confronted by the players (tragedians) - stoppard (1990)

Oldman, Roth and Dreyfuss in Stoppard’s Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Write/Direc 1966/1990) (transcript from the play UNCUT original with selections ./....) GUIL: A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population orsignificance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds, or to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; until - “My God,“ says the second man, “I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn.“ At which point, a dimension is added that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third witness, you understand, adds no further dimension but only spreads it thinner, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are, the thinner it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience... “Look, look“ recites the crowd. “A horse with an arrow in its forehead! It must have been mistaken for a deer.“ ROS (eagerly): I knew all along it was a band. GUIL (tiredly): He knew all along it was a band. ROS: Here they come! GUIL (at the last moment before they enter - wistfully): I’m sorry it wasn’t the unicorn. It would have been nice to have unicorns. ./.... PLAYER: Halt! (The GROUP turns and halts.) (Joyously.) An audience! (ROS and GUIL half rise.) ./.... PLAYER: A pleasure. We’ve played to bigger, of course, but quality counts for something. I recognised you at once - ROS: And who are we? PLAYER: - as fellow artists. ROS: I thought we were gentlemen. PLAYER: For some of us it is performance, for others, patronage. They are two sides of the same coin, or, let us say, being as there are so many of us, the same side of two coins. (Bows again.) Don’t clap too loudly - it’s a very old world. ./.... ROS: Where have you been? PLAYER: Roundabout. A nest of children carries the custom of the town. Juvenile companies, they are the fashion. But they cannot match our repertoire... we’ll stoop to anything if that’s your bent... ./.... ROS: You’re not - ah - exclusively players, then? PLAYER: We’re inclusively players, sir. ROS: So you give - exhibitions? PLAYER: Performances, sir. ROS: Yes, of course. There’s more money in that, is there? PLAYER: There’s more trade, sir. ROS: Times being what they are. PLAYER: Yes. ROS: Indifferent. PLAYER: Completely. ./.... PLAYER: We have no money. (GUIL turns to him.) GUIL: Ah. Then what have you got? (The PLAYER silently brings ALFRED forward. GUIL regards ALFRED sadly.) Was it for this? PLAYER: It’s the best we’ve got. GUIL (looking up and around): Then the times are bad indeed. ./.... GUIL: You lost. Well, then - one of the Greeks, perhaps? You’re familiar with the tragedies of antiquity, are you? The great homicidal classics? Matri, patri, fratri, sorrori, uxori and it goes without saying - ROS: Saucy - GUIL: - Suicidal - hm? Maidens aspiring to godheads - ROS: And vice versa - GUIL: Your kind of thing, is it? PLAYER: Well, no, I can’t say it is, really. We’re more of the blood, love and rhetoric school. GUIL: Well, I’ll leave the choice to you, if there is anything to choose between them. PLAYER: They’re hardly divisible, sir - well, I can do you blood and love without rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without love, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can’t do you love and rhetoric without blood. Blood is compulsory - they’re all blood, you see. ./.... GUIL (moving out): Come on. ROS: I say - that was lucky. GUIL (turning): What? ROS: It was tails.