Work Text:
Two people, ROSENCRANTZ (hereafter ROS) and GUILDENSTERN (hereafter GUIL) stand on an otherwise empty stage. They appear lost.
ROS: Do you ever think?
GUIL: About what?
ROS: About thinking.
GUIL: About knowing, yes.
ROS: You’re really the only person I know - know intimately, I mean, know the thoughts and hopes of.
GUIL: You know yourself, I’m sure.
ROS: Right. I had forgotten myself. It always seems to leave me, like a dream in the morning.
GUIL: What does?
ROS: I can’t remember.
(Pause.)
ROS: I can’t help but feel like - I’ve dreamed all this before.
GUIL (irritated): Your dreams are rather stupid, then.
ROS: Yes, my dreams are stupid, but at least I know they’re mine. I own them - I’m fairly sure no-one else does - and I can be fairly sure, because I know I am, and I know I’m not someone else - (lamely) right? (with more confidence) And unless you’re staring at a mirror wondering whether you or your reflection got there first, you generally know you are and are not someone else. But to be someone else - imagine it, imagine being not you, imagine that - maybe - you already are not you, that you’re me, and I’m you, or we’re both someone else entirely, but we’d never know it.
GUIL: Why would we never know it?
ROS: Because we’re both too busy being each other and thinking we’re being ourselves.
GUIL: I’m confused.
ROS: Me, too.
GUIL: No, that’s not right - it’s me one, it’s one me, it’s me and my reflection - (a staggering realisation) Rosencrantz, do you think you’re my reflection?
ROS: What?
GUIL: It would make sense.
ROS: No, it wouldn’t. Reflections have to look alike, and we don’t. (doubtful) Do we?
GUIL: I don’t know. When is the last time you looked at yourself?
ROS: When’s the last time you looked at yourself?
GUIL: I can’t remember.
ROS (nervy): I don’t think we look like anything at all.
GUIL: Don’t be stupid. We must look like something. I have hair - I think - and fingernails -
ROS: No, that’s me.
GUIL (ignoring him): Which means I must have hands - and I have you.
(He turns on him suddenly. ROS reaches out a hand.)
ROS: Touch. (GUIL claps his hand. ROS pulls him up to him.)
GUIL: Touch.
ROS (hesitantly): Do you think - maybe, if we tried now - (bravely). Might we - not miss it?
GUIL: Miss what?
ROS: I don’t remember. What do you recollect?
GUIL (tired): How can I remember what I don’t remember?
ROS: I didn’t ask what you didn’t remember. I asked what you did.
GUIL: Blood and rhetoric.
ROS: What?
GUIL: And something else. There was something else. Do I contradict myself?
ROS: You contradict myself.
GUIL: It’s to be expected. We are large; we contain multitudes.
ROS: You didn’t say that.
GUIL: Yes, I did.
ROS: Yes, but you didn’t say it - first.
GUIL: Of course I didn’t say it first.
ROS: Then why did you say it?
GUIL: What did I say?
ROS: I can’t remember. I think I dreamed it. What were we doing?
GUIL: Talking.
ROS: Yes. To ourselves?
GUIL: Yes, to each other.
ROS: To each other about ourselves?
GUIL: Yes.
ROS: About what?
GUIL: Dreams.
ROS: Dreams?
GUIL: Yes, dreams. And something else. There was something else.
ROS: Rhetoric.
GUIL: That wasn’t it.
ROS: Blood.
GUIL: That wasn’t it either.
ROS: Just dreams, then?
GUIL: Just dreams. (pause) I think I heard someone say, once - something like - (slowly) to die, to dream.
(Pause.)
ROS: That’s all?
GUIL: That’s all I remember.
ROS: We could make something out of that.
GUIL: We could.
ROS: To die, to dream - to wake, to reflect, to row, row, row your boat gently down the stream - merrily.
GUIL: Why merrily?
ROS: Because it sounds right.
GUIL: Scarily, warily, and airily might all work just as well. Verily might work better.
ROS: But they don’t sound right.
GUIL: Why not?
ROS: There are always questions. (pause) Ask another one.
GUIL: Practice?
ROS: Practice.
GUIL: When you die, do you become not you?
ROS: How would I know?
GUIL: Do you unbecome? Or do you become, cast off the not you like a boat casts off from the shore?
ROS (boredly): Foul. No synonyms, no rhetoric. Two strikes. One-love.
GUIL: I hadn’t started yet.
ROS: Statement. Two-love.
GUIL: I said practice!
ROS: Statement. Three-love. Your first question was practice.
GUIL (an epiphany): Love!
ROS: Foul! No non-sequiturs. First game to…
GUIL: I’m not playing.
ROS: You’re not playing because I’m winning.
GUIL: Statement. Love-one.
ROS: I’m not playing. (pause) You said love?
GUIL: The word seemed significant somehow.
ROS: Why?
GUIL: Are you counting that?
ROS: No.
GUIL: Statement. Love-two.
ROS: I’m not playing.
GUIL: Foul! No repetitions. Love-three.
ROS: Huh!
GUIL: Foul! No grunts. One game all.
(Pause. They come to an understanding.)
ROS: We never play answers.
GUIL: We could practice answers.
ROS: Yes.
GUIL: Yes.
ROS: Yes.
GUIL: Yes.
ROS: No.
GUIL (agreeing): No.
ROS: Not as much fun to play answers with no questions as it is to play questions with no answers.
GUIL: There are answers to everything.
ROS: There were answers to everything.
GUIL: Every problem.
ROS: Just not death.
GUIL: Are you dead?
ROS: Does it matter?
GUIL: Death is the biggest problem.
ROS: The biggest answer.
GUIL: The biggest question.
ROS: Dreaming is a bigger problem than dying. And there are bigger problems than dying, if dying is to be considered a problem and not a price. If dying is to be… Dying is generally considered ‘not to be.’
GUIL: And dreaming?
ROS: That, too.
GUIL: But if you’re dreaming, aren’t you doing, and if you’re doing, aren’t you being? Being or dreaming, dreaming or doing, doing or dying, dying or living, living or loving - loving or thinking. The problem with the dreaming and the doing and the dying is not the dreaming and the doing and the dying, per se, but rather that you can’t come back. From any of it, because the being and the living and the loving and the thinking are irreversible, too. The problem, quite simply, is that you can’t come back - unless the problem is that you can’t go forward, in which case going back might well be the preferable option.
ROS: But you can’t be in reverse.
GUIL: You can go backwards, but you can’t be backwards. You can undo, but you can’t unbe - not while you’re alive, anyway.
ROS: And therein lies the great appeal of death. I think. Do you think you think after death?
GUIL: I don’t think I think now.
ROS: I think I love you.
GUIL: I don’t think I don’t love you.
GUIL: Statement.
ROS: Statement.
GUIL: Love-love.
ROS: Love-love.