Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead Page #2

for others patronage,

they are two sides

of the same coin...

or being as there are so many

of us the same side of two coins.

It was luck, then?

Or fate.

Yours or ours?

It could hardly be one

without the other.

Fate then.

You said, caught up in the action?

I did! I did!

You're quicker than your friend.

For a handful of coins

I happen to have...

a private and uncut performance

of the Rape of the Sabine Women...

or rather woman...

or rather Alfred...

and for eight you can participate.

It could have been.

It didn't have to be obscene.

I was prepared.

But it's this, is it?

No enigma... no dignity,

nothing classical or poetic...

only this...

a comic pornographer

and a rabble of prostitutes.

You should have caught

us in better times.

We were purists then.

Excuse me!

Alfred.

You're not, ah,

exclusively players, then?

We're inclusively players, sir.

I had no idea--

No.

I mean I've heard of--,

but I've never actually seen...

I mean, what exactly do you do?

We keep to our usual stuff,

more or less, only inside out.

We do on stage the things

that are supposed to happen off.

Which is a kind of integrity,

if you look on every exit

as an entrance somewhere else.

Wait a minute.

What will you do for that?

Do you know any good plays?

Plays? Oh, yes.

One of the Greeks, perhaps?

You're familar with the tragedies

of Antiquity, are you?

The great homicidal classics?

'Maidens aspiring to Godheads',

or vice versa? That's

your kind of thing, is it?

I can't say it is, really.

Eh we're more of the love,

blood and rhetoric school.

Well, we can do you blood

and love without the rhetoric

without the love...

and we can do you all three

concurrent or consecutive.

But we can't do you love

and rhetoric without the blood.

Blood is compulsory.

They're all blood, you see.

Is that what people want?

It's what we do.

Would you like a bet?

Double or nothing.

Heads.

Heads.

Double or... nothing.

Come on.

I say that was lucky.

It was "tails".

Welcome! Dear Rosencrantz

and Guildenstern.

Moreover that we much did

long to see you.

The need we have to use

you did provoke our hasty sending.

Something have you heard

of Hamlet's transformation,

so call it,

sith nor th' exterior

nor the inward men

resembles that it was.

What it should be,

more than his father's death,

that thus hath put him

so much from th' understanding

of himself.

I cannot dream of.

I entreat you both

that, being of so young days

brought up with him.

And sith so neighbored

to his youth and haviour,

that you vouch-safe your rest

here in our court some little time

so by your companies

to draw him on to pleasures

and to gather so much as

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