Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead Rosencrantz Lines Act I

**Guil** (*flipping a coin*) There is an art to the building up of suspense.

**Ros** Heads.

**Guil** (*flipping another*) Though it can be done by luck alone.

**Ros** Heads.

**Guil** If that’s the word I’m after.

**Ros** (*raises his head at Guil*) Seventy-six love. Heads.

**Guil** A weaker man might be moved to re-examine his faith, if in nothing else at least in the law of probability.

**Ros** Heads.

**Guil** (*musing*) The law of probability, it has been oddly asserted, is

something to do with the proposition that if six monkeys (*He has surprised*

*himself.*) … if six monkeys were …

**Ros** Game?

**Guil** Were they?

**Ros** Are you?

**Guil** (*understanding*) Game. (*Flips a coin.*) The law of averages, if I have got this right, means that if six monkeys were thrown up in the air for long enough they would land on their tails about as often as they would land on their –

**Ros** Heads. (*He picks up the coin.*)

**Guil** Which even at first glance does not strike one as a particularly rewarding speculation, in either sense, even without the monkeys. I mean you wouldn’t *bet* on it. I mean *I* would, but *you* wouldn’t … (*As he flips a coin.*)

**Ros** Heads.

**Guil** Would you? (*Flips a coin.*)

**Ros** Heads. Heads. (*He looks up at Guil* – *embarrassed laugh.*) Getting a bit of a bore, isn’t it?

**Guil** (*coldly*) A bore?

**Ros** Well …

**Guil** What about the suspense?

**Ros** (*innocently*) What suspense?

**Guil** It must be the law of diminishing returns … I feel the spell about to be broken. (*Energizing himself somewhat.*) Well, it was an even chance … if my calculations are correct.

**Ros** Eighty-five in a row – beaten the record!

**Guil** Don’t be absurd.

**Ros** Easily!

**Guil** (*angry*) Is that *it*, then? Is that all?

**Ros** What?

**Guil** A new record? Is that as far as you are prepared to go?

**Ros** Well …

**Guil** No questions? Not even a pause?

**Ros** You spun them yourself.

**Guil** Not a flicker of doubt?

**Ros** (*aggrieved, aggressive*) Well. I won – didn’t I?

**Guil** (*approaches him – quieter*) And if you’d lost? If they’d come down against you, eighty-five times, one after another, just like that?

**Ros** (*dumbly*) Eighty-five in a row? *Tails?*

**Guil** Yes! What would you think?

**Ros** (*doubtfully*) Well … (*jocularly*) Well, I’d have a good look at your coins for a start!

**Guil** (*retiring*) I’m relieved. At least we can still count on self-interest as a predictable factor … I suppose it’s the last to go. Your capacity for trust made me wonder if perhaps … you, alone … (*He turns on him suddenly, reaches out a hand.*) Touch. (*Ros clasps his hand. Guil pulls him up to him. More intensely*) We have been spinning coins together since – (*He releases him almost as violently.*) This is not the first time we have spun coins!

**Ros** Oh no – we’ve been spinning coins for as long as I remember.

**Guil** How long is that?

**Ros** I forget. Mind you – eighty-five times!

**Guil** Yes?

**Ros** It’ll take some beating, I imagine.

**Guil** Is *that* what you imagine? Is that it? No *fear*?

**Ros** Fear?

**Guil** (*in fury* – *flings a coin on the ground*) *Fear!* The crack that might flood your brain with light!

**Ros** Heads … (*He puts it in his bag.*) I’m afraid –

**Guil** So am I.

**Ros** I’m afraid it isn’t your day.

**Guil** I’m afraid it is.

**Ros** Eighty-nine.

**Guil** It must be indicative of something, besides the redistribution of wealth. (*He muses.*) List of possible explanations. One. I’m willing it. Inside where nothing shows, I am the essence of a man spinning double-headed coins, and betting against himself in private atonement for an unremembered past. (*He spins a coin at Ros.*)

**Ros** Heads.

**Guil** Two. Time has stopped dead, and the single experience of one coin being spun once has been repeated ninety times … (*He flips a coin, looks at it, tosses it to Ros.*) On the whole, doubtful. Three. Divine intervention, that is to say, a good turn from above concerning him, cf. children of Israel, or retribution from above concerning me, cf. Lot’s wife. Four. A spectacular vindication of the principle that each individual coin spun individually (*He spins one*) is as likely to come down heads as tails and therefore should cause no surprise each individual time it does. (*It does. He tosses it to Ros.*)

**Ros** I’ve never known anything like it!

**Guil** And a syllogism: One, he had never known anything like it. Two, he has never known anything to write home about. Three, it is nothing to write home about … Home … What’s the first thing you remember?

