GUILDENSTERN: You’re familiar with the tragedies of antiquity, are you? The great homicidal classics? Matri, patri, fratri, sorrori, uxori and it goes without saying–
ROSENCRANTZ: Saucy–
GUILDENSTERN: –Suicidal–hm? Maidens aspiring to godheads–
ROSENCRANTZ: And vice versa–
GUILDENSTERN: Your kind of thing, is it?
PLAYER KING: Well, no, I can’t say it is, really. We’re more of the blood, love and rhetoric school.
GUILDENSTERN: Well, I’ll leave the choice to you, if there is anything to choose between them.
PLAYER KING: They’re hardly divisible, sir–well, I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can’t do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory–they’re all blood, you see.
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
