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 in 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 corners do looking upstage.
HAMLET: for you yourself, sir, should be as old as I am if like a crab you could go backward.
POLONIUS ( aside): Though this be madness, yet there is method in it. Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
HAMLET: Into my grave.
POLONIUS: Indeed, that's out of the 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 an 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 misstate, turn upstage to walk, HAMLET in the middle, arm over each shoulder.
HAMLET: Good lads how do you both?
BLACKOUT
ACT TWO
HAMLET , ROS and GUIL talking, the continuation of the previous scene.
Their conversation, on the move, is indecipherable at first.
The first intelligible line is HAMLET 'S, coming at the end of a short speech---see Shakespeare Act 11, scene ii.
HAMLET: S'blood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.
A flourish from the TRAGEDIANS ' band.
GUIL: There are the players.
HAMLET: Gentlemen, you am welcome to 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 am welcome. ( About to leave. ) But my uncle---father and aunt-mother am 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.
POLONIUS enters as GUIL turns away.
POLONIUS: Well be with 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 his 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 Roscius was an actor in Rome...
ROS comes downstage to rejoin 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 know when 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