**Ros** Oh, let’s see … The first thing that comes into my head, you mean?

**Guil** No **–** the first thing you remember.

**Ros** Ah. (*Pause.*) No, it’s no good, it’s gone. It was a long time ago.

**Guil** (*patient but edged*) You don’t get my meaning. What is the first thing after all the things you’ve forgotten?

**Ros** Oh I see. (*Pause.*) I’ve forgotten the question. (*Guil leaps up and paces.*)

**Guil** Are you happy?

**Ros** What?

**Guil** Content? At ease?

**Ros** I suppose so.

**Guil** What are you going to do now?

**Ros** I don’t know. What do you want to do?

**Guil** I have no desires. None. (*He stops pacing dead.*) There was a messenger … that’s right. We were sent for. (*He wheels at Ros and raps out*–) Syllogism the second: one, probability is a factor which operates within natural forces. Two, probability is not operating as a factor. Three, we are now within un-, sub- or supernatural forces. Discuss. (*Ros is suitablystartled* – *Acidly*) Not too heatedly.

**Ros** I’m sorry I – What’s the matter with you?

**Guil** The scientific approach to the examination of phenomena is a defence against the pure emotion of fear. Keep tight hold and continue while there’s time. Now – counter to the previous syllogism: tricky one, follow me carefully, it may prove a comfort. If we postulate, and we just have, that within un-, sub- or supernatural forces *the probability is* that the law of probability will not operate as a factor, then we must accept that the probability of the *first* part will not operate as a factor, in which case the law of probability *will* operate as a factor within un-, sub- or supernatural forces. And since it obviously hasn’t been doing so, we can take it that we are not held within un-, sub- or supernatural forces after all; in all probability, that is. Which is a great relief to me personally. (*Small pause.*) Which is all very well, except that – (*He continues with tight hysteria, under control.*) We have been spinning coins together since I don’t know when, and in all that time (if it *is* all that time) I don’t suppose either of us was more than a couple of gold pieces up or down. I hope that doesn’t sound surprising because its very unsurprisingness is something I am trying to keep hold of. The equanimity of your average tosser of coins depends upon the law, or rather a tendency, or let us say a probability, or at any rate a mathematically calculable chance, which ensures that he will not upset himself by losing too much nor upset his opponent by winning too often. This made for a kind of harmony and a kind of confidence. It related the fortuitous and the ordained into a reassuring union which we recognized as nature. The sun came up about as often as it went down, in the long run, and a coin showed heads about as often as it showed tails. Then a messenger arrived. We had been sent for. Nothing else happened. Ninety-two coins spun consecutively have come down heads ninety-two consecutive times … and for the last three minutes on the wind of a windless day I have heard the sound of drums and flute …

**Ros** (*cutting his fingernails*) Another curious scientific phenomenon is the fact that the fingernails grow after death, as does the beard.

**Guil** What?

**Ros** (*loud*) Beard!

**Guil** But you’re not dead.

**Ros** (*irritated*) I didn’t say they *started* to grow after death! (*Pause, calmer.*) The fingernails also grow before birth, though *not* the beard.

**Guil** *What?*

**Ros** (*shouts*) Beard! What’s the matter with you? (*reflectively*) The toenails, on the other hand, never grow at all.

**Guil** (*bemused*) The toenails on the other hand never grow at all?

**Ros** Do they? It’s a funny thing – I cut my fingernails all the time, and every time I think to cut them, they need cutting. Now, for instance. And yet, I never, to the best of my knowledge, cut my toenails. They ought to be curled under my feet by now, but it doesn’t happen. I never think about them. Perhaps I cut them absent-mindedly, when I’m thinking of something else.

**Guil** (*tensed up by this rambling*) Do you remember the first thing that happened today?

**Ros** (*promptly*) I woke up, I suppose. (*Triggered.*) Oh – I’ve got it now – that man, a foreigner, he woke us up –

**Guil** A messenger. (*He relaxes, sits.*)

**Ros** That’s it – pale sky before dawn, a man standing on his saddle to bang on the shutters – shouts – What’s all the row about?! Clear off! – But then he called our names. You remember that – this man woke us up.

