Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Arcadia

GUIL: Escapism! What else?

PLAYER: Blood

GUIL: Love and rhetoric.

PLAYER: Yes. ( Going. )

GUIL: Where are you going?

PLAYER: I can come and go as I please.

GUIL: You're evidently a man who knows his way around.

PLAYER: I've been here before.

GUIL: We're still finding our feet.

PLAYER: I should concentrate on not losing your heads.

GUIL: Do you speak from knowledge?

PLAYER: Precedent.

GUIL: You've been here before.

PLAYER: And I know which way the wind is blowing.

GUIL: Operating on two levels, are we?! How clever! I expect it comes naturally to you, being in the business so to speak. The PLAYER's grave face does not change. He makes to move off again. GUIL for the second time cuts him off. The truth is, we value your company, for want of any other. We have been left so much to our own devices after a while one welcomes the uncertainty of being left to other people's.

PLAYER: Uncertainty is the normal state. You're nobody special.

He makes to leave again. GUIL loses his cool.

GUIL: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUIL: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUIL: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

What do you assume?

ROS: Hamlet is not himself, outside or in. We have to glean what afflicts him.

GUIL: He doesn't give much away.

PLAYER: Who does, nowadays?

GUIL: He's---melancholy.

PLAYER: Melancholy?

ROS: Mad.

PLAYER: How is he mad?

ROS: Ah. ( To GUIL :) How is he mad?

GUIL: More morose than mad, perhaps.

PLAYER: Melancholy.

GUIL: Moody.

ROS: He has moods.

PLAYER: Of moroseness?

GUIL: Madness. And yet.

ROS: Quite.

GUIL: For instance.

ROS: He talks to himself, which might be madness.

GUIL: If he didn't talk sense, which he does.

ROS: Which suggests the opposite.

PLAYER: Of what?

Small pause.

GUIL: I think I have it. A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself.

ROS: Or just as mad.

GUIL: Or just as mad.

ROS: And he does both.

GUIL: So there you are.

ROS: Stark raving sane.

Pause.

PLAYER: Why?

GUIL: Ah. ( TO ROS :) Why?

ROS: Exactly.

GUIL: Exactly what?

ROS: Exactly why.

GUIL: Exactly why what?

ROS: What?

GUIL: Why?

ROS: Why what, exactly?

GUIL: Why is he mad?!

ROS: I don't know!

Beat.

PLAYER: The old man thinks he's in love with his daughter.

ROS ( appalled): Good God! We're out of our depth here.

PLAYER: No, no, no---he hasn't got a daughter---the old man thinks he's in love with his daughter.

ROS: The old man is?

PLAYER: Hamlet, in love with the old man's daughter, the old man thinks.

ROS: Ha! It's beginning to make sense! Unrequited passion!

The PLAYER moves.

GUIL: ( Fascist. ) Nobody leaves this room! ( Pause, lamely. ) Without a very good reason.

PLAYER: Why not?

GUIL: All this strolling about is getting too arbitrary by half---I'm rapidly losing my grip.

From now on reason will prevail.

PLAYER: I have lines to learn.

GUIL: Pass!

The PLAYER passes into one of the wings. ROS cups his hands and shouts into the opposite one.

ROS: Next! But no one comes.

GUIL: What did you expect?

ROS: Something... someone... nothing. They sit facing front. Are you hungry?

GUIL: No, are you?

ROS ( thinks): No. You remember that coin?

GUIL: No.

GUIL: What coin?

ROS: I don't remember exactly.