by Tom Stoppard
ROS : Ah! Ready?
GUIL : You know what to do?
ROS : What?
GUIL : Are you stupid?
ROS : Pardon?
GUIL : Are you deaf?
ROS : Did you speak?
GUIL (admonishing): Not now
ROS : Statement.
GUIL (shouts): Not now! (Pause.) If I had any doubts, or rather hopes, they are dispelled. What could we possibly have in common except our situation? (They separate and sit.) Perhaps he’ll come back this way.
ROS : Should we go?
GUIL : Why?
Pause.
ROS (starts up. Snaps fingers): Oh! You mean—you pretend to be him, and / ask you questions!
GUIL (dry): Very good.
ROS : You had me confused.
GUIL : I could see I had.
ROS : How should I begin?
GUIL : Address me.
They stand and face each other, posing.
ROS : My honoured Lord!
GUIL : My dear Rosencrantz!
Pause.
ROS : Am I pretending to be you, then?
GUIL : Certainly not. If you like. Shall we continue?
ROS : Question and answer.
GUIL : Right.
ROS : Right. My honoured lord!
GUIL : My dear fellow!
ROS : How are you?
GUIL : Afflicted!
ROS : Really? In what way?
GUIL : Transformed.
ROS : Inside or out?
GUIL : Both.
ROS : I see. (Pause.) Not much new there.
GUIL : Go into details. Delve. Probe the background, establish the situation.
ROS : So—so your uncle is the king of Denmark?!
GUIL : And my father before him.
ROS : His father before him?
GUIL : No, my father before him.
ROS : But surely——
GUIL: YOU might well ask.
ROS : Let me get it straight. Your father was king. You were his only son. Your father dies. You are of age. Your uncle becomes king.
GUIL : Yes.
ROS: Unorthodox.
GUIL : Undid me.
ROS : Undeniable. Where were you?
GUIL : In Germany.
ROS : Usurpation, then.
GUIL: He slipped in.
ROS : Which reminds me.
GUIL : Well, it would.
ROS : I don’t want to be personal.
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?
OUIL : 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 onto 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.
ROS (alert, ear cocked): I say! I heard music
GUIL : We’re here.
ROS : —Like a band—I thought I heard a band.
GUIL : Rosencrantz . . .
ROS (absently, still listening): What?
Pause, short.
GUIL (gently wry): Guildenstern. . .
ROS (irritated by the repetition): What?
GUIL : Don’t you discriminate at all?
ROS (turning dumbly): Wha’?
Pause.
GUIL : Go and see if he’s there.
ROS : Who?
GUIL : There.
ROS goes to an upstage wing, looks, returns, formally making his report.
ROS : Yes.
GUIL : What is he doing?
ROS repeats movement.
AOS : Talking.
GUIL : To himself?
ROS starts to move, GUIL cuts in impatiently.
Is he alone?
ROS: NO.
GUIL : Then he’s not talking to himself, is he?
ROS : Not by himself. . . . Coming this way, I think. (Shiftily.) Should we go?
GUIL : Why? We’re marked now.
HAMLET enters, backwards, talking, followed by POLONIUS, upstage, ROS and GUIL occupy the two downstage corners looking upstage.
HAMLET : . . . for you yourself, sir, should be as old as I am if like a crab you could go backward.
POLONIUS (aside): Though this be madness, yet there is method in it. Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
HAMLET : Into my grave.
POLONIUS : Indeed, that’s out of the air.
HAMLET crosses to upstage exit, POLONIUS asiding unintelligibly until
My lord, I will take my leave of you.
HAMLET : You cannot take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal—except my life, except my life, except my life. . . .
POLONIUS (crossing downstage): Fare you well, my lord. (ToROS :) You go to seek Lord Hamlet? There he is.
ROS (toPOLONIUS) : God save you sir.
POLONIUS goes.
GUIL (calls upstage toHAMLET) : My honoured lord!
