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CLAUDIUS: Thanks, Rosencrantz (turning to ROS who is caught unprepared,
while GUIL bows) and gentle Guildenstern (turning to GUIL who is bent
double).
GERTRUDE (correcting): Thanks, Guildenstern (turning to ROS, who bows
as GUIL checks upward movement to bow too - both bent double, squinting at
each other)... and gentle Rosencrantz. (Turning to GUIL, both straightening
up - GUIL checks again and bows again.)
And I beseech you instantly to visit
My too much changed son. Go, some of you,
And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is.
(To ATTENDANTS exit backwards, indicating that ROS and GUIL should
follow.)
GUIL: Heaven make our presence and our practices
Pleasant and helpful to him.
GERTRUDE: Ay, amen!
(ROS and GUIL move towards and downstage wing. Before they get there,
POLONIUS enters. They stop and bow to him. He nods and hurries upstage to
CLAUDIUS. They turn to look at him but lose interest and come down to
footlights. POLINIUS meanwhile calling to CLAUDIUS.)
POLONIUS: The ambassadors from Norway, my good lord, are joyfully
returned.
CLAUDIUS: Thou still hast been the father of good news.
POLONIUS: Have I, my lord? Assure you, my good liege,
I hold my duty as I hold my soul,
Both to my God and to my gracious King;
And I do think or else this brain of mine
Hunts not the trail of policy for sure
As it hath used to do, that I have found
The very cause of Hamlet's lunacy...
(Exeunt - leaving ROS and GUIL)
ROS: I want to go home.
GUIL: Don't let them confuse you.
ROS: I'm out of my step here -
GUIL: We'll soon be home and high - dry and home - I'll -
ROS: It's all over my depth -
GUIL: I'll hie you home and -
ROS: - out of my head -
GUIL: - dry you high and -
ROS (cracking, high): - over my step over my head body! - I tell you
it's all stopping to a death, it's boding to a depth, stepping to a head,
it's all heading to a dead stop -
GUIL (the nursemaid): There!... and we'll soon be home and dry... and
high and dry... (Rapidly.) Has it ever happened to you that all of a sudden
and for no reason at all you haven't the faintest idea how to spell the word
- "wife" - or "house" - because when you write it down you just can't
remember ever having seen those letters in that order before...?
ROS: I remember...
GUIL: Yes?
ROS: I remember 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 ): 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 eye, and when something nudges it into
outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque. A man standing in his
saddle in the half-lit half-alive dawn banged on the shutters and called two
names. He was just a hat and the 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...
At least we are presented with alternatives.
ROS: Well as from now -
GUIL: - But not choice.
ROS: You made me look ridiculous in there.
GUIL: I looked as ridiculous as you did.
ROS (an anguished cry): Consistency is all I ask!
GUIL (low, wry rhetoric): Give us this day our daily mask.
ROS (a dying fall): I want to go home. (Moves.) Which way did we come
in? I've lost my sense of direction.
GUIL: The only beginning is birth and the only end is death - if you
can't count on that, what can you count on?
(They connect again.)
ROS: We don't owe anything to anyone.
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: Till 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 a compensation for never having had one...
Do I contradict myself?
ROS: I don't remember. What have we got to go on?
GUIL: We have been briefed. Hamlet's transformation. What do you
recollect?
ROS: Well, he's changed, hasn't he? The exterior and inward man fails
to resemble -
GUIL: Draw him on to pleasures - glean what afflicts him.
ROS: Something more than his father's death -
GUIL: He's always talking about us - there aren't two people living
whom he dotes on more than us.
ROS: We cheer him up - find out what's the matter -
GUIL: Exactly, it's the matter of asking the right questions and giving
away as little as we can. It's a game.
ROS: And then we can go?
GUIL: And receive such thanks as fits a king's remembrance.
ROS: I like the sound of that. What do you think he means by
remembrance?
GUIL: He doesn't forget his friends.
ROS: Wouldn't you care to estimate?
GUIL: Difficult to say, really - come kings tend to be amnesiac, others
I suppose - the opposite, whatever that is...
