Richard Dreyfuss: The Player
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Quotes
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The Player : Generally speaking, things have gone about as far as they can possibly go, when things have gotten about as bad as they can reasonably get.
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The Player : We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.
Guildenstern : Is that what people want?
The Player : It's what we do.
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The Player : We're actors! We're the opposite of people!
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Guildenstern : Wasn't that the end?
Player King : You call that an ending? - with practically everyone still on his feet? My goodness, no - over your dead body!
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Rosencrantz : [Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are about to be hanged] That's it then, is it? We've done nothing wrong. We didn't harm anybody, did we?
Guildenstern : I can't remember.
Rosencrantz : All right, then. I don't care. I've had enough. To tell you the truth, I'm relieved.
Guildenstern : There must have been a moment at the beginning, where we could have said no. Somehow we missed it. Well, we'll know better next time.
The Player : Till then.
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Player King : Audiences know what they expect and that is all they are prepared to believe in.
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The Player : [after a pantomime of 'Hamlet' performed for the servants] Are you familiar with this play?
Guildenstern : No.
The Player : A slaughterhouse, eight corpses all told.
Guildenstern : [does a quick mental recount, then] Six.
The Player : Eight.
[the two tragedians who resemble Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are "hanged"]
Guildenstern : Who are they?
The Player : They're dead.
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The Player : There's a design at work in all art surely you know that? Events must play themselves out to an aesthetic, moral and logical conclusion.
Guildenstern : And what's that in this case?
The Player : It never varies. We aim for the point where everyone who is marked for death dies.
Guildenstern : Marked?
The Player : Generally speaking things have gone about as far as they can possibly go when things have got about as bad as they can reasonably get.
Guildenstern : Who decides?
The Player : Decides? It is written.
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The Player : We are tragedians, you see? We follow directions. There is no choice involved. The bad end unhappily, the good, unluckily. That is what tragedy means.
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Guildenstern : It could have been - it didn't have to be obscene! I was prepared. But it's this, is it? No enigma, no dignity, nothing classical, poetic - only this, a comic pornographer and a rabble of prostitutes!
The Player : You should have caught us in better times. We were purists then.
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Guildenstern : You can't do death!
The Player : On the contrary, it's what we do best. We have to exploit whatever talent is given to us and our talent is for dying. We can die heroically, comically, ironically, sadly, suddenly, slowly, disgustingly charmingly or from a great height.
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Guildenstern : We're still finding our feet.
The Player : I should concentrate on not losing your heads.
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The Player : Why?
Guildenstern : Ah, why?
Rosencrantz : Exactly!
Guildenstern : Exactly what?
Rosencrantz : Exactly why?
Guildenstern : Exactly why what?
Rosencrantz : What?
Guildenstern : Why?
Rosencrantz : Why what exactly?
Guildenstern : WHY IS HE MAD?
Rosencrantz : I DON'T KNOW!
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The Player : The old man thinks he's in love with his daughter.
Rosencrantz : Good God. We're out of our depths here.
The Player : No, no, no! He hasn't got a daughter! The old man thinks he's in love with his daughter.
Rosencrantz : The old man is?
The Player : Hamlet... in love... with the old man's daughter... the old man... thinks.
Rosencrantz : Ah.
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The Player : The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily... that is what Tragedy means.
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Rosencrantz : What exactly do you do?
The Player : We keep to our usual stuff, more or less, only inside out. We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen *off*. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as an entrance somewhere else.
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The Player : We can do rapiers... or rape... or both!
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Rosencrantz : [Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have read the switched letter and learned that they will be executed] They had it in for us, didn't they? Right from the beginning. Who'd have thought we were so important?
Guildenstern : But why? Was it all for this? Who are we that so much should converge on our little deaths?
The Player : You are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. That's enough.
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Guildenstern : Where's Hamlet?
Rosencrantz : Gone!
Guildenstern : Gone, where?
Rosencrantz : The pirates took him.
Guildenstern : But they can't! We're supposed to be... We've got a letter which says... The whole thing's pointless without him. We need Hamlet for our release!
Rosencrantz : I'll pretend to be... *You* pretend to be him, and... Right.
[pauses]
Rosencrantz : I suppose we just go on.
Guildenstern : Go where?
Rosencrantz : England?
Guildenstern : England. I don't believe it!
Rosencrantz : What, just a conspiracy of cartographers, you mean?
Guildenstern : [grabs Rosencrantz] I *mean* I don't believe it! And even if it's true, what do we say?
Rosencrantz : We say, "We've arrived!"
The Player : [as King of England] Who are you?
Rosencrantz : We are Guildenstern & Rosencrantz.
The Player : [as King] Which is which?
Rosencrantz : Well, I'm Guildenstern.
Guildenstern : And he's Rosencrantz.
Rosencrantz : Exactly.
The Player : [as King] What does this have to do with me? You turn up out of the blue with some cock-and-bull story...
Guildenstern : We have a letter.
[presents letter]
The Player : [as King] A letter?
[chuckles, takes letter]
The Player : Hm.
[reading]
The Player : As England is Denmark's faithful tributary. As love between them, like the palm might flourish, et cetera, that on the knowing of these contents, without delay of any kind, should those bearers, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, put to sudden death.
Rosencrantz : Not that letter. Give him the other one.
Guildenstern : I haven't got another one.
The Player : [shrugs, then yells to Tragedians] They're gone! It's all over!
Guildenstern : Where we went wrong, was getting on a boat.
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The Player : Faithless wives and ravished virgins - flagrante delicto at a price.
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The Player : It costs little to watch, and a little more to get caught up in the action. If that's your taste and times being what they are.
Guildenstern : What are they?
The Player : Indifferent.
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Rosencrantz : You're not - exclusively players, then?
The Player : We are inclusively players, sir.
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The Player : It's what is expected. Deaths for all ages and occasions! Deaths of kings and princes! And - nobodies.
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The Player : For a handful of coin I happen to have a private and uncut performance of "The Rape of the Sabine Women," or rather woman, or rather Alfred, and for eight you can participate.
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The Player : Tragedians, at your command.
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Rosencrantz : My name is Guildenstern, and this is Rosencrantz. I'm sorry, his name's Guildenstern, and I'm Rosencrantz.
The Player : We've played to bigger, but quality counts for something.
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The Player : Halt! An audience! Don't move! Perfect. Well met, in fact, and just in time.
Rosencrantz : Why's that?
The Player : Why, we grow rusty and you catch us at the very point of decadence. This time tomorrow we might have forgotten everything we ever knew. We'd be back where we started, improvising.
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The Player : For some it is performance, for others patronage, they are two sides of the same coin or being as there are so many of *us* - the same side of two coins.
Guildenstern : It was luck, then?
The Player : Or fate.
Rosencrantz : Yours or ours?
The Player : It could hardly be one without the other.
Guildenstern : Fate.
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Guildenstern : Do you speak from knowledge?
The Player : Precedent.
Guildenstern : You've been here before.
The Player : And I know which way the wind is blowing.
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The Player : You don't understand the humiliation of it - to be tricked out of the single assumption that makes our existence bearable. That somebody's watching.
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Guildenstern : Is this the "Murder of Gonzago"?
The Player : That's the least of it.
Guildenstern : Who was that?
The Player : The king's brother and uncle to the prince.
Guildenstern : Not exactly fraternal.
The Player : Not exactly avuncular as time goes on.
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The Player : In our experience, almost everything ends in death.
