Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Tom Stoppard
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being spun once has been repeated ninety times. . . . (He flips a coin, looks at it, tosses it to Ros.) On the whole, doubtful. Three: divine intervention, that is to say, a good turn from above concerning him, cf. children of Israel, or retribution from above concerning me, cf. Lot’s wife. Four: a spectacular vindication of the principle that each individual coin spun individually (he spins one) is as likely to come down heads as tails and therefore should cause no surprise each individual time it does. (It does. He tosses it to Ros.)
ROS I’ve never known anything like it!
GUIL And a syllogism: One, he has never known anything like it. Two, he has never known anything to write home about. Three, it is nothing to write home about. . . . Home . . . What’s the first thing you remember?
ROS Oh, let’s see . . . The first thing that comes into my head, you mean?
GUIL No—the first thing you remember.
ROS Ah. (Pause.) No, it’s no good, it’s gone. It was a long time ago.
GUIL (patient but edged) You don’t get my meaning. What is the first thing after all the things you’ve forgotten?
ROS Oh I see. (Pause.) I’ve forgotten the question.
Guil leaps up and paces.
GUIL Are you happy?
ROS What?
GUIL Content? At ease?
ROS I suppose so.
GUIL What are you going to do now?
ROS I don’t know. What do you want to do?
GUIL I have no desires. None. (He stops pacing dead.) There was a messenger . . . that’s right. We were sent for. (He wheels at Ros and raps out:) Syllogism the second: One, probability is a factor which operates within natural forces. Two, probability is not operating as a factor. Three, we are now within un-, sub- or supernatural forces. Discuss. (Ros is suitably startled. Acidly.) Not too heatedly.
ROS I’m sorry I—What’s the matter with you?
GUIL The scientific approach to the examination of phenomena is a defence against the pure emotion of fear. Keep tight hold and continue while there’s time. Now—counter to the previous syllogism: tricky one, follow me carefully, it may prove a comfort. If we postulate, and we just have, that within un-, sub- or supernatural forces the probability is that the law of probability will not operate as a factor, then we must accept that the probability of the first part will not operate as a factor, in which case the law of probability will operate as a factor within un-, sub- or supernatural forces. And since it obviously hasn’t been doing so, we can take it that we are not held within un-, sub- or supernatural forces after all; in all probability, that is. Which is a great relief to me personally. (Small pause.) Which is all very well, except that—(He continues with tight hysteria, under control.) We have been spinning coins together since I don’t know when, and in all that time (if it is all that time) I don’t suppose either of us was more than a couple of gold pieces up or down. I hope that doesn’t sound surprising because its very unsurprisingness is something I am trying to keep hold of. The equanimity of your average tosser of coins depends upon a law, or rather a tendency, or let us say a probability, or at any rate a mathematically calculable chance, which ensures that he will not upset himself by losing too much nor upset his opponent by winning too often. This made for a kind of harmony and a kind of confidence. It related the fortuitous and the ordained into a reassuring union which we recognized as nature. The sun came up about as often as it went down, in the long run, and a coin showed heads about as often as it showed tails. Then a messenger arrived. We had been sent for. Nothing else happened. Ninety-two coins spun consecutively have come down heads ninety-two consecutive times . . . and for the last three minutes on the wind of a windless day I have heard the sound of drums and flute. . . .
ROS (cutting his fingernails) Another curious scientific phenomenon is the fact that the fingernails grow after death, as does the beard.
GUIL What?
ROS (loud) Beard!
GUIL But you’re not dead.
ROS (irritated) I didn’t say they started to grow after death! (Pause, calmer.) The fingernails also grow before birth, though not the beard.
GUIL What?
ROS (shouts) Beard! What’s the matter with you? (Reflectively.) The toenails, on the other hand, never grow at all.
GUIL (bemused) The toenails never grow at all?
ROS Do they? It’s a funny thing—I cut my fingernails all the time, and every time I think to cut them, they need cutting. Now, for instance. And yet, I never, to the best of my knowledge, cut my toenails. They ought to be curled under my feet by now, but it doesn’t happen. I never think about them. Perhaps I cut them absent-mindedly, when I’m thinking of something else.
GUIL (tensed up by this rambling) Do you remember the first thing that happened today?
ROS (promptly) I woke up, I suppose. (Triggered.) Oh—I’ve got it now—that man, a foreigner, he woke us up—
GUIL A messenger. (He relaxes, sits.)
ROS That’s it—pale sky before dawn, a man standing on his saddle to bang on the shutters—shouts—What’s all the row about?! Clear off!—But then he called our names. You remember that—this man woke us up.
GUIL Yes.
ROS We were sent for.
GUIL Yes.
ROS That’s why we’re here. (He looks round, seems doubtful, then the explanation.) Travelling.
GUIL Yes.
ROS (dramatically) It was urgent—a matter of extreme urgency, a royal summons, his very words: official business and no questions asked—lights in the stable-yard, saddle up and off headlong and hotfoot across the land, our guides outstripped in breakneck pursuit of our duty! Fearful lest we come too late!!
Small pause.
GUIL Too late for what?
ROS How do I know? We haven’t got there yet.
GUIL Then what are we doing here, I ask myself.
ROS You might well ask.
GUIL We better get on.
ROS You might well think.
GUIL We better get on.
ROS (actively) Right! (Pause.) On where?
GUIL Forward.
ROS (forward to footlights) Ah. (Hesitates.) Which way do we—(He turns round.) Which way did we—?
GUIL Practically starting from scratch . . . An awakening, a man standing on his saddle to bang on the shutters, our names shouted in a certain dawn, a message, a summons . . . A new record for heads and tails. We have not been . . . picked out . . . simply to be abandoned . . . set loose to find our own way. . . . We are entitled to some direction. . . . I would have thought.
ROS (alert, listening) I say—! I say—
GUIL Yes?
ROS I can hear—I thought I heard—music.
Guil raises himself.
GUIL Yes?
ROS Like a band. (He looks around, laughs embarrassedly, expiating himself.) It sounded like—a band. Drums.
GUIL Yes.
ROS (relaxes) It couldn’t have been real.
GUIL “The colours red, blue and green are real. The colour yellow is a mystical experience shared by everybody”—demolish.
ROS (at edge of stage) It must have been thunder. Like drums . . .
By the end of the next speech, the band is faintly audible.
GUIL A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character,