File:The dramatic method of teaching (1912) (14766700515).jpg

Identifier: dramaticmethodof00finl (find matches)
Title: The dramatic method of teaching
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Finlay-Johnson, Harriet Cyr, Ellen M., d. 1920, ed
Subjects: Drama in education Teaching Schools
Publisher: Boston, New York (etc.) Ginn and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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ne was mastered, however, the men wereenthusiastic and demanded more. So we added anotherscene, and so on, until the complete play, minus the sceneintroducing Portia and Calpurnia, was well known. Thenwe engaged a hall and gave the play to an enthusiastic,overflowing audience. But the actual performance of theplay is not the point I wish to emphasize ; it is the factthat the men were educated enough to find ample amuse-ment in one of Shakespeares least droll plays. So muchwere they really interested that on one wet Saturday theyspent eight consecutive hours (with a short interval fortea) in rehearsing in their Roman costumes. At the out-set we had intended to meet one evening in the week.Toward the end the men would hardly be content withoutfive meetings a week. Their properties, although mostly of their own making,were quite correct; and the scene in which Brutus andCassius quarrel, and where Caesars ghost appears, was soartistically gotten up, and so well acted, that it called forth
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193 AFTER SCHOOL AGE 195 the admiration of old and hardened newspaper critics onbig London dailies. The matter did not end there, for the mothers of thevillage not only acted plays but invented them. They,too, met at the school — which thus became a real centerof light and learning —and there practiced plays writtenby one of their number. The first of these was entitledA Cup of Tea, and contained some good local hits.Another play was patriotic and written in verse! Themothers also practiced the Morris dance and dramatizedfolk songs just as the scholars in the day school were doing.In the latter art they excelled, for they had a good storeof the Sussex folk songs. Comical in the extreme was their band of variousinstruments, which they managed to play tunefully. Reallyit seemed as if we had reached the ideal state of villagelife, and had made one or two steps toward reintroducing Merrie England. Whether this was a result of theschool method I leave others to judge, but let no one be

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