Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (7 page)

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!

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 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 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.