Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman offers a good example of taking dialogue from a play and using it as an opportunity to see an incident as it happens. There is a scene in which Willy Loman approaches his boss, the son of the man he has worked for for nearly thirty-five years. His “American dream” now shattered and in pieces, Willy has come to ask the man if he can give up the road, literally his way of life, and work in the main office. But Willy Loman is a salesman, and he doesn’t know anything else.

Willy asks Howard, the son, for a job on the floor. First he asks for $65 a week, then he drops his request to $50 a week, and then, in a final humiliation, he is literally forced to beg for $40 a week. But this “is a business, kid, and everybody’s gotta pull his own weight,” Willy is told, and Willy Loman’s sales figures have not been the best lately. Willy responds by retreating into his memory, telling Howard what drew him to become a salesman. “When I was a boy... eighteen, nineteen,” he says, “I was already on the road. And there was a question in my mind as to whether selling had a future for me....”