ROS : My most dear lord!
HAMLET centred upstage, turns to them.
HAMLET : My excellent good friends! How dost thou Guildenstern? (Coming downstage with an arm raised to ROS, GUIL meanwhile bowing to no greeting, HAMLET corrects himself. Still toROS :) Ah Rosencrantz!
They laugh good-naturedly at the mistake. They all meet midstage, turn upstage to walk, HAMLET in the middle, arm over each shoulder.
HAMLET : Good lads how do you both?
BLACKOUT
ACT TWO
HAMLET, ROS and GUIL talking, the continuation of the previous scene. Their conversation, on the move, is indecipherable at first. The first intelligible line is HAMLET’s, coming at the end of a short speech—see Shakespeare Act II, scene ii.
HAMLET : S’blood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.
A flourish from the TRAGEDIANS’ band.
GUIL : There are the players.
HAMLET : Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come then. (He takes their hands.) The appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony. Let me comply with you in this garb, lest my extent to the players (which I tell you must show fairly outwards) should more appear like entertainment than yours. You are welcome. (About to leave.) But my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.
GUIL : In what, my dear lord?
HAMLET : I am but mad north north-west; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.
POLONIUS enters as GUIL turns away.
POLONIUS : Well be with you gentlemen.
HAMLET (toROS): Mark you, Guildenstern (uncertainly to GUIL) and you too; at each ear a hearer. That great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling clouts. . . . (He takes ROS upstage with him, talking together.)
POLONIUS : My Lord! I have news to tell you.
HAMLET (releasing ROS and mimicking): My lord, I have news to tell you. . . . When Roscius was an actor in Rome . . .
ROS ccmes downstage to rejoinGUIL.
POLONIUS (as he follows HAMLET out): The actors are come hither my lord.
HAMLET : Buzz, buzz.
Exeunt HAMLET andPOLONIUS.
ROS and GUIL ponder. Each reluctant to speak first.
GUIL : Hm?
ROS : Yes?
GUIL : What?
ROS : I thought you . . .
GUIL: NO.
ROS : Ah.
Pause.
GUIL : I think we can say we made some headway.
ROS : You think so?
GUIL : I think we can say that.
ROS : I think we can say he made us look ridiculous.
GUIL : We played it close to the chest of course.
ROS (derisively):“Question and answer. Old ways are the best ways”! He was scoring off us all down the line.
GUIL : He caught us on the wrong foot once or twice, perhaps, but I thought we gained some ground.
ROS (simply): He murdered us.
GUIL : He might have had the edge.
ROS (roused): Twenty-seven—three, and you think he might have had the edge?! He murdered us.
GUIL : What about our evasions?
ROS : Oh, our evasions were lovely. “Were you sent for?” he says. “My lord, we were sent for. . . .” I didn’t know where to put myself.
GUIL : He had six rhetoricals——
ROS : It was question and answer, all right. Twenty-seven questions he got out in ten minutes, and answered three. I was waiting for you to delve.“When is he going to start delving?” I asked myself.
GUIL : —And two repetitions.
ROS : Hardly a leading question between us.
GUIL : We got his symptoms, didn’t we?
ROS : Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn’t mean anything at all.
GUIL : Thwarted ambition—a sense of grievance, that’s my diagnosis.
ROS : Six rhetorical and two repetition, leaving nineteen, of which we answered fifteen. And what did we get in return? He’s depressed! . . . Denmark’s a prison and he’d rather live in a nutshell; some shadow-play about the nature of ambition, which never got down to cases, and finally one direct question which might have led somewhere, and led in fact to his illuminating claim to tell a hawk from a handsaw.
Pause.
GUIL : When the wind is southerly.
ROS : And the weather’s clear.
GUIL : And when it isn’t he can’t.
ROS : He’s at the mercy of the elements. (Licks his finger and holds it up—facing audience.) Is that southerly?
They stare at audience.
GUIL: It doesn’t look southerly. What made you think so?
