The chosen players make their entrances, dressed in costume, and then proceed to recite their lines.
The artiste, usually a rich dilettante, would sweep into the auditorium in his finest snow-white toga, perch himself on a tall stool at the center of the stage and proceed to recite from his scroll "in melting tones". Some prima donnas wore lamb's wool neck scarves to protect their throats.
Standing by the kitchen table, Muldoon proceeded to recite, in his best poetry-recital voice (which is very serious and persuasive) the lyrics for "Excitable Boy".
A woman was now standing up, at another table, and she, too, proceeded to recite.
As does Dylan Thomas, whose poem "In My Craft or Sullen Art" he proceeds to recite to me.
I got it," the waiter says, then proceeds to recite back the orders so far — all wrong.
Then he proceeded to recite the entire starting lineup of the mid-1950's Brooklyn Dodgers: Hodges, Gilliam, Reese, Robinson, Furillo, Snider, Amoros, Campanella.
In the season two opening, Draper appears reading, and then proceeds to recite, Frank O'Hara's Mayakovsky, from Meditations in an Emergency.
Last season, they had Amitabh Bachchan, who "bumped into" Arshina and her mum, and proceeded to recite his famous lines from Kabhi Kabhie.
Don Fernando said that he admired the way that Americans had reconciled after their Civil War, and he proceeded to recite, from memory, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in Spanish.
Just go into court and say, "All right, Your Honor... here's the deal," the cop says, and then proceeds to recite in great detail to his partner -who already knows all this -- for nine tedious pages.
