Word: weaverization
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...speedy Oriole offense that led the American League in batting in the second half of the season will not be full-strength today. Against a lefthander, manager Earl Weaver will bench Al Bumbry (.337) and Rich Coggins (.319), the second and third leading hitters in the American League...
ALAS, when we come to the two main players, there isn't a hint of virtuosity. If the AST wanted to import someone to play just the single role of Macbeth this summer, why pick Fritz Weaver? Fifteen years ago Weaver attempted Hamlet here, without much success. He hasn't improved in the interim...
...Weaver gives us a Macbeth that fails to engage interest; we just don't care a rap about the guy. Weaver has a rather unattractive voice, and doesn't use well what he has. He fails to penetrate the sense or the rhythm of his lines. And he has never learned how to breathe properly; so we are subjected constantly to his whiffling, snuffling, and gasping. Here he falls into empty ranting, there he delivers a serious line so that it elicits a laugh. One wishes too that he didn't address his servant twice as "patch," when Shakespeare wrote...
...Weaver's final duel with Macduff is much too tame, particularly for those who saw Christopher Plummer's breathtaking swordplay in Cyrano recently. At the end, he pulls out a dagger and seems about to commit suicide when he falls off a parapet; suicide is something no real Macbeth would entertain...
...tiny bouquet, however, for one line-reading. When Macbeth starts up the stairs to kill the king, and a bell rings, almost all editions have him say, "Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell/That summons thee to heaven, or to hell." Weaver says, "me to hell." This is an emendation I have always found rather appealing. Aside from the internal rhyme of the contrasting pronouns, it implies that the saintly king will surely achieve salvation and that Macbeth fully realizes the enormity of what he is about to do. It was a pleasure to hear this reading used...