ROS: Yes - but -
GUIL: Elephantine...?
ROS: Hot how long - how much?
GUIL: Retentive - he's a very retentive king, a royal retainer...
ROS: What are you playing at?
GUIL: Words, words. They're all we have to go on.
(Pause.)
ROS: Shouldn't we be doing something - constructive?
GUIL: What did you have in mind?... A short, blunt human pyramid...?
ROS: We could go.
GUIL: Where?
ROS: After him.
GUIL: Why? They've got us placed now - if we start moving around, we'll
all be chasing each other all night.
(Hiatus.)
ROS (at footlights): How very intriguing! (Turns.) I feel like a
spectator - an appalling business. The only thing that makes it bearable is
the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute...
GUIL: See anyone?
ROS: No. You?
GUIL: No. (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?
ROS: Foul! No synonyms! One-all.
GUIL: What in God's name is going all?
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! Two-all. Game point.
ROS: What's the matter with you today?
GUIL: When?
ROS: What?
GUIL: Are you deaf?
ROS: Am I dead?
GUIL: 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 you 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?
ROS: 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.
GUIL (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?
ROS: 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?
(Enter HAMLET behind, crossing the stage, reading a book - as he is
about to disappear GUIL notices him.)
GUIL (sharply): Rosencrantz!
ROS (jumps): What?
(HAMLET goes. Triumph dawns on them, they smile.)
GUIL: There! How was that?
ROS: Clever!
GUIL: Natural?
ROS: Instinctive.
GUIL: Got it in your head?
ROS: I take my hat off you.
GUIL: Shake hands.
(They do.)
ROS: Now I'll try you - Guil - !
GUIL: - Not yet - catch me unawares.
ROS: Right. (They separate. Pause. Aside to GUIL.) Ready?
GUIL (explodes): Don't be stupid.
ROS: Sorry.
(Pause.)
GUIL (snaps): Guildenstern!
ROS (jumps): What? (He is immediately crestfallen, GUIL is disgusted.)
GUIL: Consistency is all I ask!
ROS (guilty): Give us this day our daily week...
(Beat.)
ROS: Who was that?
GUIL: Didn't you know him?
ROS: He didn't know me.
GUIL: He didn't see you.
ROS: I didn't see him.
GUIL: We shall see. I hardly knew him, he's changed.
ROS: You could see that?
GUIL: Transformed.
ROS: How do you know?
GUIL: Inside and out.
ROS: I see.
GUIL: He's not himself.
ROS: He's changed.
GUIL: I could see that. (Beat.) Glean what afflicts him.
ROS: Me?
GUIL: Him.
ROS: How?
GUIL: Question and answer. Old ways are the best ways.
ROS: He's afflicted.
GUIL: You question, I'll answer.
ROS: He's not himself, you know.
GUIL: I'm him, you see.
(Beat.)
ROS: Who am I then?
GUIL: You're yourself.
ROS: And he's you?
GUIL: Not a bit of it.
ROS: Are you afflicted?
GUIL: That's the idea. Are you ready?
ROS: Let's go back a bit.
GUIL: I'm afflicted.
ROS: I see.
GUIL: Glean what afflicts me.
ROS: Right.
GUIL: Question and answer.
ROS: How should I begin?
GUIL: Address me.
ROS: My dear Guildenstern!
GUIL (quietly): You've forgotten - haven't you?
ROS: My dear Rosencrantz!
GUIL (great control): I don't think you quite understand. What we are
attempting is a hypothesis in which I answer for him, while you ask me
questions.
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 my 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 I 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.) No 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: 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 though 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 and 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 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): What?
(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.)
ROS: Talking.
GUIL: To himself?
(ROS starts to move. GUIL cuts him 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 backwards.
POLONIUS (aside): Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.
Will you walk out of air, my Lord?
HAMLET: Into my grave.
POLONIUS: Indeed, that's out of 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. (To ROS.) You go
to seek Lord HAMLET? There he is.
ROS (to POLONIUS) God save you, sir.
(POLONIUS goes.)
