Tim Roth credited as playing...
Guildenstern
- Rosencrantz: Do you think Death could possibly be a boat?
- Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is "not." Death isn't. Take my meaning? Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not be on a boat.
- Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats.
- Guildenstern: No, no... What you've been is not on boats.
- Guildenstern: I don't believe in it anyway.
- Rosencrantz: What?
- Guildenstern: England.
- Rosencrantz: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then?
- Guildenstern: I think I have it. A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself.
- Rosencrantz: Or just as mad.
- Guildenstern: Or just as mad.
- Rosencrantz: And he does both.
- Guildenstern: So there you are.
- Rosencrantz: Stark raving sane.
- Rosencrantz: Did you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it?
- Guildenstern: No.
- Rosencrantz: Nor do I, really. It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean, one thinks of it like being alive in a box. One keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead, which should make all the difference, shouldn't it? I mean, you'd never *know* you were in a box, would you? It would be just like you were asleep in a box. Not that I'd like to sleep in a box, mind you. Not without any air. You'd wake up dead for a start, and then where would you be? In a box. That's the bit I don't like, frankly. That's why I don't think of it. Because you'd be helpless, wouldn't you? Stuffed in a box like that. I mean, you'd be in there forever, even taking into account the fact that you're dead. It isn't a pleasant thought. Especially if you're dead, really. Ask yourself, if I asked you straight off, "I'm going to stuff you in this box. Now, would you rather be alive or dead?" naturally, you'd prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance, at least. You could lie there thinking, "Well, at least I'm not dead. In a minute somebody is going to bang on the lid, and tell me to come out."
- [bangs on lid]
- Rosencrantz: "Hey you! What's your name? Come out of there!"
- Guildenstern: [long pause] I think I'm going to kill you.
- Rosencrantz: What's the matter with you today?
- Guildenstern: When?
- Rosencrantz: What?
- Guildenstern: Are you deaf?
- Rosencrantz: Am I dead?
- Guildenstern: Yes or no?
- Rosencrantz: Is there a choice?
- Guildenstern: Is there a God?
- Rosencrantz: Foul! No non sequiturs! Three... two, one game all.
- Guildenstern: What's your name?
- Rosencrantz: What's yours?
- Guildenstern: You first.
- Rosencrantz: Statement! One... love.
- Guildenstern: What's your name when you're at home?
- Rosencrantz: What's yours?
- Guildenstern: When I'm at home?
- Rosencrantz: Is it different at home?
- Guildenstern: What home?
- Rosencrantz: Haven't you got one?
- Guildenstern: Why do you ask?
- Rosencrantz: What are you driving at?
- Guildenstern: What's your name?
- Rosencrantz: Repetition! Two... love. Match point.
- Guildenstern: Who do you think you are?
- Rosencrantz: Rhetoric! Game and match!
- The Player: We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.
- Guildenstern: Is that what people want?
- The Player: It's what we do.
- [Guildenstern is pretending to be Hamlet]
- Rosencrantz: Let me get it straight. Your father was king. You were his only son. Your father dies. You are of age. Your uncle becomes king.
- Guildenstern: Yes.
- Rosencrantz: Unusual.
- Guildenstern: Undid me.
- Rosencrantz: Undeniably.
- Guildenstern: He slipped in.
- Rosencrantz: Which reminds me...
- Guildenstern: Well, it would.
- Rosencrantz: I don't want to be personal.
- Guildenstern: Common knowledge.
- Rosencrantz: Your mother's marriage.
- Guildenstern: He slipped in.
- Rosencrantz: His body was still warm!
- Guildenstern: So was hers.
- Rosencrantz: Extraordinarily...
- Guildenstern: Indecent.
- Rosencrantz: Hasty.
- Guildenstern: Suspicious.
- Rosencrantz: Makes you think.
- Guildenstern: Don't think I haven't.
- Rosencrantz: And with her husband's brother!
- Guildenstern: They *were* close.
- Rosencrantz: She went to him...
- Guildenstern: Too close.
- Rosencrantz: For comfort.
- Guildenstern: It looks bad.
- Rosencrantz: Adds up.
- Guildenstern: Incest to adultery.
- Rosencrantz: Would you go so far?
- Guildenstern: Never!
- Rosencrantz: To sum up: your father, whom you love, dies. You are his heir. You come back to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his young brother pops onto his throne and into his sheets, thereby offending both legal and natural practice. Now... why exactly are you behaving in this extraordinary manner?
- Guildenstern: I can't imagine.
- Guildenstern: Wasn't that the end?
- Player King: You call that an ending? - with practically everyone still on his feet? My goodness, no - over your dead body!
- Rosencrantz: [Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are about to be hanged] That's it then, is it? We've done nothing wrong. We didn't harm anybody, did we?
- Guildenstern: I can't remember.
- Rosencrantz: All right, then. I don't care. I've had enough. To tell you the truth, I'm relieved.
- Guildenstern: There must have been a moment at the beginning, where we could have said no. Somehow we missed it. Well, we'll know better next time.
- The Player: Till then.
- The Player: [after a pantomime of 'Hamlet' performed for the servants] Are you familiar with this play?
- Guildenstern: No.
- The Player: A slaughterhouse, eight corpses all told.
- Guildenstern: [does a quick mental recount, then] Six.
- The Player: Eight.
- [the two tragedians who resemble Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are "hanged"]
- