We Haven't Got There Yet

Sure as sure, he and Rosencrantz sleep. Sure as sure, Hamlet lifts their letter and substitutes his own. Sure as sure, the tragedians and their spokesman emerge from barrels by the rail. They are playing the tune they used when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern first met them. Shakespeare nods—a pretty touch, that.

“Incidents! All we get is incidents!” Rosencrantz cries. “Dear God, is it too much to expect a little sustained action?!”

At which, of course, the pirates attack. There is a mad scramble, people screeching and running and fighting and jumping in and out of barrels. Some of it sets the groundlings howling with laughter. Will Kempe would play well in such buffoonery, Shakespeare thinks. Kempe has left the craft, though, and fallen on hard times. He was a great name in London theatre. He is . . . nobody. It can happen to anyone.

The pirates are beaten back. Hamlet goes missing—as he must, for his place in the remaining action lies in Elsinore. Is he any freer than Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, or only better written?

Without Hamlet, but still with that letter, his hapless schoolmates struggle on. Guildenstern opens the letter. He discovers, to no one’s surprise but Rosencrantz’s and his own, that it means their deaths, not Hamlet’s.

“But why? Was it all for this?” He turns to, and on, the tragedians’ spokesman. “Who are we?”

“You are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. That’s enough.”

Guildenstern stabs the spokesman, who dies, horribly. Even Shakespeare is impressed. Then, to the tragedians’ applause, the fellow revives. The prop knife—any company will have one—is revealed for what it is.

“We’ve done nothing wrong. We didn’t harm anyone,” Rosencrantz says desperately. “Did we?”

“I can’t remember,” Guildenstern says.

Rosencrantz gathers himself. “All right, then. I don’t care. I’ve had enough. To tell you the truth, I’m relieved.” He falls through a trap door and is gone.

“There must have been a moment, at the beginning, when we could have said—no. But somehow we missed it.” Guildenstern looks around. He stands all alone on the front of the stage. “Rosen—? Guil—?” Like Rosencrantz before him, he prepares for the inevitable. “Well, we’ll know better next time. Now you see me, now you—” A different trap opens beneath him. He too disappears.

A curtain opens, showing the tableau from the end of Hamlet. Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, and Hamlet all lie dead, the Prince of Denmark in Horatio’s arms. Fortinbras stands off to the side. In come two English ambassadors. One of them delivers Shakespeare’s lines:

The ears are senseless that should give us hearing

to tell him his commandment is fulfilled,

that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.

“He never gave commandment for their death,” Horatio answers, and goes on with his speech. Musicians play through his words, louder and louder—yet again, the tragedians’ tune. One phrase, though, Shakespeare makes out very plainly: “Purposes mistook fallen on the inventors’ heads.”

The curtain closes again. The players step out through it for their bows and applause. They win—some. Shakespeare claps till his palms burn. The stout woman who’s eaten through the performance edges away from him again. She makes for the exit. So do almost all the groundlings, and their betters in the galleries. The Rose empties like a basin.

Shakespeare goes the other way. He has to get backstage.

* * *

He is acquainted with the bruiser at the tiring-room door. “Now, Master Will . . .” The fellow shuffles his feet in faint embarrassment. “‘Let no one in,’ they told me. And a fine, fat threepenny bit they gave me, too, to see that I hearkened.”

“Surely, Ned, they meant but the general,” Shakespeare says. “I share the craft, and I’m fain to gratulate ’em on work well done.”

“‘Let no one in,’ they said.” The bruiser is not inclined to bend. He has his reasons: “With a threepenny bit behind it, that carries weight.”

“The scales should balance, then,” Shakespeare says with a sigh, and hands him another silver threepence. He pays three times as much to reach the tiring room as he did to get into the Rose. But he doesn’t begrudge the coin . . . too much.

Ned weighs it in his hand. Has he the gall to insist the scales should better than balance? Have I the gall to name him Judas-rogue if he should? Shakespeare wonders. He is glad it does not come to that: Ned shrugs broad shoulders and opens the door he guards. “Come on, come on. Balance they do. If the players grumble, I’ll tell ’em you sneaked past me.”

Inside, the after-the-play chaos seems hearteningly familiar. Half-dressed players scrub makeup from their faces and talk in loud voices of what has just gone well and what not so well—and of anything else that pops into their heads.