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.
ROS: I'm assuming nothing. ( He stands up. GUIL wakes. ) The position as I see it, then. That's west unless we're off course, in which case it's night; the King gave me the same as you, the King gave you the same as me; the King never gave me the letter, the King gave you the letter, we don't know what's in the letter; we take Hamlet to the English king, it depending on when we get there who he is, and we hand over the letter, which may or may not have something in to keep us going, and if not, we are finished and at a loose end, if they have loose ends. We could have done worse. I don't think we missed any chances... Not that we're getting much help. ( He sits down again. They lie downprone. ) If we stopped breathing we'd vanish.
The muffled sound of a recorder. They sit up with disproportionate interest.
GUIL: Here we go.
ROS: Yes, but what?
They listen to the music.
GUIL ( excitedly): Out of the void, finally, a sound; while on a boat ( admittedly) outside the action ( admittedly) the perfect and absolute silence of the wet lazy slap of water against water and the rolling creak of timber-breaks; giving rise at once to the speculation or the assumption or the hope that something is about to happen; a pipe is heard. One of the sailors has pursed his lips against a woodwind, his fingers and thumb governing, shall we say, the ventages, whereupon, giving it breath, let us say, with his mouth, it, the pipe, discourses, as the saying goes, most eloquent music. A thing like that, it could change the course of events. ( Pause. ) Go and see what it is.
ROS: It's someone playing on a pipe.
GUIL: Go and find him.
ROS: And then what?
GUIL: I don't know-request a tune.
ROS: What for?
GUIL: Quick-before we lose our momentum.
ROS: Why!---something is happening. It had quite escaped my attention! No listens: Makes a stab at an exit. Listens more carefully: Changes direction.
GUIL takes no notice. ROS wanders about trying to decide where the music comes from. Finally he tracks it down-unwillingly--to the middle barrel. There is no getting away from it. He turns to GUIL who takes no notice. ROS , during this whole