ROS : I didn’t say I think so. It could be northerly for all I know.
GUIL : I wouldn’t have thought so.
ROS : Well, if you’re going to be dogmatic.
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 theaudience) 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. . . (lamely) would still 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 (behindhim), and if that is southerly (his left) and the sun is really over there (front), then it’s the afternoon. However, if no 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.
ROS: I merely suggest that the position of the sun, if it is out, would give you a rough idea of the time; alternatively, the clock, if it is going, would give you a rough idea of the position of the sun. I forget which you’re trying to establish.
GUIL : I’m trying to establish the direction of the wind.
ROS : There isn’t any wind. Draught, yes.
GUIL : In that case, the origin. Trace it to its source and it might give us a rough idea of the way we came in—which might give us a rough idea of south, for further reference.
ROS: It’s coming up through the floor. (He studies the floor.) That can’t be south, can it?
GUIL : That’s not a direction. Lick your toe and wave it around a bit.
ROS considers the distance of his foot.
ROS : No, 1 think you’d have to lick it for me.
Pause.
GUIL : I’m prepared to let the whole matter drop.
ROS : Or I could lick yours, of course.
GUIL : No thank you.
ROS : I’ll even wave it around for you.
GUIL (down ROS’5 throat): What in God’s name is the matter with you?
ROS : Just being friendly.
GUIL (retiring): Somebody might come in. It’s what we’re counting on, after all. Ultimately.
Good pause.
ROS : Perhaps they’ve all trampled each other to death in the rush. . . . Give them a shout. Something provocative. Intrigue them.
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 Tang 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.
A good pause, ROS leaps up and bellows at the audience.
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. (He takes out one of his coins. Spins it. Catches it. Looks at it. Replaces it.)
GUIL : What was it?
ROS : What?
GUIL : Heads or tails?
ROS : Oh. I didn’t look.
GUIL : Yes you did.
ROS : Oh, did I? (He takes out a coin, studies it.) Quite right— it rings a bell.
GUIL : What’s the last thing you remember?
ROS : I don’t wish to be reminded of it.
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.
Ros approaches him brightly, holding a coin between finger and thumb. He covers it with his other hand, draws his fists apart and holds them for GUIL. GUIL considers them. Indicates the left hand, ROS opens it to show it empty.
ROS : No.
Repeat process, GUIL indicates left hand again. ROS shows it empty.
Double bluff!
Repeat process —GUIL taps one hand, then the other hand, quickly, ROS inadvertently shows that both are empty. ROS laughs as GUIL turns upstage, ROS stops laughing, looks around his feet, pats his clothes, puzzled.
POLONIUS breaks that up by entering upstage followed by the TRAGEDIANS and HAMLET.
POLONIUS (entering): Come sirs.
HAMLET : Follow him, friends. We’ll hear a play tomorrow.(Aside to the PLAYER, who is the last of the TRAGEDIANS.) Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play The Murder of Gonzago?
PLAYER : Ay, my lord.
HAMLET : We’ll ha’t tomorrow night. You
could for a need study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines which I would set down and insert in’t, could you not?
PLAYER : Ay, my lord.
HAMLET : Very well. Follow that lord, and look you mock him not.
The PLAYER crossing downstage, notes ROS and GUIL. Stops. HAMLET crossing downstage addresses them without pause.
HAMLET : My good friends, I’ll leave you till tonight. You are welcome to Elsinore.
ROS : Good, my lord.
HAMLET goes.
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 of 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.
ROS : So you’ve caught on.
GUIL: SO you’ve caught up.
PLAYER (tops): Not yet! (Bitterly.) You left us.
GUIL : Ah! I’d forgotten—you performed a dramatic spectacle on the way. Yes, I’m sorry we had to miss it
PLAYER (bursts out): We can’t look each other in the face! (Pause, more in control.) You don’t understand the humiliation of it —to be tricked out 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 we 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!