titude.

Then there should be a departure from this system. Educational
development comes not only from doing what you are best able to do,
but from developing the less-marked phases of your disposition and
character. The opposite practice should be followed, at least once.
Let the prominent class member assume a role of subdued personality.
Let the timid take the lead. Induce the silent to deliver the majority
of the speeches. You will be amazed frequently to behold the best
delineations springing from such assignments.

Such rehearsing of a play already studied should terminate the minute
analysis in order to show the material for what it is--actable drama.
It will vivify the play again, and make the characters live in your
memory as mere reading never will. You will see the moving people, the
grouped situations, the developed story, the impressive climax, and
the satisfying conclusion.

In dealing with scenes from a long play--whether linked or
disconnected--pupils will always have a feeling of incompleteness. In
a full-length play no situation is complete in itself. It is part of a
longer series of events. It may finish one part of the action, but it
usually merely carries forward the plot, passing on the complication
to subsequent situations.

Short Plays. To deal with finished products should be the next
endeavor. There are thousands of short plays suitable for class
presentation in an informal manner. Most of them do not require
intensive study, as does a great Greek or English drama, so their
preparation may go on entirely outside the classroom. It should be
frankly admitted that the exercises of delivering lines "in character"
as here described is not acting or producing the play. That will come
later. These preliminary exercises--many or few, painstaking or
sketchy--are processes of training pupils to speak clearly,
interestingly, forcefully, in the imagined character of some other
person. The pupil must not wrongly believe that he is acting.

Though the delivery of a complete short play may seem like a
performance, both participants and audience must not think of it so.
It is class exercise, subject to criticism, comment, improvement,
exactly as all other class recitations are.

Since the entire class has not had the chance to become familiar with
all the short plays to be presented, some one should give an
introductory account of the time and place of action. There might be
added any necessary commen