Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard.
Title: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Author: Tom Stoppard.
Genre: Fiction, plays.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1966.
Summary: The play which, as it were, takes place in the wings of Hamlet, and finds both humour and poignancy in the situation of the ill-fated attendant lords, caught up in and doomed by Hamlet's mania.
My Rating: 9/10
My Review:
♥ Two Elizabethans passing the time in a place without any visible character.
♥ The run of "heads" is impossible, yet ROS betrays no surprise at all - he feels none. However, he is nice enough to feel a little embarrassed at taking so much money off his friend. Let that be his character note.
♥ GUIL: (Flipping a coin) There is an art to the building up of suspense.
ROS: Heads.
GUIL: {Flipping another) Though it can be done by luck alone.
♥ (..[ROS] spins another coin over his shoulder without looking at it, his attention being directed at his environment or lack of it.)
♥ ([GUIL] flips a coin.) The law of averages, if I have got this right, means that if six monkeys were thrown up in the air for long enough they would land on their tails about as often as they would land on their -
ROS: Heads. (He picks up the coins.)
♥ GUIL: ..We have been spinning coins together since - (He releases him almost as violently.) This is not the first time we have spun coins!
ROS: Oh no - we've been spinning coins for as long as I remember.
GUIL: How long is that?
ROS: I forgot. Mind you - eighty-five times!
♥ GUIL: ..No fear?
ROS: Fear?
GUIL: (In fury - flings a coin on the ground) Fear! The crack that might flood your brain with light!
♥ ROS: I'm afraid -
GUIL: So am I.
ROS: I'm afraid it isn't your day.
GUIL: I'm afraid it is.
♥ GUIL: ..(He muses.) List of possible explanations.
One. I'm willing it. Inside where nothing shows, I am the essence of a man spinning double-headed coins, and betting against himself in private atonement for an unremembered past. (He spins a coin at ROS.)
ROS: Heads.
GUIL: Two. Time has stopped dead, and the single experience of one coin being spun once has been repeated ninety times... (He flips a coin, looks at it, tosses it to ROS.) On the whole, doubtful. Three. Divine intervention, that is to say, as good turn from above concerning him, cf. children of Israel, or retribution from above concerning me, cf. Lot's wife. Four. A spectacular indication of the principle that each individual coin spun individually (He spins one) is as like to come down heads as tails and therefore should cause no surprise each individual time it does. (It does.)
♥ GUIL: (He stops pacing dead.) There was a messenger... that's right. We were sent for. (He wheels at ROS and raps out -) Syllogism the second: one, probability is a factor which operates within natural forces. Two, probability is not operating as a factor. Three, we are now within un-, sub-, or supernatural forces. Discuss. (ROS is suitably startled - Acidly.) Not too heatedly.
ROS: I'm sorry I - What's the matter with you?
GUIL: The scientific approach to the examination of the phenomena is a defence against the pure emotion of fear. Keep tight hold and continue while there's time. Now - counter to the previous syllogism: tricky one, follow me carefully, it may prove a comfort. If we postulate, and we just have, that within un-, sub- or supernatural forces the probability is that the law of probability will not operate as a factor. Then we must accept that the probability of the first part will not operate as a factor, in which case the law of probability will operate as a factor within un-, sub- or supernatural forces. And since it obviously hasn't been doing so, we can take it that we are not held within un-, sub- or supernatural forces after all; in all probability, that is. Which is a great relief in me personally. (Small pause.) Which is all very well, except that - (He continues with tight hysteria, under control.) We have been spinning coins together since I don't know when, and in all that time (if it is all that time) I don't suppose either of us was more than a couple of gold pieces up or down. I hope that doesn't sound surprising because its very unsurprisingness is something I am trying to keep hold of. The equanimity of your average tosser of coins depends upon the law, or rather a tendency, or let us say a probability, or at any rate a mathematically calculable chance, which ensures that he will not upset himself by losing too much nor upset his opponent by winning too often. This made for a kind of harmony and a kind of confidence. It related the fortuitous and the ordained into a reassuring union which we recognized as nature. The sun came up about as often as it went down, in the long run, and a coin showed heads about as often as it showed tails. Then a messenger arrived. We had been sent for. Nothing else happened. Ninety-two coins spun consecutively have come down heads ninety-two consecutive times... and for the last three minutes on the wind of a windless day I have heard the sound of drums and flute...
ROS: (Cutting his fingernails) Another curious scientific phenomenon is the fact that the fingernails grow after death, as does the beard.
♥ ROS: (Dramatically) It was urgent - a matter of extreme urgency, a royal summons, his very words: official business and no questions asked - lights in the stableyards, saddle up and off headlong and hotfoot across the land, our guides outstripped in breakneck pursuit of our duty! Fearful lest we come too late!! (Small pause.)
