Thanks.
I patched the game up to 1.23. I didn't previously even know there was a patch for the game available. That seemed to do the trick. It now starts up okay.
The voiceacting doesn't work still, though. This is a bit of a problem, since that was definitely one of the strong parts of the game. Voices work okay in the intro, but in-game turn off. I did run the setup, mind you, and tried with both soundblaster and soundblaster pro this far. Is there something to do with dosbox settings to help with this?