Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead Page #5

Not yet, sir.

Now mind your tongue,

or we'll have it out and

throw the rest of you away like

a nightingale at a Roman feast.

Took the words out of my mouth.

You'd be lost for words.

You'd be tongue tied.

Like a mute in a monologue.

Like a nightingale

at a Roman feast.

You left us.

Yes... on the road.

You don't understand the humiliation

of it... to be tricked out of

the single assumption

that makes our existence bearable.

That somebody is watching.

We are actors, we are

the opposite of people.

So?

We need an audience.

We had an appointment.

That is true.

You know why you're here.

We only know what

we're told and for all we

know it isn't even true.

One acts on assumptions.

What do you assume?

Hamlet is not himself outside or in.

We have to glean what afflicts him.

He's melancholy.

Melancholy?

Mad.

How is he mad?

How's he mad?

More morose than mad perhaps.

Melancholy.

Moody.

He had moods.

Of moroseness?

Madness and yet.

Quite.

For instance.

He talks to himself which

might be madness.

If he didn't talk sense,

which he does.

Which suggests the opposite.

Of what?

I think I have it.

A man talking sense to himself...

is no madder than a man talking

nonsense not to himself.

Or just as mad.

Or just as mad.

And he does both.

So there you are.

Start raving sane.

Why?

Ah. Why?

Exactly.

Exactly what?

Exactly why?

Exactly why what?

What?

Why?

Why what, exactly?

Why is he mad?

I don't know!

The old man thinks he's

in love with his daughter.

We're out of our depth here!

No, no, no, he hasn't

got a daughter,

the old man thinks he's in

love with his daughter.

The old man is?

Hamlet. In love.

Man's daughter.

The old man thinks.

It's beginning to make sense!

Unrequited passion!

Where are you going?

I can come and go as I please.

You know your way around.

I've been here before.

We're still finding our feet.

I should concentrate on

not losing your heads.

Do you speak from knowledge?

Precedent.

You've been here before.

And I know which way

the wind is blowing.

Wait! Back!

This place is a mad house.

Behind ye!

Are you familar with this play?

No.

A slaughterhouse,

eight corpses all told.

Six.

Eight.

What are they?

They're dead.

Actor! What do you know about death?

The mechanics of cheap melodrama!

Cheap melodrama.

It doesn't bring

death home to anyone!

It's not at home to anyone!

Shut up!

Shut up!

You can't do death!

On the contrary,

it's what we do best.

We have to exploit

whatever talent is given to us

and our talent is for dying.

We can die heroically, comically,

ironically, sadly, suddenly, slowly...

disgustingly charmingly

or from a great height.

Audiences know what to expect,

and that is all they are

prepared to believe in.

Next...

And can you by no drift of

conference get from him why

he puts on his confusion?

He does confess he

feels himself distracted.

But from what cause

he will by no means speak.

(To be or not to be...)

that is the question.

Did he receive you well?

Most like a gentleman.

But with much forcing

of his disposition.

Niggard of question but of our

demands, most free in his reply.

Did you assay him

to any pastime?

Madam, it so fell out that certain

players we o'er-raught on the wat

of these we told him, and there

did seem in him a kind ofjoy

to hear of it.

They are here about the court,

this night to play before him.

'Tis most true,

and he beseeched me to entreat

your Majesties to here

and see the matter.

Good gentlemen,

give him a further edge and drive

his purpose into these delights.

We shall, my load.

Sweet Gertrude, leave us too...

For we have closely

sent for Hamlet hither,

that he, as 'twere by accident

may here affront Ophelia.

Do you ever think of yourself

as actually dead lying in a box

with a lid on it?

No.

Nor do I really.

It's silly to be depressed by it.

I mean, one thinks of it

like being alive in a box,

and one keeps forgetting to take

into account the fact that

one is dead...

which should make all

the difference... shouldn't it?

I mean, you'd never know you

were in a box, would you?

It would be just like

you were asleep in a box.

Not that I'd like to sleep in a box,

mind you, not without any air,

you'd wake up dead for a start,

and then where would you be?

In a box. That's the bit I don't

like frankly. That's why don't

think of it.

Because you'd be helpless?

Stuffed in a box like that, I mean,

you'd be in there for ever.

Even taking into account the fact

that you're dead, it isn't

a pleasant thought.

Especially if you're dead,

really...

ask yourself,

if I asked you straight off...

I'm going to stuff you in this box

now, would you rather

be alive or dead.

Naturally, you prefer to be alive.

Life in a box is better than

no life at all. I expect.

You'd have a chance at least.

You could lie there thinking well,

at least I'm not dead!

In a minute somebody is

going to bang on the lid

and tell me to come out.

Hey, you! What's yer name!

Come out of there!

I think I'm going to kill you.

Nymph, in thy orisons be

all my sins remembered.

I wouldn't think about it,

if I were you. You'd only

get depressed.

My lord, I have

rememberances of yours

that I have long had

long to redeliver,

I pray you now receive them.

No, not I.

I never gave you ought.

My honoured lord, you know

right well you did.

And with them words of so

sweet breath composed as

made the things more rich.

Whatever became of the moment

when one first knew about death?

There must have been one,

a moment, in childhood,

when it first occurred to you that

you don't go on forever.

It must have been shattering

stamped into one's memory.

And yet I can't remember it.

It never occurred to me at all.

We must be born with

an intuition of mortality.

Before we know the word for it,

before we know

that there are words,

out we come,

bloodied and squalling...

with the knowledge that for all

the points of the compass,

there's only one direction

and time is its only measure.

What is the dumb show for?

It's a device, really,

it makes the action that follows

more or less comprehensible.

You understand,

we are tied down to a language

which makes up in obscurity

what it lacks in style.

Is this the "Murder of Gonzago"?

That's the least of it.

Who was that?

The king's brother

and uncle to the prince.

Not exactly fraternal.

Not exactly avuncular

as time goes on.

Go to, I'll no more on't,

it hath made me mad!

I say we will have

no more marriages!

Those that are married already

all but one shall live.

The rest shall keep as they are.

To a nunnery, go.

That didn't look like love to me.

Love!

His affections do not that way tend,

nor what he spake,

though it lacked form a little,

was not like madness.

How now Ophelia.

You need not tell us what

Lord Hamlet said, we heard it all.

There's something in his soul

o'er which his melancholy

sits on brood.

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