GUIL: Too late for what?
ROS: How do I know? We haven't got there yet.
♥ GUIL: ..We have not been... picked out... simply to be abandoned... set loose to find our own way... We are entitled to some direction... I would have thought.
♥ GUIL: A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds or, to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; until - "My God," says a second man, "I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn." At which point, a dimension is added that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third witness, you understand, adds no further dimension but only spreads it thinner, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are the thinner it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience... "Look, look!" recited the crowd. "A horse with an arrow in its forehead! It must have been mistaken for a deer."
♥ ROS: My name is Guildenstern, and this is Rosencrantz. (GUIL confers briefly with him.)
(Without embarrassment) I'm sorry - his name is Guildenstern, and I'm Rosencrantz.
♥ PLAYER: It costs little to watch, and little more if you happen to get caught up in the action, if that's your taste and times being what they are.
ROS: What are they?
PLAYER: Indifferent.
ROS: Bad?
PLAYER: Wicked.
♥ ROS: And how much?
PLAYER: To take part?
ROS: To watch.
PLAYER: Watch what?
ROS: A private performance.
PLAYER: How private?
ROS: Well, there are only two of us. Is that enough?
PLAYER: For an audience, disappointing. For voyeurs, about average.
ROS: What's the difference?
PLAYER: Ten guilders.
♥ GUIL: It was chance, then?
PLAYER: Chance?
GUIL: You found us.
PLAYER: Oh yes.
GUIL: You were looking?
PLAYER: Oh no.
GUIL: Chance, then.
PLAYER: Or fate.
GUIL: Yours or ours?
PLAYER: It could hardly be one without the other.
GUIL: Fate, then.
♥ PLAYER: ..Now for a handful of guilders I happen to have a private and uncut performance of the Rape of the Sabine Women - or rather woman, or rather Alfred - (Over his shoulder) Get your skirt on, Alfred -
(The BOY starts struggling into a female robe.)
..and for eight you can participate.
(GUIL backs, PLAYER follows).
...taking either part.
(GUIL backs.)
...or both for ten.
(GUIL tries to turn away. PLAYER holds his sleeve.)
...with encores -
(GUIL smashes the PLAYER across the face. The PLAYER recoils. GUIL stands trembling.)
(Resigned and quiet) Get your skirt off, Alfred...
(ALFRED struggles out of his half-on robe.)
GUIL: (Shaking with rage and fright) It could have been - it didn't have to be obscene... It could have been - a bird out of season, dropping bright-feathered on my shoulder... It could have been a tongueless dwarf standing by the road to point the way... I was prepared. But it's this, is it? No enigma, no dignity, nothing classical, portentous, only this - a comic pornographer and a rabble of prostitutes...
PLAYER: (Acknowledging the description with a sweep of his hat, bowing: sadly) You should have caught us in better times. We were purists then.
..ROS: You're not - ah - exclusively players, then?
PLAYER: We're inclusively players, sir.
ROS: Times being what they are.
PLAYER: Yes.
ROS: Indifferent.
PLAYER: Completely.
♥ ROS: I mean, what exactly do you do?
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 kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.
♥ GUIL: Good. Year of your birth. Double it. Even numbers I win, odd numbers I lose.
(Silence. An awful sigh as the TRAGEDIANS realize that any number doubled is even. Then a terrible row as they object, Then a terrible silence.)
♥ GUIL: ..Come here, Alfred.
(ALFRED moves down and stands, frightened and small. Gently.) Do you lose often?
ALFRED: Yes, sir.
GUIL: Then what could you have left to lose?
AALFRED Nothing, sir.
♥ GUIL: Your kind of thing, is it?
PLAYER: Well, no, I can't say it is, really. We're more of the blood, love and rhetoric school.
GUIL: Well, I'll leave the choice to you, if there is anything to choose between them.
PLAYER: 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.
GUIL: Is that what people want?
PLAYER: It's what we do.
♥ GUIL: Well... aren't you going to change into your costume?
PLAYER: I never change out of it, sir.
GUIL: Always in character.
PLAYER: That's it.
(Pause.)
GUIL: Aren't you going to - come on?
PLAYER: I am on.
GUIL: But if you are on, you can't come on. Can you?
PLAYER: I start on.
♥ ROS: I remember -
GUIL: Yes?
ROS: I remember when there were no questions.
GUIL: There were always questions. To exchange one set for another is no great matter.
ROS: Answers, yes. There were answers to everything.
GUIL: You've forgotten.
