Act One
Two ELIZABETHANS passing time in a place without any visible character.
They are well-dressed - hats, cloaks, sticks and all.
Each of them has a large leather money bag.
Guildenstern's bag is nearly empty.
Rosencrantz's bag is nearly full.
The reason being: they are betting on the toss of a coin, in the
following manner: Guildenstern (hereafter 'GUIL') takes a coin out of his
bag, spins it, letting it fall. Rosencrantz (hereafter 'ROS') studies it,
announces it as "heads" (as it happens) and puts it into his own bag. Then
they repeat the process. They have apparently been doing it for some time.
The run of "heads" is impossible, yet ROS betrays no surprise at all -
he feels none. However he is nice enough to feel a little embarrassed at
taking so much money off his friend. Let that be his character note.
GUIL is well alive to the oddity of it. He is not worried about the
money, but he is worried by the implications ; aware but not going to panic
about it - his character note.
GUIL sits. ROS stands (he does the moving, retrieving coins).
GUIL spins. ROS studies coin.
ROS: Heads.
(He picks it up and puts it in his money bag. The process is repeated.)
Heads.
(Again.)
ROS: Heads.
(Again.)
Heads.
(Again.)
Heads.
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.
(GUIL gets up but has nowhere to go. He spins another coin over his
shoulder without looking at it, his attention being directed at his
environment or lack of it.)
Heads.
GUIL: A weaker man might be moved to re-examine his faith, if in
nothing else at least in the law of probability.
(He slips a coin over his shoulder as he goes to look upstage.)
ROS: Heads.
(GUIL, examining the confines of the stage, flips over two more coins,
as he does so, one by one of course. ROS announces each of them as "heads".)
GUIL (musing): The law of probability, as 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): Games. (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 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.
(Repeat.)
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 suspense?
ROS (innocently): What suspense?
(Small pause.)
GUIL: It must be the law of diminishing returns... I feel the spell
about to be broken. (Energising himself somewhat.)
(He takes out a coin, spins it high, catches it, turns it over on to
the back of his other hand, studies the coin - and tosses it to ROS. His
energy deflates and he sits.)
Well, it was a 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 the it, then? Is that all?
ROS: What?
GUIL: A new record? Is that as far as you prepared to go?
ROS: Well...
GUIL: No questions? Not even a pause?
ROS: You spun it 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 claps 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 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 time 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.)
(GUIL sits despondently. He takes a coin, spins it, lets it fall
between his feet. He looks at it, picks it up; throws it to ROS, who puts it
in his bag.)
(GUIL takes another coin, spins it, catches it, turns it over on to his
other hand, looks at it, and throws it to ROS who puts it in his bag.)
(GUIL tales a third coin, spins it, catches it in his right hand, turns
it over on to his loft wrist, lobs it in the air, catches it with his left
hand, raises his left leg, throws the coin up under it, catches it and turns
it over on to the top of his head, where it sits. ROS comes, looks at it,
puts it in his bag.)
ROS: I'm afraid -
GUIL: So am I.
ROS: I'm afraid it isn't your day.
GUIL: I'm afraid it is.
(Small pause.)
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'm 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 a 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 that each individual time it does. (It
does. He tosses it to ROS.)
ROS: I've never known anything like it!
GUIL: And syllogism: One, he has never known anything like it. Two: he
has never known anything to write home about. Three, it's 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: How long have you suffered from a bad memory?
ROS: I can't remember.
(GUIL 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
suitably startled - Acidly.) Not too heatedly.
ROS: I'm sorry, I - What's the matter with you?
GUIL: A 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 it's very unsurprisingness is
something I am trying to keep hold of. The equanimity of your average
pitcher and tosser of coins depends upon a 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 ordained into a reassuring
union which we recognised 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 sun 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 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
happen 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 stable-yard; 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: Without much conviction; 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 pitch and toss. 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 rises himself.)
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...
(By the end of the next speech, the band is faintly audible.)
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 the 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!
GUIL (at the last moment before they enter - wistfully): I'm sorry it
wasn't the unicorn. It would have been nice to have unicorns.
(The TRAGEDIANS are six in number, including a small BOY(ALFRED). Two
pull a cart piled up with props and belongings. There is also a DRUMMER, a
HORN-PLAYER and a FLAUTIST. The SPOKESMAN ("the PLAYER") has no instrument.
He brings up the rear and is the first to notice them.)
scene analysis :
R-G = court :
(He tosses the coin to GUIL who catches it. Simultaneously - a lighting
change sufficient to alter the exterior mood into interior, but nothing
violent.)
And OPELIA runs on in some alarm, holding up her skirts - followed by
HAMLET.
Note: The resemblance between HAMLET and The PLAYER is superficial but
noticeable.
(OPHELIA has been sewing and she holds the garment. They are both mute.
HAMLET, with his doublet all unbraced, no hat upon his head, his stockings
fouled, ungartered and double-gyved to his ankle, pale as his shirt, his
knees knocking each other... and with a look so piteous, he takes her by the
wrist and holds her hard, then he goes to the length of his arm and with his
other hand over his brow, falls to such perusal of her face as he would draw
it... At last, with a little shaking of his arm, and thrice his head waving
up and down, he raises a sigh so piteous and profound that it does seem to
shatter all his bulk and end his being. That done he lets her go, and with
his head over his shoulder turned, he goes backwards without taking his eyes
off her... she runs off in the opposite direction.)
(ROS and GUIL have frozen. GUIL unfreezes first. He jumps at ROS.)
GUIL: Come on!
(But a flourish - enter CLAUDIUS and GERTRUDE, attended.)
CLAUDIUS: Welcome, dear Rosencrantz... (he raises a hand at GUIL while
ROS bows - GUIL bows late and hurriedly.)... and Guildenstern.
(He raises a hand at ROS while GUIL bows to him - ROS is still
straightening up from his previous bow and half way up he bows down again.
With his head down, he twists to look at GUIL, who is on the way up.)
Moreover that we did much long to see you,
The need we have to use you did provoke
Our hasty sanding.
(ROS and GUIL still adjusting their clothing for CLAUDIUS's presence.)
Something have you heard
Of Hamlet's transformation, so call it,
Sith nor th'exterior nor inward man
Resembles that it was. What it should be,
More than his father's death, that thus hath put him,
So much from th'understanding of himself,
I cannot dream of. I entreat you both
That, being of so young days brought up with him
And sith so neighbored to his youth and haviour
That you ... safe your rest here on our court
Some little time, so by your companies
To draw him on to pleasures and to gather
So much as from occasion you may glean,
Whether ought to us unknown afflicts him thus,
That opened lies within our remedy.
GERTRUDE: Good (fractional suspense) gentlemen...
(They both bow.)
He hath much talked of you,
And sure I am, two men there is not living
To whom he more adheres. If it will please you
To show us so much gentry and good will
As to expand your time with us awhile
For the supply and profit of our hope,
Your visitation shall receive such thanks
As fits the king's remembrance.
ROS: Both your majesties
Might, by the sovereign power you have on us,
Put your dread pleasure more into command
Than to entreaty.
GUIL: But we both obey,
And here give up ourselves in the full bent
To lay our service freely at your feet,
To be commanded.
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)
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