r mind as to the nature or value of this final step in the training,
since it has anticipated both. Development of imaginative vigor should
arouse a latent dramatic instinct and release histrionic power. The
choice of place in these studies for this phase of the training was made
to insure cumulative evolution resulting in balanced expression. As
imagination needs to safeguard her freedom with sympathetic thought and
intelligent emotion, so dramatic instinct needs the guidance of a
vigorous but trained imagination. Dramatic instinct so directed should
achieve skill in interpreting drama and lead to distinction in the art
of acting. The immediate evolution should be a clarified vision of life.
Your final attainment from this theory should be distinction in the art
of living.

With dramatic instinct capable of such achievement, let us proceed to
exercise it in the material chosen for this study,--dramatic literature.
The natural transition from story to play, from narrative to drama, is
by way of the monologue. Some discussion with suggestive analysis of
this form is necessary in order to impress upon you the difference
between suggestive impersonation and actual impersonation or
characterization, leading to a clear understanding of the difference
between reading a play and acting in one; but the final evolution of
interpretative power must come through acted drama,--through taking part
in a play.

The dictionary in defining the monologue authorizes three forms: (1)
when the actor tells a continuous story in which he is the chief
character, referring to the others as absent; (2) when he assumes the
voice or manner of several characters successively; (3) more recently,
when he implies that the others are present, leading the audience to
imagine what they say by his replies. Browning created this more recent
form, which is the most vital of the three. I have chosen for your study
of the monologue examples from Browning alone. To interpret effectively
any one of the Browning monologues will call into play every element of
power in voice and expression which you have gained in your study of
previous forms. You must think vividly, feel intelligently, realize and
suggest an atmosphere, sustain a situation, and keep the beauty of the
poetic form. And you must do all this _in the person of another_. The
new demand which the monologue makes is impersonation. Let us see just
what we mean by impersonation. It is the art of identify