ROS: (Flaring) I haven't forgotten - how I used to remember my own name - and yours, oh yes! There were answers everywhere you looked. There was no question about it - people knew who I was and if they didn't they asked and I told them.
GUIL: You did, the trouble is, each of them is... plausible, without being instinctive. All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eyes, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque. A man standing on his saddle in the half-lit half-alive dawn banged on the shutters and called two names. He was just a hat and a cloak levitating in the grey plume of his own breath, but when he called we came. That much is certain - we came.
ROS: Well I can tell you I'm sick to death of it. I don't care one way or another, so why don't you make up your mind.
GUIL: We can't afford anything quite so arbitrary. Nor did we come all this way for a christening. All that - preceded us. But we are comparatively fortunate; we might have been left to sift the whole field of human nomenclature, like two blind men looting a bazaar for their own portraits...
♥ GUIL: ..At least we are presented with alternatives.
ROS: Well as from now -
GUIL: - But not choice.
♥ GUIL: (Low, wry rhetoric) Give us this day our daily mask.
♥ GUIL: The only beginning is birth and the only end is death - if you can't count on that, what can you count on?
♥ GUIL: We've been caught up. Your smallest action sets off another somewhere else, and is set off by it. Keep an eye open, an ear cocked. Tread warily, follow instructions. We'll be all right.
ROS: For how long?
GUIL: Tell events have played themselves out. There's a logic at work - it's all done for you, don't worry. Enjoy it. Relax. To be taken in hand and led, like being a child again, even without the innocence, a child - It's like being given a prize, an extra slice of childhood when you least expect it, as a prize for being good, or compensation for never having had one.. Do I contradict myself?
ROS: I can't remember.
♥ GUIL: ..(At footlights) What a fine persecution - to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened... (Pause.) We've had no practice.
ROS: We could play at questions.
GUIL: What good would that do?
ROS: Practice!
GUIL: Statement! One-love.
ROS: Cheating!
GUIL: How?
'
ROS: I hadn't started yet.
GUIL: Statement. Two-love.
ROS: Are you counting that?
GUIL: What?
ROS" Are you counting that?
GUIL: Foul! No repetitions. Three-love. First game to...
ROS: I'm not going to play if you're going to be like that.
GUIL: Whose serve?
ROS: Hah?
GUIL: Foul! No grunts. Love-one.
ROS: Whose go?
GUIL: Why?
ROS: Why not?
GUIL: What for?
RIOS: Foul! No synonyms! One-all.
GUIL: What in God's name is going on?
ROS: Foul! No rhetoric. Two-one.
GUIL: What does it all add up to?
ROS: Can't you guess?
GUIL: Were you addressing me?
ROS: Is there anyone else?
GUIL: Who?
ROS: How would I know?
'
GUIL: Why do you ask?
ROS: Are you serious?
GUIL: Was that rhetoric?
ROS: No.
GUIL: Statement! Twp-all. Game point.
ROS: What's the matter with you today?
GUIL: When?
ROS: What?
GUIL: Are you deaf?
RIOS: Am I dead?
FUIL: Yes or no?
ROS: Is there a choice?
GUIL: Is there a God?
ROS: Foul! No non sequiturs, three-two, one game all.
GUIL: (Seriously) What's your name?
ROS: What's yours?
GUIL: I asked first.
ROS: Statement. One-love.
GUIL: What's your name when you're at home?
ROS: What's yours?
GUIL: When I'm at home?
ROS: Is it different at home?
GUIL: What home?
RIOS: Haven't you got one?
GUIL: Why do you ask?
ROS: What are you driving at?
GUIL: (with emphasis) What's your name?!
ROS: Repetition. Two-love. Match point to me.
GIL: (Seizing him violently) WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
ROS: Rhetoric! Game and match! (Pause.) Where's it going to end?
GUIL: That's the question.
ROS: It's all questions.
GUIL: Do you think it matters?
RIOS: Doesn't it matter to you?
GUIL: Why should it matter?
ROS: What does it matter why?
GUIL: (Teasing gently) Doesn't it matter why it matters?
ROS: (Rounding on him) What's the matter with you? (Pause.)
GUIL: It doesn't matter.
ROS: (Voice in the wilderness)...What's the game?
GUIL: What are the rules?
♥ GUIL: Consistency is all I ask!
ROS: (Quietly) Immortality is all I seek...
GUIL: (Dying fall) Give us this day our daily week...
♥ GUIL: It's common knowledge.
ROS: Your mother's marriage.
GUIL: He slipped in.
(Beat.)
ROS: (Lugubriously) His body was still warm.
GUIL: So was hers.
ROS: Extraordinary.
GUIL: Indecent.
ROS: Hasty.
GUIL: Suspicious.
ROS: It makes you think.