GUIL (calls upstage to HAMLET): 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 am arm raised to ROS, GUIL meanwhile bowing to no greeting.
HAMLET corrects himself. Still to ROS.) Ah Rosencrantz!
(They laugh good naturedly at the mistake. They all meet midstage, turn
upside to walk, HAMLET in the middle, arm over each shoulder.)
HAMLET: Good lads, how do you both?
(A fade out. That is to say, the conversation - see Shakespeare, Act
II, Scene ii - runs down quickly; it is still animated and interspersed with
laughter, but it is overtaken by rising music and fading light.)
Act Two.
HAMLET, ROS and GUIL talking, the continuation of the previous scene.
Their conversation, on the move, is indecipherable at first. The first
illegible 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 take it out.
(A flourish from the TRAGEDIANS' band.)
GUIL: There are the players.
HAMLET: Gentlemen, you are welcome in 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.
(POLUNIUS enters, as GUIL turns away.)
POLONIUS: Well be you gentlemen.
HAMLET (to ROS): 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
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 Rocius was an actor in Rome...
(ROS comes down to re-join GUIL.)
POLONIUS (as he follows HAMLET out): The actors are come hither my
lord.
HAMLET: Buzz, buzz.
(Exeunt HAMLET and POLONIUS.)
(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 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 repetitions, 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 when the weather is 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 the 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 around
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's 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 (behind him), and if that is southerly (his
left) and the sun is really over there (front), then it's 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.
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 the 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 direction. Lick your toe and wave it around a bit.
(ROS considers the distance to his foot.)
ROS: No, I 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's 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 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.
(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.
(ROS 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 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 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 the other hand, draws his fist 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 left, 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 a 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.
PLAYER: 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 up.
GUIL: So you've caught up.
PLAYER (tops): Not yet! (Bitterly.) You left us.
GUIL: Ah! I'd forgotten - you performed a dramatic spectacle by the
wayside - a thing much thought of in the New Testament. How did yours
compare as an impromptu?
PLAYER: Badly - neither witnessed nor reported.
GUIL: Yes, I'm sorry we had to miss it. I hope you didn't leave
anything out - I'd be furious to think I didn't miss all of it.
(The PLAYER, progressively aggrieved, now burst out.)
PLAYER: 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 a 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 are - 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 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
conventions of our trade; that someone would be watching. And than,
gradually, no one was. We were caught, high and dry. It was not until the
murder's long soliloquy that we were able to look around; frozen we were in
the profil, our eyes searched you out, first confidently, then hesitantly,
then desperately as each patch of turf, each log, each exposed corned 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 fingers, and the King faltered. Even then, habit and a stubborn trust
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.
(Silence. Then GUIL claps solo with slow measured irony.)
GUIL: Brilliantly re-created - if these eyes could weep!... Rather
strong on metaphor, mind you. No criticism - only a matter of taste. And so
here you are - with a vengeance. That's a figure of speech... isn't it? Well
let's say we've made up for it, for you may have no doubt whom to thank for
your performance at the court.
ROS: We are counting on you to take him out of himself. You are the
pleasures which we draw him on to - (he escapes a fractional giggle but
recovers immediately) and by that I don't mean your usual filth; you can't .
treat royalty like people with normal perverted desires. They know nothing
of that and you know nothing of them, to your mutual survival. So give him a
good clean show suitable for all the family, or you can rest assured you'll
be playing the tavern tonight.
GUIL: Or the night, after.
ROS: Or not.
PLAYER: We already have an entry here. And always have had.
GUIL: You've played for him before?
PLAYER: Yes, sir.
ROS: And what's his bent?
PLAYER: Classical.
ROS: Saucy!
GUIL: What will you play?
PLAYER: "The Murder of Gonzago".
GUIL: Full of fine cadence and corpses.
PLAYER: Pirated from the Italian....
ROS: What is it about?
PLAYER: It's about a King and Queen....
GUIL: Escapism! What else?
PLAYER: Blood - -
GUIL: - Love and rhetoric.
PLAYER: Yes. (Going.)
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 our feet.