**Guil** Yes.

**Ros** We were sent for.

**Guil** Yes.

**Ros** That’s why we’re here. (*He looks round, seems doubtful, then the explanation.*) Travelling.

**Guil** Yes.

**Ros** (*dramatically*) It was urgent – a matter of extreme urgency, a royal summons, his very words: official business and no questions asked – lights in the stableyard, saddle up and off headlong and hotfoot across the land, our guides outstripped in breakneck pursuit of our duty! Fearful lest we come too late!! (*Small pause.*)

**Guil** Too late for what?

**Ros** How do I know? We haven’t got there yet.

**Guil** Then what are we doing here, I ask myself.

**Ros** You might well ask.

**Guil** We better get on.

**Ros** You might well think.

**Guil** We better get on.

**Ros** (*actively*) Right! (*Pause.*) On where?

**Guil** Forward.

**Ros** (*forward to footlights*) Ah. (*Hesitates.*) Which way do we – (*He turns round.*) Which way did we –?

**Guil** Practically starting from scratch … An awakening, a man standing on his saddle to bang on the shutters, our names shouted in a certain dawn, a message, a summons … A new record for heads and tails. We have not been … picked out … simply to be abandoned … set loose to find our own way … We are entitled to some direction … I would have thought.

**Ros** (*alert, listening*) I say –! I say –

**Guil** Yes?

**Ros** I can hear – I thought I heard – music.

**Guil** Yes?

**Ros** Like a band. (*He looks around, laughs embarrassedly, expiating himself.*) It sounded like – a band. Drums.

**Guil** Yes.

**Ros** (*relaxes*) It couldn’t have been real.

**Guil** ‘The colours red, blue and green are real. The colour yellow is a mystical experience shared by everybody’ – demolish.

**Ros** (*at edge of stage*) It must have been thunder. Like drums …

**Guil** A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds or, to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; until – ‘My God,’ says a second man, ‘I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn.’ At which point, a dimension is added that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third witness, you understand, adds no further dimension but only spreads it thinner, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are the thinner it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience … ‘Look, look!’ recites the crowd. ‘A horse with an arrow in its forehead! It must have been mistaken for a deer.’

**Ros** (*eagerly*) I knew all along it was a band.

**Guil** (*tiredly*) He knew all along it was a band

**Ros** Here they come!

**Player** Halt! (*The Group turns and halts.)* (*joyously*) An audience! (*Ros and Guil half rise.)* Don’t move! (*They sink back. He regards them fondly.)* Perfect! A lucky thing we came along.

**Ros** For us?

**Player** Let us hope so. But to meet two gentlemen on the road – we would not hope to meet them off it.

**Ros** No?

**Player** Well met, in fact, and just in time.

**Ros** Why’s that?

**Player** Why, we grow rusty and you catch us at the very point of decadence – by this time tomorrow we might have forgotten everything we ever knew. That’s a thought, isn’t it? (*He laughs generously.*) We’d be back where we started – improvising.

**Ros** Tumblers, are you?

**Player** We can give you a tumble if that’s your taste, and times being what they are … Otherwise, for a jingle of coin we can do you a selection of gory romances, full of fine cadence and corpses, pirated from the Italian; and it doesn’t take much to make a jingle – even a single coin has music in it. (*They all flourish and bow, raggedly.)* Tragedians, at your command.

**Ros** My name is Guildenstern, and this is Rosencrantz. (*Guil confers briefly with him.*) (*without embarrassment*) I’m sorry – *his* name’s Guildenstern, and *I*’*m* Rosencrantz.

**Player** A pleasure. We’ve played to bigger, of course, but quality counts for something. I recognized you at once –

**Ros** And who are we?

**Player** – as fellow artists.

**Ros** I thought we were gentlemen.

**Player** For some of us it is performance, for others, patronage. They are two sides of the same coin, or, let us say, being as there are so many of us, the same side of two coins. (*Bows again.*) Don’t clap too loudly – it’s a very old world.

**Ros** What is your line?

**Player** Tragedy, sir. Deaths and disclosures, universal and particular, dénouements both unexpected and inexorable, transvestite melodrama on all levels including the suggestive. We transport you into a world of intrigue and illusion … clowns, if you like, murderers – we can do you ghosts and battles, on the skirmish level, heroes, villains, tormented lovers – set pieces in the poetic vein; we can do you rapiers or rape or both, by all means, faithless wives and ravished virgins – flagrante delicto at a price, but that comes under realism for which there are special terms. Getting warm, am I?

**Ros** (*doubtfully*) Well, I don’t know …

**Player** It costs little to watch, and little more if you happen to get caught up in the action, if that’s your taste and times being what they are.