GUIL: Don't think I haven't thought of it.
ROS: And with her husband's brother.
GUIL: They were close.
ROS: She went to him -
GUIL: - Too close -
ROS: - for comfort.
GUIL: It looks bad.
ROS: It adds up.
GUIL: Incest to adultery.
ROS: Would you go so far?
GUIL: Never.
ROS: To sum up: your father, whom you love, dies, you are his heir, you come back to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his young brother popped on to his throne and into his sheets, thereby offending both legal and natural practice. Now why exactly are you behaving in this extraordinary manner?
GUIL: I can't imagine! (Pause.) But all that is well known, common property. Yet he sent for us. And we did come.
♥ GUIL: Wait a minute - we came from roughly south according to a rough map.
ROS: I see. Well, which way did we come in? (GUIL looks round vaguely.) Roughly.
GUIL: (Clears his throat) In the morning the sun would be easterly. I think we can assume that.
ROS: That it's morning?
GUIL: If it is, and the sun is over there (His right as he faces the audience) for instance, that (Front) would be northerly. On the other hand, if it is not morning and the sun is over there (His left)... that... (Lamelystill be northerly. (Picking up). To put it another way, if we came from down there (Front) and it is morning, the sun would be up there (His left), and if it is actually over there (His right) and it's still morning, we must have come from up there (Behind him), and if that is southerly (His left) and the sun is really over there (Front), then it's the afternoon. However, if none of these is the case -
ROS: Why don't you go and have a look?
GUIL: Pragmatism?! - is that all you have to offer? You seem to have no conception of where we stand! You won't find the answer written down for you in the bowl of a compass - I can tell you that. (Pause.) Besides, you can never tell this far north - it's probably dark out there.
♥ GUIL: Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are... condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one - that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd know that we were lost. (He sits.) A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty - and, by which definition, a philosopher - dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
♥ ROS: Fire!
(GUIL jumps up.)
GUIL: Where?
ROS: It's all right - I'm demonstrating the misuse of free speech. To prove that it exists. (He regards the audience, that is the direction, with contempt - and other directions, then front again.) Not a move. They should burn to death in their shoes.
♥ GUIL: We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.
♥ GUIL: So you've caught up.
PLAYER: (Coldly) Not yet, sir.
GUIL: Now mind your tongue, or we'll have it out and throw the rest if you away, like a nightingale at a Roman feast.
ROS: Took the very words out of my mouth.
GUIL: You'd be lost for words.
ROS: You'd be tongue-tied.
GUIL: Like a mute in a monologue.
ROS: Like a nightingale at a Roman feast.
GUIL: Your diction will go to pieces.
ROS: Your lines will be cut.
GUIL: To dumbshows.
ROS: And dramatic pauses.
GUIL: You'll never find your tongue.
ROS: Lick your lips.
GUIL: Taste your tears.
ROS: Your breakfast.
GUIL: You won't know the difference.
ROS: There won't be any.
GUIL: We'll take the very words out of your mouth.
♥ PLAYER: ..You don't understand the humiliation of it - to be tricked pout of the single assumption which makes our existence viable - that somebody is watching... The plot was two corpses gone before we caught sight of ourselves, stripped naked in the middle of nowhere and pouring ourselves down a bottomless well.
ROS: Is that thirty-eight?
PLAYER: (Lost) There were were - demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow protestations of faith hurled after empty promises of vengeance - and every gesture, every pose, vanishing into the thin unpopulated air. We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened. (He rounds on them.) Don't you see?! We're actors - we're the opposite of people! (They recoil nonplussed, his voice calms.) Think, in your head, now, think of the most... private... secret... intimate... thing you have ever done secure in the knowledge of its privacy... (He gives them - and the audience - a good pause. ROS takes on a shifty look.) Are you thinking of it? (He strikes with his voice and his head.) Well, I saw you do it! (ROS leaps up, dissembling madly.)
ROS: You never! It's a lie! (He catches himself with a giggle in a vacuum and sits down again.)
PLAYER: We're actors... We pledged our identities, secure in the convention of our trade; that someone would be watching. And then, gradually, no one was. We were caught, high and dry. It was not until the murderer's long soliloquy that we were able to look around, frozen as we were in profile, our eyes searched you out, first confidently, then hesitantly, then desperately as each patch of turf, each log, every exposed corner in every direction proved uninhabited, and all the while the murderous King addressed the horizon with his dreary interminable guilt... Our heads began to move, wary as lizards, the corpse of unsullied Rosalinda peeped through his gingers, and the King faltered. Even then, habit and a stubborn tryst that our audience spied upon us from behind the nearest bush, forced our bodies to blunder on long after they had emptied of meaning, until like runaway carts they dragged to a halt. No one came forward. No one shouted at us. The silence was unbreakable, it imposed itself upon us; it was obscene. We took off our crowns and swords and cloth of gold and moved silent on the road to Elsinore.
