seldom thought of at all. I must feet
Juliet in my heart, understand her with my mind, and let her vibrate
clearly _across_ my nerves, to the audience. The moment I let my nerves
be shaken as Juliet's nerves were in reality, I am absorbing her
myself, misusing nervous force, preparing to come off the stage
thoroughly exhausted, and keeping her away from the audience. The
present low state of the drama is largely due to this failure to
recognize and practise a natural use of the nervous force. To work up
an emotion, a most pernicious practice followed by young aspirants,
means to work your nerves up to a state of mild or even severe
hysteria. This morbid, inartistic, nervous excitement actually trains
men and women to the loss of all emotional control, and no wonder that
their nerves play the mischief with them, and that the atmosphere of
the stage is kept in its present murkiness. The power to work the
nerves up in the beginning finally carries them to the state where they
must be more artificially urged by stimulants; and when the actor is
off the stage he has no self-control at all. This all means misused and
over-used force. In no schools is the general influence so absolutely
morbid and unwholesome, as in most of the schools of elocution and
acting.

The methods by which the necessity for artificial stimulants can be
overcome are so simple and so pleasant and so immediately effective,
that it is worth taking the time and space to describe them briefly. Of
course, to begin with, the body must be trained to perfect freedom in
repose, and then to freedom in its use. A very simple way of practising
is to take the most relaxed attitude possible, and then, without
changing it, to recite _with all the expression that belongs to it_
some poem or selection from a play full of emotional power. You will
become sensitive at once to any new tension, and must stop and drop it.
At first, an hour's daily practice will be merely a beginning over and
over,--the nervous tension will be so evident,--but the final reward is
well worth working and waiting for.

It is well to begin by simply inhaling through the nose, and exhaling
quietly through the mouth several times; then inhale and exhale an
exclamation in every form of feeling you can think of Let the
exclamation come as easily and freely as the breath alone, without
superfluous tension in any part of the body. So much freedom gained,
inhale as before, and exhale brief expressive