**Ros** What are they?

**Player** Indifferent.

**Ros** Bad?

**Player** Wicked. Now what precisely is your pleasure? (*He turns to the Tragedians.*) Gentlemen, disport yourselves. (*The Tragedians shuffle into some kind of line.*) There! See anything you like?

**ROS** (*doubtful, innocent*) What do they do?

**Player** Let your imagination run riot. They are beyond surprise.

**ROS** And how much?

**Player** To take part?

**ROS** To watch.

**Player** Watch what?

**ROS** A private performance.

**Player** How private?

**ROS** Well, there are only two of us. Is that enough?

**Player** For an audience, disappointing. For voyeurs, about average.

**ROS** What’s the difference?

**Player** Ten guilders.

**ROS** (*horrified*) Ten *guilders*!

**Player** I mean eight.

**ROS** Together?

**Player** Each. I don’t think you understand –

**ROS** What are you *saying*?

**Player** What am I saying – seven.

**ROS** Where have you *been*?

**Player** Roundabout. A nest of children carries the custom of the town. Juvenile companies, they are the fashion. But they cannot match our repertoire … we’ll stoop to anything if that’s your bent …

**ROS** They’ll grow up.

**Player** (*acknowledging the description with a sweep of his hat, bowing: sadly*) You should have caught us in better times. We were purists then. (*Straightens up.*) On-ward.

**ROS** (*his voice has changed: he has caught on*) Excuse me!

**Player** Ha-alt! (*They halt.)* A-al-l-fred! (*Alfred resumes the struggle. The Player comes forward.)*

**ROS** You’re not – ah – exclusively players, then?

**Player** We’re inclusively players, sir.

**ROS** So you give – exhibitions?

**Player** Performances, sir.

**ROS** Yes, of course. There’s more money in that, is there?

**Player** There’s more trade, sir.

**ROS** Times being what they are.

**Player** Yes.

**ROS** Indifferent.

**Player** Completely.

**ROS** You know I’d no idea –

**Player** No.

**ROS** I mean, I’ve *heard* of – but I’ve never actually –

**Player** No.

**ROS** I mean, what exactly do you *do*?

**Player** We keep to our usual stuff, more or less, only inside out. We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.

**ROS** (*nervy, loud*) Well, I’m not really the type of man who – no, but don’t hurry off – sit down and tell us about some of the things people ask you to do – (*The Player turns away.*)

**Player** On-ward!

**ROS** Just a minute! (*They turn and look at him without expression.)* Well, all right – I wouldn’t mind seeing – just an idea of the kind of – (*bravely*) What will you do for that? (*And tosses a single coin on the ground between them. The Player spits at the coin, from where he stands. The Tragedians demur, trying to get at the coin. He kicks and cuffs them back.*)

**Player** On! (*Alfred is still half in and out of his robe. The Player cuffs him. To Alfred.)* What are you playing at? (*ROS is shamed into fury.)*

**ROS** Filth! Disgusting – I’ll report you to the authorities – *perverts*! I know your game all right, it’s all filth!

**Guil** You and I, Alfred – we could create a dramatic precedent here. (*And Alfred, who has been near to tears, starts to sniffle.)* Come, come, Alfred, this is no way to fill the theatres of Europe. (*The Player has moved down, to remonstrate with Alfred. Guil cuts him off again. Viciously.)* Do you know any good plays?

**Player** Plays?

**ROS** (*coming forward, faltering shyly*) Exhibitions …

**Guil** You lost. Well then – one of the Greeks, perhaps? You’re familiar with the tragedies of antiquity, are you? The great homicidal classics? Matri, patri, fratri, sorori, uxori and it goes without saying –

**ROS** Saucy –

**Guil** – Suicidal – hm? Maidens aspiring to godheads –

**ROS** And vice versa –

**Player** (*to Tragedians*) Thirty-eight!

**ROS** (*moving acROSs, fascinated and hopeful*) Position?

**Player** Sir?

**ROS** One of your – tableaux?

**Player** No, sir.

**ROS** Oh.

**Player** I’ll give you a wave. (*He does not move. His immobility is now pointed, and getting awkward. Pause. ROS walks up to him till they are face to face.)*

R**OS** Excuse me. (*Pause. The Player lifts his downstage foot. It was covering Guil’s coin. ROS puts his foot on the coin. Smiles.)* Thank you. (*The Player turns and goes. ROS has bent for the coin.)*

**Guil** (*moving out*) Come on.

**ROS** I say – that was lucky.

**Guil** (*turning*) What?

**ROS** It was tails.