♥ GUIL: Where are you going?
PLAYER: I can come and go as I please.
GUIL: You're evidently a man who knows his way around.
PLAYER: I've been here before.
GUIL: We're still finding out feet.
PLAYER: I should concentrate on not losing your heads.
GUIL: Do you speak from knowledge?
PLAYER: Precedent.
GUIL: You've been here before.
PLAYER: And I know which way the wind is blowing.
♥ (GUIL for the second time cuts him off.) The truth is, we value your company, for want of any other. We have been left so much to our own devices - after a while one welcomes the uncertainty of being left to other people's.
PLAYER: Uncertainty is the normal state. You're nobody special.
♥ GUIL: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.
PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions. What do you assume?
ROS: Hamlet is not himself, outside or in. We have to glean what afflicts him.
GUIL: He doesn't give much away.
PLAYER: Who does, nowadays?
GUIL: He's - melancholy.
PLAYER: Melancholy?
ROS: Mad.
PLAYER: How is he mad?
ROS: Ah. (To GUIL) How is he mad?
GUIL: More morose than mad, perhaps.
PLAYER: Melancholy.
GUIL: Moody.
ROS: He has moods.
PLAYER: Of moroseness?
GUIL: Madness. And yet.
ROS: Quite.
GUIL: For instance.
ROS: He talks to himself, which might be madness.
GUIL: If he didn't talk sense, which he does.
ROS: Which suggests the opposite.
PLAYER: Of what?
(Small pause.)
GUIL: I think I have it. A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself.
ROS: Or just as mad.
GUIL: Or just as mad.
ROS: And he does both.
GUIL: So there you are.
ROS: Stark raving sane.
♥ PLAYER: The old man thinks he's in love with his daughter.
ROS: (Appalled) Good God! We're out of our depth here.
♥ GUIL: Pass!
(The PLAYER passes into one of the wings. ROS cups his hands and shouts into the opposite one.)
ROS: Next!
(But no one comes.)
GUIL: What did you expect?
ROS: Something... someone.... nothing. (They sit facing front.)
♥ ROS: We can't afford it.
GUIL: Yes, one must think of the future.
ROS: It's the normal thing.
GUIL: To have one. One is, after all, having it all the time... now... and now... and now...
ROS: It could go on for ever. Well, not for ever, I suppose.
♥ ROS: ..Eternity is a terrible though. I mean, where's it going to end?
♥ ROS: ..We have no control. None at all... (He paces.) Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood when it first occurred to you that you don't go on for ever. It must have been shattering - stamped into one's memory. And yet I can't remember it. It never occurred to me at all. What does one make of that? We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the words for it, before we know that there are words, out we come, bloodied and squalling with the knowledge that for all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure.
♥ ROS: (..He looks out and comes back quickly.)
He's coming.
GUIL: What's he doing?
ROS: Nothing.
GUIL: He must be doing something.
ROS: Walking.
GUIL: On his hands?
ROS: No, on his feet.
GUIL: Stark naked?
ROS: Fully dressed.
GUIL: Selling toffee apples?
ROS: Not that I noticed.
GUIL: You could be wrong?
ROS: I don't think so.
♥ ROS: ..Yes. Yes, this looks like one to be grabbed with both hands, I should say... if I were asked... No point in looking at a gift horse till you see the whites of its eyes, etcetera. (He has moved towards HAMLET but his nerve fails. He returns.) We're overawed, that's our trouble. When it comes to the point we succumb to their personality...
♥ PLAYER: ..(To the TRAGEDIANS) Everyone ready? And for goodness sake, remember what we're doing. (To ROS and GUIL) We always use the same costumes more or less, and they forget what they are supposed to be in you see... Stop picking your nose, Alfred. When Queens have to they do it by a cerebral process passed down in the blood... ..(To ROS and GUIL) They're a bit out of practice, but they always pick up wonderfully for the deaths - it brings out the poetry in them.
GUIL: How nice.
PLAYER: There's nothing more unconvincing than an unconvincing death.
♥ PLAYER: ..There's a design at work in all art - surely you know that? Events must play themselves out to aesthetic, moral and logical conclusion.
GUIL: And what's that, in this case?
PLAYER: It never varies - we aim at the point where everyone who is marked for death dies.
GUIL: Marked?
PLAYER: Between "just deserts" and "tragic irony" we are given quite a lot of scope for our particular talent. Generally speaking, things have gone about as far as they can possibly go when things have got about as bad as they reasonably get. (He switches on a smile.)
