Tom Stoppard - Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

ROS: I must have!

GUIL: That's odd-I thought he gave it to me.

ROS looks at him hopefully.

ROS: Perhaps he did.

GUIL: But you seemed so sure it was you who hadn't got it.

ROS ( high ) : It was me who hadn't got it!

GUIL: But if he gave it to me there no reason why you should have had it in the first place, in which case I don't see what all the fuss is about you not having it.

ROS ( pause ) : I admit its confusing.

GUIL: This Is all getting rather undisciplined… The boat, the night, the sense of isolation and uncertainty… all these induce a loosening of the concentration. We must not lose control. Tighten up. Now. Either you have lost the letter or you didn't have It to lose in the first place, in which case the King never gave it to you, in which case he gave it to me, in which case I would have put it into my inside top pocket, in which case ( calmly producing the letter ) … it will be… hem. ( They smile at each other. ) We mustn't drop off like that again.

Pause. ROS takes the letter gently from him.

ROS: Now that we have found it, why were we looking for it?

GUIL ( thinks ) : We thought it was lost.

ROS: Something else?

GUIL: No.

Deflation.

ROS: Now we've lost the tension.

GUIL: What tension?

ROS: What was the last thing I said before we wandered off?

GUIL: When was that?

ROS ( helplessly ) : I can't remember.

GUIL ( leaping up ) : What a shambles! We're just not getting anywhere.

ROS ( mournfully ) : Not even England. I don't believe in it anyway.

GUIL: What?

ROS: England.

GUIL: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, you mean?

ROS: I mean I don't believe it! ( Calmer. ) I have no image. I try to picture us arriving, a little harbour perhaps… roads inhabitants to point the way… horses on the road… riding for a day or a fortnight and then a palace and the English king… That would be the logical kind of thing… But my mind remains a blank. No. We're slipping off the map.

GUIL: Yes… yes… ( Rallying. ) But you don't believe anything till it happens. And it has all happened. Hasn't it?

ROS: We drift down time, clutching at straws. But what good's a brick to a drowning man?

GUIL: Don't give up, we can't be long now.

ROS: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat?

GUIL: No, no, no.. – Death is. – – not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat.

ROS: I've frequently not been on boats.

GUIL: No, no, no-what you've been is not on boats.

ROS: I wish I was dead. ( Considers the drop. ) I could jump over the side. That would put a spoke in their wheel.

GUIL: Unless they're counting on it.

ROS: I shall remain on board. That'll put a spoke in their wheel. ( The futility of it, fury. ) All right! We don't question, we don't doubt. We perform. But a line must be drawn somewhere, and I would like to put it on record that I have no confidence in England. Thank you. ( Thinks about this. ) And even if it's true, it'll just be another shambles.

GUIL: I don't see why.

ROS ( furious ) : He won't know what we're talking about.-What are we going to say?

GUIL: We say-Your majesty, we have arrived!

ROS ( kingly ) : And who are you?

GUIL: We are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

ROS ( barks ) : Never heard of you!

GUIL: Well, we're nobody special

ROS ( regal and nasty ) : What's your game?

GUIL: We've got our instructions

ROS: First I've heard of it

GUIL ( angry ) : Let me finish– ( Humble. ) We've come from Denmark.

ROS: What do you want?

GUIL: Nothing-we're delivering Hamlet

ROS: Who's he?

GUIL ( irritated ) : You've heard of him

ROS: Oh, I've heard of him all right and I want nothing to do with it.

GUIL: But …

ROS: You march in here without so much as a by-your-leave and expect me to take in every lunatic you try to pass off with a lot of unsubstantiated …

GUIL: We've got a letter …

ROS snatches it and tears it open.

ROS ( efficiently ) : I see… I see… well, this seems to support your story such as it is-it is an exact command from the king of Denmark, for several different reasons, importing Denmark's health and England's too, that on the reading of this letter, without delay, I should have Hamlet's head cut off-!

GUIL snatches the letter. ROS , double-taking, snatches it back. GUIL snatches it half back. They read it together, and separate. Pause. They are well downstage looking front.

ROS: The sun's going down. It will be dark soon.

GUIL: Do you think so?

ROS: I was just making conversation. ( Pause. ) We're his friends.

GUIL: How do you know?

ROS: From our young days brought up with him.

GUIL: You've only got their word for it.

ROS: But that's what we depend on.

GUIL: Well, yes, and then again no. ( Airily. ) Let us keep things in proportion. Assume, if you like, that they're going to kill him. Well, he is a man, he is mortal, death comes to us all, etcetera, and consequently he would have died anyway, sooner or later. Or to look at it from the social point of view-he's just one man among many, the loss would be well within reason and convenience. And then again, what is so terrible about death? As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don't know what death is, it is illogical to fear it. It might be… very nice. Certainly it is a release from the burden of life, and, for the godly, a haven and a reward. Or to look at it another way-we are little men, we don't know the ins and outs of the matter, there are wheels within wheels, etcetera-it would be presumptuous of us to interfere with the designs of fate or even of kings. All in all, I think we'd be well advised to leave well alone. Tie up the letter-there-neatly-like that.-They won't notice the broken seal, assuming you were in character.

ROS: But what's the point?

GUIL: Don't apply logic.

ROS: He's done nothing to us.

GUIL: Or justice.

ROS: It's awful.

GUIL: But it could have been worse. I was beginning to think was. ( And his relief comes out in a laugh. )

Behind them HAMLET appears from behind the umbrella. light has been going. Slightly. HAMLET is going to the lantern.

ROS: The position as I see it, then. We, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, from our young days brought up with him awakened by a man standing on his saddle, are summoned, and arrive, and are instructed to glean what afflicts him draw him on to pleasures, such as a play, which unfortunately, as it turns out, is abandoned in some confusion owing to certain nuances outside our appreciation –which, among other causes, results in, among other effects, a high, not to say, homicidal, excitement in Hamlet, whom we, in consequence, are escorting, for his own good, to England. Good. We're on top of it now.

HAMLET blows out the lantern. The stage goes pitch black. The black resolves itself to moonlight, by which HAMLET approaches the sleeping ROS and GUIL . He extracts the letter and takes it behind his umbrella; the light of his lantern shines through the fabric, HAMLET emerges again with a letter, an and replaces it, and retires, blowing out his lantern. Morning comes. ROS watches it coming-from. the auditorium. Behind him gay sight. Beneath the re-tilted umbrella, reclining in a deck-chair, wrapped in a rug, reading a book, possibly smoking, sits HAMLET . ROS watches the morning come, and brighten to high noon.