and situation is
lost. The great reader of the play (in that _instant's pause_), as he
utters the last word of one character, becomes the interlocutor
listening to the words which he as the other character has just uttered.
In that instant he must show the effect of the speech he has just
uttered upon the character he has just become. Which is the greater art:
to read a play, or to act in it?

Use for your study of the play the Shakespearian drama. Begin with
scenes from _As You Like It_ and _The Merchant of Venice_; but begin
with actualized impersonation of the characters. No discussion more! No
analysis more! The play--the "play's the thing" through which to
complete this evolution in Vocal Expression.

_A FINAL WORD ON INTERPRETATION_

Looking back over these studies in interpretation, let us review in true
scholastic fashion the main points thus far discovered. We say looking
back, but as far as the arrangement of our text goes this review
involves looking forward too. The division of the book into three parts
is purely a matter of a necessary separation in discussing the three
activities involved in vocal expression. If your use of this book has
been intelligent, each study in interpretation has revealed your need to
strengthen your vocal vocabulary or to perfect your vocal technique, and
you have turned at once for the required help to the studies in Part II
and the exercises in Part III.

Omitting a review of the _preliminary plunge_, which was intended to
"show up" all your peculiar powers and all your especial needs at once,
and so furnish a basis for the main work, let us see what happened in
the five following studies. It will simplify our statement in each case
to base the analysis of our discoveries on the form of literature
employed in each study.

You found then (or ought to have found) in Study One: that the essay and
didactic poem make a fundamental appeal to the mind; that the demand
upon the interpreter of this form is for clear, concise thinking; that
your need is for a command of unerring emphasis and purposeful
inflection. You turned to the studies in _pause_, _change of pitch_, and
_inflection_ to meet that need. Returning to the main study, you tested
your vocal skill on the essay to find the essay so read might persuade
an auditor to some readjustment of his ideas, values, discriminations,
or strengthen him in convictions already held.

Study Two revealed that in lyric poetry the prim