Alfred Ayres, Thomas Embly Osmun

Thomas Embly Osmun, was born in Summit County, Ohio, 26 February, 1826. He was educated at Oberlin College and in Germany and Paris, spending six years in Europe. He devoted himself to orthoepy (the art and study of correct pronunciation of words) and elocution. He had a regular column in Werner’s Voice Magazine that involved lists of words and how they should be pronounced properly.

Ayres worked as an elocutionist and instructor in dramatic art in New York City. He saw the emergence of drama schools as a potential threat and became a vociferous critic of acting schools. By publicly criticizing the mispronunciations of actors and the methods used in acting schools, Ayres induced the dramatic profession to observe a more severe and more natural standard of oratory. The paragraph below is a description of him by Hodge (1954, p. 562):

Ayres early lost faith in dramatic schools because, he claimed, they failed to pay attention to stage delivery which was the very core of acting to his way of thinking. Adept at straight talk, that often received publication in the New York Dramatic Mirror, he blasted the schools at every opportunity.