Kids,” the happy triumph of mother wit sharpened
by love. For the children they, as well as the more modern tales, must
be kept direct, simple stories. But the student need not miss a broader
significance. He can hardly fail to appreciate the analogies to human
conduct so often implied in Hans Andersen’s tales, done, as in Dante’s
great tale, with conscious intent. He must not, however, ask the children
to probe for hidden meanings, and he must not strain at suggesting them
in his interpretation. The story is not to be turned into an abstraction;
its concreteness is the secret of its power to please and to move.
After you have thus characterized the story to yourself, grasp its
elements: its setting, or time and place; its action; its persons, or
characters. And cultivate sensibility to their appropriateness.
_The setting._ The lovely fairy romances, old and new, like “The Frog
Prince,” “Cinderella,” Andersen’s “Princess on the Pea,” occurred in
the all-possible “once upon a time,” or in that delectable bygone when
“wishing was having,” or in such right good kingly times as Arthur’s or
Charlemagne’s. Sometimes the place was an enchanted castle shut away
behind a hedge of thorns and trees, in the very heart of a forest, a
hedge that sprang up in a quarter of an hour, with thorns long enough to
impale unworthy suitors; sometimes it was the highroad out to the world,
upon which many a stout hero set foot to seek fortune. The merry gallant
history of “Tom Thumb,” fairy fledgeling, wizard-fostered, king’s jester
and doughty knightling, is referred to the magical days of Merlin and the
chivalrous court of Arthur. We find him, too, versatile little imp, in
his mother’s practical pudding bowl, in the red cow’s mouth, in a giant’s
stomach, inside a fish; and each place is capital setting for him. Who
says that giants are figments of the imagination? The people of Cornwall
record that it was in their land that Jack killed the giant, and they
point out a castle built on a rock standing in the sea as the stronghold
of the monster. (Let the folklorists find in this primitive belief,
if they will; let us find, also, artistic fitness.) What a delightful
plausibility the tale takes on from this minutely recorded geographical
setting, as delightful in its way as the vague long ago and dim place of
other tales! Here, in the apparently artless tale, is the artistic device
by which Defoe hoodwinked the England of his day into believing that
Robinson Crusoe was fact and not truer fiction.
Note the appropriateness in change of scene; Andersen’s “Ugly Duckling,”
among the modern tales, affords a good study. The artistic principle
is applied more naïvely in the old story of “The Hut in the Wood” at
the transformation of the hut into a castle to be fit setting for the
sovereign power and beauty of kindness; also in “Mother Holle,” at the
emergence of the child from the dark well and darker despair into the
lovely meadow where the sun was shining, and thousands of flowers were
blooming, and wonderful little ovens and red apple-trees called out to
her, and golden shower fell on her and glorified her. In “Dummling,” at
the stage when enchantment is brought in, the scene changes completely to
a stone castle in whose courtyard are stalls containing stone horses.
Note the narrative use made of setting. The appearance of the sea, in
“The Fisherman and his Wife,” as the fisherman carries each succeeding
wish of his wife to the flounder, does as much to tell the story as the
action itself.
Setting, then, is part of the whole. It is not to be overdone, nor is any
part in the simple story, but its appropriateness is worth appreciation.
_The action._ The action is of course the chief part of the story. The
motive of the action is easy to find. But again note that it is faithful
to life and that it paves the way for appreciation of the motives of
greater literature. In the simple tales, as in the novel and the drama,
the action arises from love, hate, envy, spirit of adventure, friendship,
malice, spirit of fun and play. Grasp the details of the action. In
some versions of “The Frog Prince” the falling of the princess’s golden
ball into the well is made the occasion for the appearance of the
magical frog, which, for the aid he offers, imposes the condition of
companionship and love. The princess pretends agreement. Her repugnance
to the frog becomes the complicating force. And (in some tales) her
father’s insistence that she keep her promise to the frog makes all
come out happily; the frog stands revealed a prince in disguise, and
marries the princess. In “Dummling” the despised stupid third and
youngest brother sets out to seek his elders; then come the three acts of
unkindness he prevents; then the failure of the elders at the task set
forth in the enchanted castle, and Dummling’s success, due to the aid of
the creatures to whom he had shown kindness, followed by his triumphant
marriage to the youngest and dearest of the princesses. In “The Cat and
the Mouse in Partnership,” the story opens with the doubtful compact
entered into by the mouse on the cat’s representation of friendship,
and her agreement to his proposal that they lay by a pot of fat for the
winter. The cat has the hardihood to propose the church as the safest
hiding place for the pot of fat, hypocritically saying that no one would
dare steal anything from a church. Then comes the cat’s first “gulling”
of the frank little mouse with his story of having been asked to be
godfather to his cousin’s remarkable child. “Beauty and the Beast” is
another good character study, and from an important point of view for the
little child’s story a better one, as this time virtue is unmistakably
triumphant.
