Voices

The Game Of Empire, CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

"'You should find this house more hospitable when we summon you,' Pele said. Conviviality provides opportunities for the probing of character. 'At present, I have my work to do. Good day.'" (p. 345)

Would you be able to read this passage aloud, making clear which parts are spoken by Pele and which are comments by the narrator? For Pele's dialogue, you would have to imitate her aged female Zacharian voice with its slight accent. For the rest, you would have to adopt a completely different narrator's voice and tone. Easy enough for those who can do it.

In a TV drama about the Abdication of King Edward VIII, an actor with his back to the camera spoke in Churchillian tones so that we knew who he was even when he turned to face us and did not look like him. A 1940's festival in nearby Morecambe was advertised with a photograph of a Churchill look-alike. (See the attached image.) Seeing the guy at the Festival, I approached him and said, "I didn't expect to meet you here, sir!" He replied in an incomprehensible high-pitched whine!

At Christmas one year, a guy I knew performed an abridged public reading of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," with mulled wine, at a local library. He gave the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come a pronounced Scottish accent. No warrant for this in the text but it served to differentiate him from the others. The same guy performed telephone calls to children from Santa Claus. 

Have we gone off the point again? Not really. Read carefully every line written by Poul Anderson for what it means to you. All human and nonhuman life is in there.