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36 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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1st line
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Halt. An audience Don't move! Perfect! A lucky thing we came along |
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For us?
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Let us hope so. But to meet two gentlemen on the road--we would not hope to meet them off it
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No?
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Well met, in fact, and just in time.
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Why's that?
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Why, we grow rusty and you catch us at the very point of decadence--by this time tomorrow we might have forgotten everything we ever knew. That's a thought, isn't it? We'd be back where we started--improvising
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Tumblers, are you?
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WE can give you a tumble if that's your taste, and times being what they are...Otherwise, for a jingle of coin we can do you a selection of gory romances, full of fine cadence and corpses, pirated from the Italian; and it doesn't take much to make a jingle--even a single coin has music in it. Tragedians, at your command.
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I'm sorry-- his name is Guildenstern, and I'm Rosencrantz
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A pleasure. We've played to bigger, of course, but quality counts for something. I recognized you at once--
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And who are we?
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--as fellow artists
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I thought we were gentlemen
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For some of us it is performance, for others, patronage. There 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. Don't clap too loudly--it's a very old world
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What is your line?
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Tragedy, sir. Deaths and disclosures, universal and particular, denouements both unexpected and inexorable, transvestite melodrama on all levels including the suggestive. We transport you into a world of intrigue and illusion...clowns, if you like, murderers--we can do you ghosts and battles, on the skirmish level, heroes, villains, tormented loves--set pieces in the poetic vein; we can do you rapiers or rape or both, by all means, faithless wives and ravished virgins--flagrante delicto at a price, but that comes under realism for which there are special terms. Getting warm, am I?
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Well, I don't know...
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It costs little to watch, and littke more if you happen to get caught up in the action, if that's your taste and times being what they are
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What are they?
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Indifferent.
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Bad?
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Wicked. Now what precisely is your pleasure? Gentlemen disport yourselves. There! See anything you like? |
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What do they do? |
Let your imagination run riot. They are beyond surprise.
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And how much?
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To take part?
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To watch.
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Watch what?
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A private performance
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Well, there are only two of us. Is that enough? |
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What's the difference? |
Ten guilders.
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Ten guilders!
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I mean eight |
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Together? |
Each. I don't think you understand-- |
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What are you saying? |
What am I saying--seven. |
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Where have you been? |
Roundabout. A nest of children carries the custom. Juvenile companies, they are the fashion. But they cannot match our repertoire...we'll stoop to anything if that's your bent... |
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They'll grow up
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Onward! |
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Where are you going? |
Home sir |
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Where from?
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Home. We're travelling people. We take our chances where we find them |
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It was chance then? |
Chance? |
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You found us. |
Oh yes. |
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You were looking? |
Oh no. |
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Chance, then |
Or fate
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Yours or ours? |
It could hardly be one withput the other. |
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Fate, then. |
Oh yes. We have no control. Tonight we play to the court. Or the night after. Or to the tavern. Or not. |
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Perhaps I can use my influence. |
At the tavern? |
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Would you say so? |
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I have influence yet. |
Yet what? |
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I have influence! You said something--about getting caught up in the action-- |
I did--I did--You're quicker than your friend...Now for aa handful of guilders T happen to have aa private performance of The Rape of the Sabine Women--or rather woman--or rather Alfred---- Get your skirt on Alfred--- ...and for eight you can participate ...taking either part ...or both for ten ...with encores Get your skirt off, Alfred.... |
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a comic pornographer and a rabble of prostitutes... |
You should have caught us in better times. We were purists then.
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