GUIL: Who decides?
PLAYER: (Switching off his smile) Decides? It is written.
(He turns away. GUIL grabs him and spins him back violently. Unflustered.) Now if you're going to be subtle, we'll miss each other in the dark. I'm referring to oral tradition. So to speak.
(GUIL releases him.)
We're tragedians, you see. We follow directions - there is no choice involved. The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.
♥ ROS: Oh, I say - here - really! You can't do that!
PLAYER: Why not?
ROS: Well, really - I mean, people want to be entertained - they don't come expecting sordid and gratuitous filth.
PLAYER: You're wrong - they do! Murder, seduction and incest - what do you want - jokes?
ROS: I want a good story, with a beginning, middle and end.
PLAYER: (To GUIL) And you?
GUIL: I'd prefer art to mirror life, it it's all the same to you.
PLAYER: It's the same to me, sir.
♥ ..the PLAYER himself continues his breathless commentary for the benefit of ROS and GUIL.)
PLAYER: Lucianus, nephew to the king... usurped by his uncle and shattered by his mother's incestuous marriage... loses his reason... throwing the court into turmoil and disarray as he alternates between bitter melancholy and unrestricted lunacy... staggering from the suicidal (A pose) to the homicidal (Here he kills "POLONIUS")... he at last confronts his mother and in a scene of provocative ambiguity - (A somewhat oedipal embrace) begs her to repent and recant -
(He springs up, still talking.)
The King - (He pushes forward the POISONER/KING) tormented by guilt - haunted by fear - decides to despatch his nephew to England - and entrusts this undertaking to two smiling accomplices - friends - courtiers - to two spies - (He has swung round to bring together the POISONER/KING and the two cloaked TRAGEDIANS; the latter kneel and accept a scroll from the KING.)
- giving them a letter to present to the English court - ! And so they depart - on board ship -
(The two SPIES position themselves on either side of the PLAYER, and the three of them sway gently in unison, the motion of a boat; and then the PLAYER detaches himself.) - and they arrive -
(One SPY shades his eyes at the horizon.)
- and disembark - and present themselves before the English king - (He wheels round.) The English king - (An exchange of headgear creates the ENGLISH KING from the remaining player - that is, the PLAYER who played the original murdered king.)
But where is the Prince? Where indeed? The plot has thickened - a twist of fate and cunning has put into their hands a letter that seals their deaths!
(The two SPIES present their letter; the ENGLISH KING reads it and orders their deaths; They stand up as the PLAYER whips off their cloaks preparatory to execution.)
Traitors hoist by their own petard? - or victims of the gods? - we shall never know!
♥ GUIL: (Fear, derision) Actors! The mechanics of cheap melodrama! That isn't death! (More quietly) Your scream and choke and sink to your knees, but it doesn't bring death home to anyone - it doesn't catch them unawares and start the whisper in their skulls that says - "One day you are going to die." (He straightens up.) You die so many times, how can you expect them to believe in your death?
PLAYER: On the contrary, it's the only kind they do believe. .. Audiences know what to expect, and that is all that they are prepared to believe in.
♥ ROS: ..Where does one begin...? (Takes one step towards the wings and halts.)
GUIL: Well, that's a step in the right direction.
ROS: You think so? He could be anywhere.
GUIL: All right - you go that way, I'll go this way.
ROS: Right.
(They walk towards opposite wings. ROS halts.)
No.
(GUIL halts.)
You go this way - I'll go that way.
GUIL: All right.
(They march towards each other, cross. ROS halts.)
ROS: Wait a minute.
(GUIL halts.)
I think we should stick together. He might be violent.
GUIL: Good point. I'll come with you.
(GUIL marches across to ROS. They turn to leave. ROS halts.)
ROS: No, I'll come with you.
GUIL: Right.
(They turn, march across to the opposite wing. ROS halts. GUIL halts.)
ROS: I'll come with you, my way.
GUIL: All right.
(They turn again and march across. ROS halts. GUIL halts.)
RIOS: I've just thought. If we both go, he could come here. That would be stupid, wouldn't it?
GUIL: All right - I'll stay, you go.
ROS: Right.
(GUIL marches to midstage.)
I say.
(GUIL wheels and carries on marching back towards ROS who starts marching downstage. They cross. ROS halts.)
I've just thought.
(GUIL halts.)
We ought to stick together; he might be violent.
GUIL: Good point.
(GUIL marches down to join ROS. They stand still for a moment in their original positions.)
Well, at last we're getting somewhere.
(Pause.)
GUIL: Of course, he might not come.
RIOS: (Airily) Oh, he'll come.
GUIL: We'd have some explaining to do.
