GUILDENSTERN: You!–What do you know about death?
PLAYER KING: It’s what the actors do best. They have to exploit whatever talent is given to them, and their talent is dying. They can die heroically, comically, ironically, slowly, suddenly, disgustingly, charmingly, or from a great height. My own talent is more general. I extract significance from melodrama, a significance which it does not in fact contain; but occasionally, from out of this matter, there escapes a thin beam of light that, seen at the right angle, can crack the shell of mortality.
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