PLAYER: I should concentrate on not losing your heads.
while GUIL bows) and gentle Guildenstern (turning to GUIL who is bent
double).
GERTRUDE (correcting): Thanks, Guildenstern (turning to ROS, who bows
as GUIL checks upward movement to bow too - both bent double, squinting at
each other)... and gentle Rosencrantz. (Turning to GUIL, both straightening
up - GUIL checks again and bows again.)
And I beseech you instantly to visit
My too much changed son. Go, some of you,
And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is.
(To ATTENDANTS exit backwards, indicating that ROS and GUIL should
follow.)
GUIL: Heaven make our presence and our practices
Pleasant and helpful to him.
GERTRUDE: Ay, amen!
(ROS and GUIL move towards and downstage wing. Before they get there,
POLONIUS enters. They stop and bow to him. He nods and hurries upstage to
CLAUDIUS. They turn to look at him but lose interest and come down to
footlights. POLINIUS meanwhile calling to CLAUDIUS.)
POLONIUS: The ambassadors from Norway, my good lord, are joyfully
returned.
CLAUDIUS: Thou still hast been the father of good news.
POLONIUS: Have I, my lord? Assure you, my good liege,
I hold my duty as I hold my soul,
Both to my God and to my gracious King;
And I do think or else this brain of mine
Hunts not the trail of policy for sure
As it hath used to do, that I have found
The very cause of Hamlet's lunacy...
(Exeunt - leaving ROS and GUIL)
ROS: I want to go home.
GUIL: Don't let them confuse you.
ROS: I'm out of my step here -
GUIL: We'll soon be home and high - dry and home - I'll -
ROS: It's all over my depth -
GUIL: I'll hie you home and -
ROS: - out of my head -
GUIL: - dry you high and -
ROS (cracking, high): - over my step over my head body! - I tell you
it's all stopping to a death, it's boding to a depth, stepping to a head,
it's all heading to a dead stop -
GUIL (the nursemaid): There!... and we'll soon be home and dry... and
high and dry... (Rapidly.) Has it ever happened to you that all of a sudden
and for no reason at all you haven't the faintest idea how to spell the word
- "wife" - or "house" - because when you write it down you just can't
remember ever having seen those letters in that order before...?
ROS: I remember...
GUIL: Yes?
ROS: I remember 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 ): 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 eye, and when something nudges it into
outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque. A man standing in his
saddle in the half-lit half-alive dawn banged on the shutters and called two
names. He was just a hat and the 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...
At least we are presented with alternatives.
ROS: Well as from now -
GUIL: - But not choice.
ROS: You made me look ridiculous in there.
GUIL: I looked as ridiculous as you did.
ROS (an anguished cry): Consistency is all I ask!
GUIL (low, wry rhetoric): Give us this day our daily mask.
ROS (a dying fall): I want to go home. (Moves.) Which way did we come
in? I've lost my sense of direction.
GUIL: The only beginning is birth and the only end is death - if you
can't count on that, what can you count on?
(They connect again.)
ROS: We don't owe anything to anyone.
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: Till 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 a compensation for never having had one...
Do I contradict myself?
ROS: I don't remember. What have we got to go on?
GUIL: We have been briefed. Hamlet's transformation. What do you
recollect?
ROS: Well, he's changed, hasn't he? The exterior and inward man fails
to resemble -
GUIL: Draw him on to pleasures - glean what afflicts him.
ROS: Something more than his father's death -
GUIL: He's always talking about us - there aren't two people living
whom he dotes on more than us.
ROS: We cheer him up - find out what's the matter -
GUIL: Exactly, it's the matter of asking the right questions and giving
away as little as we can. It's a game.
ROS: And then we can go?
GUIL: And receive such thanks as fits a king's remembrance.
ROS: I like the sound of that. What do you think he means by
remembrance?
GUIL: He doesn't forget his friends.
ROS: Wouldn't you care to estimate?
GUIL: Difficult to say, really - come kings tend to be amnesiac, others
I suppose - the opposite, whatever that is...
ROS: Yes - but -
GUIL: Elephantine...?
