Word: dictional
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...funny in Hamlin's Tartuffe, but not too much was comic. Many of the lines that got the biggest laughs were those who the actors stepped just slightly out of character where the polished diction and movement collapsed into purely American shock or embarassment. So the laughter was more at the incongruity than at an aspect of the human comedy Moliere was revealing...
Poet Gerald Meyers strives for a precision and a richness of diction that tends to disturb the flow of his lines. Wordy images help to convey complex impressions of "Benton Harbor," but at the same time they mince his stanzas into goulashes of striking sentences and phrases. But the infection is local. At the poem's end he serenades his subject with moving simplicity...
...dialogue is refined, clever, and painfully polite. Steinian repetition abounds. The diction floats high above the reality of war. Any emotion must be deduced from the situation, not seen in the characterization...
Royal Hunt is just as purely an epic as is the lliad (and one could point out numerous parallels between the two). It also shows high quality in all six departments postulated by Aristotle for tragedy: plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, song. Shaffer says he was aiming for "total this theatre," and he definitely has achieved it. For this is not just a play to be spoken. Lighting, sets, costumes, masks, instrumental music, singing, sound effects, mime, dance, ritual-all are wonderfully integrated and absolutely indispensable...
Carradine is an actor ideal for the part. He looks like a young god, projects his specially stylized diction affectingly, and has superb control of his bodily movements. The moment of astonishment when he discovers the existence of writing is a sight to behold; and, when he lies dead for minutes on end, I'd swear he didn't take a single breath...