Word: dictional
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Biblical Weather Report Sir: In his attempt to update the Bible [Oct. 23] so that it reads like today's newspaper in a common-denominator prose, Translator Speiser sacrifices vision along with poetic diction. The opening lines of Genesis sound like a weather report on Hurricane Hilda instead of an image or symbol of the active power of God brooding over dumb creation and awakening a response...
...language constantly points backward with malice to other poets' diction, to their barely credible recognition scenes based on flimsy evidence like scars, footprints and locks of hair, to their unquestioning awe of traditional elements of all kinds...
Sawyer has a rich baritone voice of wide range, which he only rarely pushes to stridency. His classical diction is close to flawless (including every last y-sound in words like 'dew' and 'suit'), and he speaks with an unusual feeling for the musicality of the lines. In fact, he shows, in the excerpts from the "pious chanson" about Jephthah's daughter, that he has a splendid singing voice. And his apostrophe to Man is itself a beautifully modulated song...
Philip Bosco exhibits the clarity of diction we have come to expect of him, but it cannot be said that his King Claudius is one of his better portrayals. He does not seem at all royal. Murderer he may be, but Claudius is also an undeniably efficient administrator. In the Play Scene, he gives no signs of paying attention to what is going on until his cue to break the party up. This scene is, however, visually appealing. Five attendants stand about with ten-foot poles topped by simulated deer's heads, orange streamers, and flaming torches; the resulting Hallowe...
...First Gravedigger is a roguish, low-comic word prankster. But Alfred Drake's King Claudius is too suavely ingratiating to have killed a brother and seized a crown. He is more like mine host of the Elsinore Hilton. Eileen Her-lie is a middle-aged matron with diction; it is easier to imagine her at bridge than in the "rank sweat of an enseamed bed." The saddest thing about Linda Marsh's Ophelia is how far beyond her grasp the part...