Danton Char '98 of Dunster House and Kate DeLima '97 of

Cabot House won the 1997 Boylston Prize Speaking Contest, held last week.

Char won first place ($300) reading an excerpt from Henry V by William Shakespeare, and DeLima won second place ($150) reading and excerpt from The Winter's Tale, also by Shakespeare

The Boylston Prize for Elocution was founded in 1817 by Ward Nicholas Boylston. The contest is open to all upperclass students in good academic standing. Each candidate presents a reading that is not more than five minutes in length.

The actual terms of the original endowment call for ". . . a public exhibition, or trial of the advancement or progress of the Students at the University in Elocution, and to the end that the attention of the competitors and the judges herein after provided, may not be diverted from the only object of the institution which is what is usually termed a good delivery, including therein gracefulness, energy and propriety of action, distinctness and clearness of enunciation, correctness of pronunciation, and a suitable regard to the emphasis and modulation of voice, and in short every thing which contributes to give force and beauty to written discourses, when delivered publicly, it shall be a standing rule that the speaker shall never rehearse his own compositions but may select any writings in verse or prose from approved English, Greek or Latin Authors, the selection so made to be first approved by the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory."

The competition takes place over the course of two nights. The first round is judged by the members of the Boylston Prize Committee. The second round of the contest is a black-tie event. There are three judges for the final round: one representative from the legal profession, one from the clergy, and one from academia.

This year's event was hosted by English Professor Peter Sacks (acting in lieu of the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory Seamus Heaney, who is on leave).

The chair of the Boylston Prize Committee was Senior Lecturer Richard Marius. The judges for the first round were chair of the Richard Marius, English Instructor Nicholas Jenkins, and Assistant Professor of English Rebecca Krug. The judges for the final round were: Associate Justice Margaret H. Marshall of the Massachusetts Supreme Court; the Rev. Sam Lloyd III of Trinity Church; and Assistant Professor of the Classics Ivy Livingston. Some past winners include Ralph Waldo Emerson (1820), Richard Henry Dana (1837), Leverett Saltonstall (1844), Hans von Kaltenborn (1909) and Edward A. Weeks Jr. (1921).