The student will gradually develop sensibility to the typical materials
of folk story: human difficulty overcome by supernatural aid; the task of
guessing a name, or the forfeit of a child, as a condition for aid, as in
“Rumpelstiltskin;” trial and triumph of the despised ugly third sister
or stupid third brother; doughty deeds that overcome bulk of body with
nimbleness of wit, as in “Jack the Giant Killer;” greed of wishing whose
indulgence precipitates loss of all, as in “The Fisherman and his Wife;”
reward of kindness to animals, as in “The Hut in the Wood.”
_The characters._ Characterize the people in the story. In their varied
company is the story-teller’s opportunity to acquaint the child with
the chief kinds of persons to be found in literature and life; the
child himself, cherishing mother, doting grandmother, virile father
sending his sons out to find their place in the world, loving brother
and sister, gentle people, hateful people, ill-tempered people, cruel
people, jealous people, kind people, wily people, frank people, brave
people, cowards, old people, children, sad people, merry people. Besides
these, animals, pigs and bears, cows and hens and goats, inhabit the
child’s world side by side with man, helping the story to make its way
to the child’s affections. Then there is the host of witching fairy
folk: fairies, giants, elves, pixies, witches, goblins. Music as well as
language has attempted to suggest them, and with surprising agreement
in artistic convention. Language makes fairies light, airy, tripping;
goblins, grotesque; so does music. Language makes the giant huge, clumsy,
big-handed and big-footed, but stupid; Wagner gives ponderous musical
motif to the dragon, the “laidly worm,” the giant of his music dramas,
and also makes him conquerable.
_The workmanship, composition, and style._ Much story-telling is spoiled
by disregard of the _composition_ of the narrative. By composition here
is meant what is meant in painting or sculpture, the arranging, or
grouping, of the materials, to build out the whole.
The method of grouping in the folk story is apparent. At the beginning of
the story are the time and place, some of the principal characters, and
the motive of the action. Next follows the action, easily separable into
rise, course, resolution. In many of the stories, for example, in “The
Frog Prince,” there is after the action an explanation of enchantment;
and an assurance that all went well ever after or quaint formula like
that parodied in “They stepped on a tin, and the tin bended, so my
story’s ended,” whose purpose, similar to that of Shakespeare’s rhyming
couplet in his earlier dramas, is to give conclusive ending to the tale.
Like “Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch,” who stayed on at the theater
after the curtain had gone down on the last scene, the children, though
sensitive to artistic reserve, are not always satisfied with highly
reserved ending.
The story-teller should cultivate sensibility to story-building; it is
the creative principle of story-telling. It is really surprising how
lacking the beginner is in consciousness of structure. He should study
structure until he can feel the tale making: the scene putting in, the
people coming in, the motive revealing itself, the action starting, and
going forward until it arrives at climax and solution, the whole winding
up with happy prophecy of the far future.
Grasp especially the composition of the _action_. It is usually built on
one of the following plans:
(a) The single line of sequence, as in Hans Andersen’s “Princess on the
Pea,” or “The Sleeping Beauty,” or “The Frog Prince;”
(b) The three-parallel line—what the first did, what the second did, what
the third did,—as in “The Golden Pears” and in “Dummling;”
(c) The balanced antithetical plan, two contrasting courses of action
placed side by side,
what the beautiful, what the ugly,
industrious child did idle child did,
as in “Mother Holle” or in “Diamonds and Toads.”
(d) The cumulative plan, as in “Henny-Penny,” “The Cat and the Mouse in
the Malt House,” “The House that Jack Built,” “The Old Woman and her
Pig.” Do not miss the increase in interest and suspense.
Note in the three-parallel structure the climactic “thirdness” and its
distinguishing characteristic; it is the youngest and the stupid third
member of the family who turns out to be the cleverest and most favored
of fortune; it is Dummling who marries the sweetest princess; it is the
woodcutter’s third daughter who proves considerate of the dumb animals,
frees the castle of enchantment, and marries the prince.
Note, too, that the old-world story-tellers were sensitive to the
dramatic effect of the contrasts in life. The miller’s daughter, innocent
victim of her father’s ambition, sits down in despair to weep over an
impossible task, and “at this moment the door opens and in comes a
comical little dwarf” who with three magical whirrs of the spinning-wheel
turn a roomful of straw into gold. It is the very day of her fifteenth
birthday that the princess must take to explore the castle and come
upon unsuspected spinning-wheel with which to prick her finger that
the witch’s prophecy may be fulfilled, but, as is the merry good luck
of romance, it is on the last day of the hundred years that the prince
goes hunting to spy, not deer, but the towers of the identical castle
in which the Sleeping Beauty lies, inquires about it of everyone until
he meets the very man who can tell him what “my father told me,” and
rides off to awaken the princess. It is always so in literature sound at
heart, whether it be in a Shakespearean comedy, in which cottages appear
in the forest in the nick of time as night is falling and lovely ladies
and gallant knights are footsore and weary; or whether it be in simple
fairy tale abounding in porridge pots, appearing when folks are on the
brink of starvation and cooking like mad, “as if they would feed the
whole world” at the magic words, “Little pot, cook,” or in frogs popping
out of near by wells in time to say, “Your wish shall be fulfilled,
within a year you shall have a little child,” or in small ovens and red
apple-trees placed “conveniently low.” The scholarly student of narrative
or dramatic technique recognizes this as what he calls _comic relief_ to
offset the pathos of the situation; the student lacking this knowledge
accepts with satisfaction the plausibleness of timely happening.