ROS: He'll come. (Airily wanders upstage.) Don't worry - take my word for it - (Looks out - is appalled.) He's coming!
♥ (He positions ROS with his back to one wing, facing HAMLET's entrance.)
GUIL positions himself next to ROS, a few feet away, so that they are covering one side of the stage, facing the opposite side.
GUIL unfastens his belt. ROS does the same They join the two belts, and hold them taut between them. ROS's trousers slide slowly down. HAMLET enters opposite, slowly, dragging POLONIUS's body. He enters upstage, makes a small arc and leaves by the same side, a few feet downstage.
ROS and GUIL, holding the belts taut, stare at him in some bewilderment.
HAMLET leaves, dragging the body. They relax the strain on the belts.)
ROS: That was close.
GUIL: There is a limit to what two people can do.
♥ ROS: I understand you not, my lord.
HAMLET: I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.
♥ GUIL: (Does not move: thoughtfully) And yet it doesn't seem enough; to have breathed such significance. Can that be all? And why us? - anybody would have done. And we have contributed nothing.
ROS: It was a trying episode while it lasted, but they've done with us now.
GUIL: Done what?
ROS: I don't pretend to have understood. Frankly, I'm not very interested. If they won't tell us, that's their affair.
♥ GUIL: It's autumnal.
ROS: (Examining the ground) No leaves.
GUIL: Autumnal - nothing to do with leaves. It is to do with a certain brownness at the edges of the day... Brown is creeping up on us, take my word for it... Russets and tangerine shades of old gold flushing the very outside edge of the senses... deep shining ochres, burnt umber and parchments of baked earth - reflecting on itself and through itself, filtering the light. At such times, perhaps, coincidentally, the leaves might fall, somewhere, by repute. Yesterday was blue, like smoke.
♥ ROS: He said we can go. Cross my heart.
GUIL: I like to know where I am. Even if I don't know where I am, I like to know that. If we go there's no knowing.
ROS: No knowing what?
GUIL: If we'll ever come back.
ROS: We don't want to come back.
GUIL: That may very well be true, but do we want to go?
RIOS: We'll be free.
GUIL: I don't know. It's the same sky.
ROS: We've come this far.
(He moves towards exit. GUIL follows him.)
And besides, anything could happen yet.
(They go.)
BLACKOUT
♥ ROS: We're on a boat. (Pause.) Dark, isn't it?
GUIL: Not for night.
ROS: No, not for night.
GUIL: Dark for day.
(Pause.)
ROS: Oh yes, it's dark for day.
GUIL: We must have gone north, of course.
ROS: Off course?
GUIL: Land of the midnight sun, that is.
ROS: Of course.
♥ (ROS inhales with expectation, exhales with boredom.)
♥ GUIL: ..Free to move, speak, extemporise, and yet. We have not been cut loose. Our truancy is defined by one fixed star, and our drift represents merely a slight change of angle to it: we may seize the moment, toss it around while the moments pass, a short dash here, an exploration there, but we are brought round full circle to face again the single immutable fact - that we, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, bearing a letter from one king to another, are taking Hamlet to England.
♥ ROS: (After shifting, looking around) What now?
GUIL: What do you mean?
ROS: Well, nothing is happening.
GUIL: We're on a boat.
ROS: I'm aware of that.
GUIL: (Angrily) Then what do you expect? (Unhappily) We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.
♥ ROS: We take Hamlet to the English king, we hand over the letter - what then?
GUIL: There may be something in the letter to keep us going a bit.
RIOS: And if not?
GUIL: Then that's it - we're finished.
ROS: At a loose ends?
GUIL: Yes.
(Pause.)
ROS: Are there likely to be loose ends? (Pause.)
♥ GUIL: (Leaping up) What a shambles! We're just not getting anywhere.
ROS: (Mournfully) Not even England. I don't believe in it anyway.
GUIL: What?
ROS: England.
GUIL: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, you mean?
ROS: I mean I don't believe it! (Calmer) I have no image. I try to picture us arriving, a little harbour perhaps... roads... inhabitants to point the way... horses on the road... riding for a day or a fortnight and then a palace and the English king... That would be the logical kind of thing... But my mind remains a blank. No. We're slipping off the map.
GUIL: Yes... yes... (Rallying) But you don't believe anything till it happens. And it has all happened. Hasn't it?
ROS: We drift down time, clutching at straws. But what good's a brick to a drowning man?
GUIL: Don't give up, we can't be long now.
ROS: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat?
GUIL: No, no, no... Death is... not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat.
ROS: I've frequently not been on boats.
GUIL: No, no, no - what you've been is not on boats.