ROS: Hot how long - how much?
GUIL: Retentive - he's a very retentive king, a royal retainer...
ROS: What are you playing at?
GUIL: Words, words. They're all we have to go on.
(Pause.)
ROS: Shouldn't we be doing something - constructive?
GUIL: What did you have in mind?... A short, blunt human pyramid...?
ROS: We could go.
GUIL: Where?
ROS: After him.
GUIL: Why? They've got us placed now - if we start moving around, we'll
all be chasing each other all night.
(Hiatus.)
ROS (at footlights): How very intriguing! (Turns.) I feel like a
spectator - an appalling business. The only thing that makes it bearable is
the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute...
GUIL: See anyone?
ROS: No. You?
GUIL: No. (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?
ROS: Foul! No synonyms! One-all.
GUIL: What in God's name is going all?
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! Two-all. Game point.
ROS: What's the matter with you today?
GUIL: When?
ROS: What?
GUIL: Are you deaf?
ROS: Am I dead?
GUIL: 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 you 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?
ROS: 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.
GUIL (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?
ROS: 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?
(Enter HAMLET behind, crossing the stage, reading a book - as he is
about to disappear GUIL notices him.)
GUIL (sharply): Rosencrantz!
ROS (jumps): What?
(HAMLET goes. Triumph dawns on them, they smile.)
GUIL: There! How was that?
ROS: Clever!
GUIL: Natural?
ROS: Instinctive.
GUIL: Got it in your head?
ROS: I take my hat off you.
GUIL: Shake hands.
(They do.)
ROS: Now I'll try you - Guil - !
GUIL: - Not yet - catch me unawares.
ROS: Right. (They separate. Pause. Aside to GUIL.) Ready?
GUIL (explodes): Don't be stupid.
ROS: Sorry.
(Pause.)
GUIL (snaps): Guildenstern!
ROS (jumps): What? (He is immediately crestfallen, GUIL is disgusted.)
GUIL: Consistency is all I ask!
ROS (guilty): Give us this day our daily week...
(Beat.)
ROS: Who was that?
GUIL: Didn't you know him?
ROS: He didn't know me.
GUIL: He didn't see you.
ROS: I didn't see him.
GUIL: We shall see. I hardly knew him, he's changed.
ROS: You could see that?
GUIL: Transformed.
ROS: How do you know?
GUIL: Inside and out.
ROS: I see.
GUIL: He's not himself.
ROS: He's changed.
GUIL: I could see that. (Beat.) Glean what afflicts him.
ROS: Me?
GUIL: Him.
ROS: How?
GUIL: Question and answer. Old ways are the best ways.
ROS: He's afflicted.
GUIL: You question, I'll answer.
ROS: He's not himself, you know.
GUIL: I'm him, you see.
(Beat.)
ROS: Who am I then?
GUIL: You're yourself.
ROS: And he's you?
GUIL: Not a bit of it.
ROS: Are you afflicted?
GUIL: That's the idea. Are you ready?
ROS: Let's go back a bit.
GUIL: I'm afflicted.
ROS: I see.
GUIL: Glean what afflicts me.
ROS: Right.
GUIL: Question and answer.
ROS: How should I begin?
GUIL: Address me.
ROS: My dear Guildenstern!
GUIL (quietly): You've forgotten - haven't you?
ROS: My dear Rosencrantz!
GUIL (great control): I don't think you quite understand. What we are
attempting is a hypothesis in which I answer for him, while you ask me
questions.
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 my 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 I 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.) No 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: 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 though 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 and 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 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): What?
(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.)
ROS: Talking.
GUIL: To himself?
(ROS starts to move. GUIL cuts him 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 backwards.
POLONIUS (aside): Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.
Will you walk out of air, my Lord?
HAMLET: Into my grave.
POLONIUS: Indeed, that's out of 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. (To ROS.) You go
to seek Lord HAMLET? There he is.
ROS (to POLONIUS) God save you, sir.
(POLONIUS goes.)
GUIL (calls upstage to HAMLET): 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 am arm raised to ROS, GUIL meanwhile bowing to no greeting.