After this careful work read the story again for enriched appreciation of
it. Now put the book away and go about your business.
By and by see whether you know the story. Let no mistrust born of book
dependence and neglect of the constructive imagination daunt you. Boldly
sketch in time and place, introduce the first characters, suggest the
motive of the action, start the action, carry it forward to climax and
solution, wind up the whole. Now criticise your product. Is it the thing
you meant it to be? Thackeray tells us his characters and plots got out
of his hands and finished themselves. Is it the tale as “’twas told to
you,” is it an improved version, is it a new story? One and all may be in
place.
Some will feel that they have spoiled the story. They have bungled the
structure through unskillful placing, or omission of necessary details.
They have dulled life, dimmed beauty, obscured truth for lack of words.
Well, there is no harm done as yet. These students, studying again the
parts in which they failed, will appreciate now more thoroughly play and
interplay of character, detail and course of action, vivid word. The cat
in “The Bremen Town Musicians,” they will note, is capitally described
(in some accepted texts) as having a face that looked like “three days
of rainy weather;” Snow-White and Rose-Red were “like the rose-bushes in
their mother’s garden;” they will not miss in “The Cat and the Mouse” the
cat’s sly description of the pot of fat and the apt names he gives his
bogus godchildren. In this way the appropriate word or phrase will come
to them easily.
The question often asked, “Am I to hold myself to the text?” is
interesting. It applies of course only to artistic texts, not to formless
source material. Some people contend that this destroys the spirit of
story-telling, making the art mechanical instead of creative.
Story-telling is creative effort, never mere repetition of the letter.
It is creative effort, whether you make live again something produced
by another, or make live more abundantly by perfecting matter and form
produced by another, or make new life. The question cannot be answered
offhand. If it were true that the text form, the composition and diction,
in which you found the story, were the perfect reflection of its life
and that the story suffered no change in your comprehension of it, and
that it were your intention to pass it on without modification or loss
to the child, and that he could receive it without change in form, then
the answer appears to follow: you are to be faithful to the text. In
some cases the form in which the folk tale is found has suffered through
translation, in others it may be intrinsically faulty; in many texts of
“The Frog Prince,” for example, the Iron John incident is too detached
and very much out of perspective. The story-teller who can make it
better should do so, or who feels prompted to give the children another
product from old materials will use them, though the folklorists will
forbid him to palm off his product as old-world lore. Any training in
story-telling that does not give outlet and direction to such ability and
to originality neglects an important obligation to the student. It is
notable, by the way, that it is the student with the literary artist’s
instinct who is surest to “get” the style of any good original he may be
reproducing. Proper simplification of standard texts and the question of
adaptation to younger and older audiences will be considered later.
Are we not inconsistent in our attitude toward form in language? We
profess to recognize reverently an intimate relation between the matter
and the manner in the sculptor’s, the painter’s, the musician’s art. But
we constantly deny any integrity to language as a medium of expression.
We do not, to be sure, attempt to tamper with the form the great poets
gave their message. Indeed we “get” the verse running through the simple
prose tale, although it is scarcely less artless than is the prose. But
everyone because he can speak in words appears to feel competent to tell
the prose body of the stories in “his own words.” Now, every word in the
folktale may not be so necessary to its thought as very minute details
in Shakespeare’s or even in Kipling’s or Andersen’s or Stockton’s form
are considered to his thought. But there is such a thing as folk-story
style, easy, loose sentence liberally sprinkled with _and_s and _so_s,
picture-making word, distinctive epithet, recurrent jingle, rhythmic
swing. It is surprising how insensible students are to it. Yet it is
due largely, no doubt, to the best of all causes, the belief that the
story is to be given living form by the teller. Dull rote memorizing
will not of course do this. The method of study set forth suggests how
the story-teller may easily develop sensibility to folk-story style and
easily train himself to “do,” or “catch,” it.
Let us not be afraid of a due regard for form. Right attention to form
is not testimony to the worth of the superficial. The poet says, “The
soul is form and doth the body make.” Let us see to it that we make the
language body of our story by clear reflection of its spirit.
The question of oral interpretation, or oral form, the more important
aspect of form, while properly a matter to be settled by the student
during the stage of preparation, is here more conveniently considered
under the next head.