by Tom Stoppard
PLAYER : Who knows?
GUIL (rattled): He’s not coming back?
PLAYER : Hardly.
ROS : He’s dead then. He’s dead as far as we’re concerned.
PLAYER : Or we are as far as he is. (He goes and sits on the floor to one side.) Not too bad, is it?
GUIL (rattled): But he can’t—we’re supposed to be—we’ve got a letter—we’re going to England with a letter for the King——
PLAYER : Yes, that much seems certain. I congratulate you on the unambiguity of your situation.
GUIL : But you don’t understand—it contains—we’ve had our instructions——the whole thing’s pointless without him.
PLAYER : Pirates could happen to anyone. Just deliver the letter. They’ll send ambassadors from England to explain. . . .
GUIL (worked up): Can’t you see—the pirates left us home and high—dry and home—drome——(Furiously.) The pirates left us high and dry!
PLAYER (comforting): There . . .
GUIL (near tears): Nothing will be resolved without him. . . .
PLAYER : There . . .!
GUIL : We need Hamlet for our release!
PLAYER : There!
GUIL : What are we supposed to do?
PLAYER : This.
He turns away, lies down if he likes, ROS and GUIL apart.
ROS : Saved again.
GUIL : Saved for what?
ROS sighs.
ROS : The sun’s going down. (Pause.) It’ll be night soon. (Pause.) If that’s west. (Pause.) Unless we’ve
GUIL (shouts): Shut up! I’m sick of it! Do you think conversation is going to help us now?
ROS (hurt, desperately ingratiating): I—I bet you all the money I’ve got the year of my birth doubled is an odd number.
GUIL (moan): No-o.
ROS: Your birth!
GUIL smashes him down.
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: GO where?
ROS : To England.
GUIL : England! That’s a dead end. I never believed in it anyway.
ROS : All we’ve got to do is make our report and that’ll be that Surely.
GUIL: I don’t believe it—a shore, a harbour, say—and we get off and we stop someone and say—Where’s the King?— And he says, Oh, you follow that road there and take the first left and——— (Furiously.) I don’t believe any of it!
ROS : It doesn’t sound very plausible.
GUIL : And even if we came face to face, what do we say?
ROS : We say—We’ve arrived!
GUIL (kingly): And who are you?
ROS : We are Guildenstern and Rosencrantz.
GUIL : Which is which?
ROS : Well, I’m—You’re——
GUIL : What’s it all about?——
ROS : Well, we were bringing Hamlet—but then some pirates——
GUIL: I don’t begin to understand. Who are all these people, what’s it got to do with me? You turn up out of the blue with some cock and bull story——
ROS (with letter): We have a letter——
GUIL (snatches it, opens it): A letter—yes—that’s true. That’s something . . . a letter . . . (Reads.) “As England is Denmark’s faithful tributary . . . as love between them like the palm might flourish, etcetera . . . that on the knowing of this contents, without delay of any kind, should those bearers, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, put to sudden death——”
He double-takes, ROS snatches the letter, GUIL snatches it back, ROS snatches it half back. They read it again and look up.
The PLAYER gets to his feet and walks over to his barrel and kicks it and shouts into it.
PLAYER : They’ve gone! It’s all over!
One by one the PLAYERS emerge, impossibly, from the barrel, and form a casually menacing circle round ROS and GUIL, who are still appalled and mesmerised.
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 wet
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.
GUIL (fear, vengeance, scorn): Your experience!—Actors!
He snatches a dagger from the PLAYER’ S belt and holds the point at the PLAYER’ S throat: the PLAYER backs and GUIL advances, speaking more quietly.
I’m talking about death—and you’ve never experienced that. And you cannot act it. You die a thousand casual deaths—with none of that intensity which squeezes out life . . . and no blood runs cold anywhere. Because even as you die you know that you will come back in a different hat. But no one gets up after death—there is no applause—there is only silence and some second-hand clothes, and that’s—death
And he pushes the blade in up to the hilt. The PLAYER stands with huge, terrible eyes, clutches at the wound as the blade withdraws: he makes small weeping sounds and jails to his knees, and then right down.
While he is dying, GUIL, nervous, high, almost hysterical, wheels on the TRAGEDIANS—
If we have a destiny, then so had he—and if this is ours, then that was his—and if there are no explanations for us, then let there be none for him——
The TRAGEDIANS watch the PLAYER die: they watch with some interest. The PLAYER finally lies still. A short moment of silence. Then the TRAGEDIANS start to applaud with genuine admiration. The PLAYER stands up, brushing himself down.
PLAYER {modestly): Oh, come, come, gentlemen—no flattery—it was merely competent——
The TRAGEDIANS are still congratulating him. The PLAYER approaches GUIL, who stands rooted, holding the dagger.
PLAYER : What did you think? (Pause.) You see, it is the kind they do believe in—it’s what is expected.
He holds his hand out for the dagger, GUIL slowly puts the point of the dagger on to the PLAYER’S hand, and pushes . . . the blade slides back into the handle. The PLAYER smiles, reclaims the dagger.
For a moment you thought I’d—cheated.
ROS relieves his own tension with loud nervy laughter.
ROS : Oh, very good! Very good! Took me in completely—didn’t he take you in completely— (claps his hands). Encore! Encore!
PLAYER (activated, arms spread, the professional): Deaths for all ages and occasions! Deaths by suspension, convulsion, consumption, incision, execution, asphyxiation and malnutrition—! Climactic carnage, by poison and by steel—! Double deaths by duel—! Show!—
ALFRED, still in his Queen’s costume, dies by poison: the PLAYER, with rapier, kills the “KING” and duels with a fourth TRAGEDIAN, inflicting and receiving a wound. The two remaining TRAGEDIANS, the two “SPIES” dressed in the same coats as ROS and GUIL, are stabbed, as before. And the light is fading over the deaths which take place right upstage.
(Dying amid the dying—tragically; romantically.) So there’s an end to that—it’s commonplace: light goes with life, and in the winter of your years the dark comes early. . . .
GUIL (tired, drained, but still an edge of impatience; over the mime): No . . . no . . . not for us, no 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. . . .
The light has gone upstage. Only GUIL and ROS are visible as ROS’J clapping falters to silence.
Small pause.
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).
Immediately the whole stage is lit up, revealing, upstage, arranged in the approximate positions last held by the dead TRAGEDIANS, the tableau of court and corpses which is the last scene of Hamlet.
That is: The KING, QUEEN, LAERTES and HAMLET all dead. HORATIO holds HAMLET. FORTINBRAS is there.
So are two AMBASSADORS from England.
AMBASSADOR : The sight is dismal;
and our affairs from England come too late.
The ears are senseless that should give us hearing
to tell him his commandment is fulfilled,
that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
Where should we have our thanks?
HORATIO : Not from his mouth,
had it the ability of life to thank you:
He never gave commandment for their death.
But since, so jump upon this bloody question,
you from the Polack wars, and you from England,
are here arrived, give order that these bodies
high on a stage be placed to the view;
and let me speak to the yet unknowing world
how these things came about: so shall you hear
of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts,
of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
and, in this upshot, purposes mistook
fallen on the inventors’ heads: all this can I truly deliver.
But during the above speech, the play fades out, overtaken by dark and music.