HAMLET corrects himself. Still to ROS.) Ah Rosencrantz!
(They laugh good naturedly at the mistake. They all meet midstage, turn
upside to walk, HAMLET in the middle, arm over each shoulder.)
HAMLET: Good lads, how do you both?
(A fade out. That is to say, the conversation - see Shakespeare, Act
II, Scene ii - runs down quickly; it is still animated and interspersed with
laughter, but it is overtaken by rising music and fading light.)
Act Two.
HAMLET, ROS and GUIL talking, the continuation of the previous scene.
Their conversation, on the move, is indecipherable at first. The first
illegible 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 take it out.
(A flourish from the TRAGEDIANS' band.)
GUIL: There are the players.
HAMLET: Gentlemen, you are welcome in 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.
(POLUNIUS enters, as GUIL turns away.)
POLONIUS: Well be you gentlemen.
HAMLET (to ROS): 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
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 Rocius was an actor in Rome...
(ROS comes down to re-join GUIL.)
POLONIUS (as he follows HAMLET out): The actors are come hither my
lord.
HAMLET: Buzz, buzz.
(Exeunt HAMLET and POLONIUS.)
(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 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 repetitions, 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 when the weather is 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 the 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 around
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's 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 (behind him), and if that is southerly (his
left) and the sun is really over there (front), then it's 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.
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 the 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 direction. Lick your toe and wave it around a bit.
(ROS considers the distance to his foot.)
ROS: No, I 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's 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 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.
(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.
(ROS 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 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 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 the other hand, draws his fist 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 left, 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 a 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.
PLAYER: 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 up.
GUIL: So you've caught up.
PLAYER (tops): Not yet! (Bitterly.) You left us.
GUIL: Ah! I'd forgotten - you performed a dramatic spectacle by the
wayside - a thing much thought of in the New Testament. How did yours
compare as an impromptu?
PLAYER: Badly - neither witnessed nor reported.
GUIL: Yes, I'm sorry we had to miss it. I hope you didn't leave
anything out - I'd be furious to think I didn't miss all of it.
(The PLAYER, progressively aggrieved, now burst out.)
PLAYER: 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 a 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 are - 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 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
conventions of our trade; that someone would be watching. And than,
gradually, no one was. We were caught, high and dry. It was not until the
murder's long soliloquy that we were able to look around; frozen we were in
the profil, our eyes searched you out, first confidently, then hesitantly,
then desperately as each patch of turf, each log, each exposed corned 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 fingers, and the King faltered. Even then, habit and a stubborn trust
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.
(Silence. Then GUIL claps solo with slow measured irony.)
GUIL: Brilliantly re-created - if these eyes could weep!... Rather
strong on metaphor, mind you. No criticism - only a matter of taste. And so
here you are - with a vengeance. That's a figure of speech... isn't it? Well
let's say we've made up for it, for you may have no doubt whom to thank for
your performance at the court.
ROS: We are counting on you to take him out of himself. You are the
pleasures which we draw him on to - (he escapes a fractional giggle but
recovers immediately) and by that I don't mean your usual filth; you can't .
treat royalty like people with normal perverted desires. They know nothing
of that and you know nothing of them, to your mutual survival. So give him a
good clean show suitable for all the family, or you can rest assured you'll
be playing the tavern tonight.
GUIL: Or the night, after.
ROS: Or not.
PLAYER: We already have an entry here. And always have had.
GUIL: You've played for him before?
PLAYER: Yes, sir.
ROS: And what's his bent?
PLAYER: Classical.
ROS: Saucy!
GUIL: What will you play?
PLAYER: "The Murder of Gonzago".
GUIL: Full of fine cadence and corpses.
PLAYER: Pirated from the Italian....
ROS: What is it about?
PLAYER: It's about a King and Queen....
GUIL: Escapism! What else?
PLAYER: Blood - -
GUIL: - Love and rhetoric.
PLAYER: Yes. (Going.)
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 our feet.
PLAYER: I should concentrate on not losing your heads.