It’s interesting what bits of one’s education one remembers. I spent one long, hot afternoon in junior school memorising the Sanskrit chant Bhaja Govindam. This tedious task was much eased by terror — because the lesson was with a teacher who, though entertaining, was also uncompromising. Each of us was to stand up and chant the whole selection (about 40 lines), in front of the class. As luck would have it the teacher called on me first, and — relief! — it all tumbled out more or less perfect.
The memorable thing, however, was that this was not just words but rhythm, quality of breath, a bit of a swing in the recitation — and that attention had to be paid, while speaking the words, to how those words were spoken.
It’s one thing to be an articulate speaker, even to be able to tell a joke or deliver an anecdote well — though how many people do you know who can do either? — and quite another to deliver someone else’s words to similar effect. Fortunately you can achieve this skill through practice.
Elocution used to be part of an English-language education. In English class at my school, though, nobody asked us to memorise or recite poems out loud — not even obvious things like Wordsworth’s “Daffodils”, a speech from a Shakespeare play, a few lines of Nissim Ezekiel. Not required. And now that is something I regret deeply.
A few days ago the UK’s Open University put onto its YouTube channel a delightful set of 10 one-minute videos called A History of English in Ten Minutes. They are brisk, crisp, playful, mildly bawdy (“The English language begins with the phrase ‘Up yours, Caesar,” as the Romans leave Britain and a lot of Germanic tribes start flooding in”), cleverly animated, well thought-through — not unlike Scholastic’s bestselling Horrible Histories series, written by Terry Deary — and above all, very well spoken by the BBC’s Clive Anderson. (“Chapter Three, Shakespeare, or, a plaque on both houses.”)
Just as I could never get far beyond the opening lines of T S Eliot’s “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock” — because they are such terrific lines and beg to be spoken, though it is nearly impossible to get them right — it was not easy to get beyond “A History of English in Ten Minutes”, the very words with which each instalment of this series opens. I am still trying, and failing, to capture Anderson’s funny gruff note in “in ten minutes”.
It’s possible that Anderson is too good to copy — so I suggest starting with Jonson and the Cavaliers, edited by Maurice Hussey (Heinemann, 1964). This is a collection of 16th- and 17th-century poems, most of them to do with love, composed and, no doubt, performed by a set of Court poets centred on the famous Ben Jonson. Yes, it sounds obscure, but believe me, reading these poems out loud is utterly compulsive. With a glass of alcohol in one hand, try this, from “Out upon it” by Sir John Suckling:
Out upon it, I have lov’d,
Three whole days together;
And am like to love three more,
If it prove fair weather.
Or this, from “The Scrutinie” by Richard Lovelace: Why should you sweare I am forsworn,
Since thine I vow’d to be?
Lady it is already Morn,
And ’twas last night I swore to thee
That fond impossibility.
And so on. Mildly misogynistic, but playful and very much fun. You’ll quickly realise how bad you are at speaking well, and how entertaining it can be to get better. And profitable — being effective in speech can be good for your career.
