We Haven't Got There Yet

“My name is Guildenstern, and this is Rosencrantz,” says the man with the bulging leather sack. Now—at last!—they own names. Shakespeare is about to explode. These prose-prattling mountebanks, his characters? The fellow with the empty sack whispers in his friend’s ear. Friend nods and speaks again: “I’m sorry—his name’s Guildenstern, and I’m Rosencrantz.”

Ragged laughter rises in the Rose. Shakespeare joins in. He is too startled to stop himself. How can a man not know his own name? The befuddled soul on stage seems to have no trouble at all, and to be too troubled to have the faintest idea how troubled he is.

If his—Rosencrantz’s—trouble troubles the tragedians’ spokesman, that worthy likewise gives no sign. He merely replies, “A pleasure.” He goes back and forth with Rosencrantz, still trying to talk him out of cash in exchange for a performance. At last, after a weary bow, he says, “Don’t clap too loudly—it’s a very old world.”

That only bewilders the woman beside Shakespeare. He wishes it struck no chord in him. How many times has he played in shows that won nothing but catcalls and cabbages? How many times has he wished he could play in any show at all? Even a hurled cabbage may still have good bits. Along with a stale roll, it can make a supper of sorts. And, to a man out of sorts, even a supper of sorts looks good.

Back and forth they go, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern against the spokesman. Much of it is clever. A few lines lodge in Shakespeare’s memory. The playwright is also more open about the things some boys who play women do than any Shakespeare has heard before him. How he got his lines past the Master of the Revels . . . is a question for another day. Too many other, more urgent, questions, flood Shakespeare’s mind now.

Up on the stage, they do more with coins. Everything keeps coming up heads—against the spokesman, even Guildenstern uses this to his advantage. Then one last coin, which the spokesman tries to keep under his boot. Rosencrantz elbows him away from the golden disk and puts his own foot down on it. Disgruntled—no performance, no possible profit—the spokesman mooches away.

Rosencrantz stoops to retrieve the coin. “I say—that was lucky.”

“What?” Guildenstern asks.

“It was tails,” Rosencrantz answers.

And everything changes.

* * *

A richly dressed young woman rushes onstage. If the two strange simpletons are Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, if this play has anything to do with Hamlet, she must be Ophelia. Where the boy burlesquing a woman in the tragedians’ troupe—Alfred, he goes by—is a jape against femininity, and a sour jape at that, this player is astoundingly convincing. Shape, skin, and mannerisms are perfect, though the player does not speak. Shakespeare has seen some fine personations, but none to match this one.

Likewise, the man who hurries after her has to be Hamlet. His fancy doublet is half unlaced, his stockings dirty and ungartered. He grabs her wrist, stares into her face, and sighs like a man coming to pieces inside himself. Then he sighs cavernously, lets her go, and exits with long strides. She lightfoots off in the opposite direction.

Neither Ophelia nor Hamlet notices Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who stand transfixed, gaping at the piteous spectacle they form. After both the other players exit, Guildenstern unfreezes first. He grabs Rosencrantz’s arm. “Come on!”

Too late. Ruffles and flourishes announce another entrance, an important one. In sweep a gray-bearded king and his equally middle-aged queen: Claudius and Gertrude. Attendants trail them. Shakespeare has eyes only for the player acting Gertrude’s part. Beardless boys, with training, can imitate young women well. Women not so young, women with jowls and wrinkles, are far harder to play. Ophelia is marvelously good. For the life of him, he cannot see where Gertrude falls short of perfection.

Claudius greets Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by name (though he waves to the one while calling him by the other’s name). And Shakespeare grinds his teeth louder than the woman beside him chomps her nutmeats. Claudius doesn’t just speak—he speaks the words Shakespeare wrote for him in Hamlet. The player in the role has a fine feel for the blank verse, though his accent is as odd as those of the men portraying Guildenstern and Rosencrantz.

Gertrude also speaks well, and with that same accent. And if the player’s voice is not that of a woman nearing fifty, Shakespeare has never heard one that is.

“Abandoned robbers!” he shouts furiously, shaking his fist at the stage. Stoppard hasn’t just robbed him of his characters. He’s lifted a whole great chunk of Hamlet and transplanted it into his play.

When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern respond, they too use blank verse—Shakespeare’s blank verse. Their air of befuddlement, bewilderment, drops away like an abandoned cloak. They are everything their creator could wish them to be . . . except for bestriding the stage in this pilfered piece of play.