ROS: I wish I was dead. (Considers the drop.) I could jump over the side. That would put a spoke in their wheel.
GUIL: Unless they're counting on it.
ROS: I shall remain on board. That'll put a spoke in their wheel. (The futility of it, fury.) All right! We don't question, we don't doubt. We perform. But a line must be drawn somewhere, and I would like to put it on record that I have no confidence in England. Thank you. (Thinks about this.) And even if it's true, it'll just be another shambles.
♥ ROS: ..We're his friends.
GUIL: How do you know?
ROS: From our young days brought up with him.
GUIL: You've only got their word for it.
ROS: But that's what we depend on.
GUIL: Well, yes, and then again no.
♥ ROS: ..(..They lie down - prone.) If we stopped breathing we'd vanish.
(The muffled sound of a recorder. They sit up with disproportionate interest.)
Here we go.
Yes, but what?
(They listen to the music.)
GUIL: (Excitedly) Out of the void, finally, a sound; while on a boat (admittedly) outside the action (admittedly) the perfect and absolute silence of the wet lazy slap of water against water and the rolling creak of timber - breaks; giving rise at once to the speculation or the assumption or the hope that something is about to happen; a pipe is heard. One of the sailors has pursued his lips against a woodwind, his fingers and thumb governing, shall we say, the ventages, whereupon, giving it breath, let us say, with his mouth, it, the pipe, discourses, as the saying goes, most eloquent music. A thing like that, it could change the course of events.
♥ PLAYER: ..all the money we had we lost betting on certainties. Life is a gamble, at terrible odds - if it was a bet, you wouldn't take it. If you know that any number doubled is even?
ROS: Is it?
PLAYER: We learn something every day, to our cost.
♥ ROS: A compulsion towards philosophical introspection is his chief characteristic, if I may put it like that. It does not mean he is mad. It does not mean he isn't. Very often, it does not mean anything at all. Which may or may not be a kind of madness.
GUIL: It really boils down to symptoms. Pregnant replies, mystic allusions, mistaken identities, arguing his father is his mother, that sort of thing; intimations of suicide, forgoing of exercise, loss of mirth, hints of claustrophobia not to say delusions of imprisonment; invocations of camels, chameleons, capons, whales, weasels, hawks, handsaws - riddles, quibbles and evasions; amnesia, paranoia, myopia; day-dreaming, hallucinations; stabbing his elders, abusing his parents, insulting his lover, and appearing hatless in public - knock-kneed, droop-stockinged and sighing like a love-sick shcoolboy, which at his age is coming on a big strong.
ROS: And talking to himself
GUIL: And talking to himself.
♥ GUIL: (Broken) We've travelled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation.
ROS: Be happy - If you're not even happy what's so good about surviving? (He picks himself up.) We'll be all right. I suppose we just go on.
♥ GUIL: (Quietly) Where we went wrong was getting on a boat. We can move, of course, change direction, rattle about, but our movement is contained within a larger one that carries us along as inexorably as the wind and current...
ROS: They had it in for us, didn't they? Right from the beginning. Who'd have thought that we were so important?
GUIL: But why? Was it all for this? Who are we that so much should converge on our little deaths? (In anguish to the PLAYER.) Who are we?
PLAYER: You are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. That's enough.
GUIL: No - it is not enough. To be told so little - to such an end - and still, finally, to be denied an explanation...
PLAYER: In our experience, most things end in death.
♥ PLAYER: ..So there's an end to that - it's commonplace: light goes with life, an in the winter of your years the dark comes early...
GUILK: (Tired, drained, but still an edge of impatience; over the mime) No... no... not for us, not like that. Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over... Death is not anything... death is not... It's the absence of presence, nothing more... the endless time of never coming back... a gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound...
♥ ROS: That's it, then, is it?
(No answer, he looks out front.)
The sun's going down. Or the earth's coming up, as the fashionable theory has it.
(Small pause.) Not that it makes any difference.
(Pause.)
What was it all about? When did it begin?
(Pause, no answer.)
Couldn't we just stay put? I mean no one is going to come on and drag us off... They'll just have to wait. We're still young... fit... we've got years...
(Pause. No answer.)
(A cry.) We've done nothing wrong! We didn't harm anyone. Did we?
GUIL: I can't remember.
(ROS pulls himself together.)
ROS: All right, then. I don't care. I've had enough. To tell you the truth, I'm relieved.
(And he disappears from view.
GUIL does not notice.)
GUIL: Our names shouted in a certain dawn... a message.. a summons... there must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said - no. But somehow we missed it.
(He looks round and sees he is alone.)
Rosen - ?
Guil - ?
(He gathers himself.)
Well, we'll know better next time. Now you see me, now you -
(And disappears.)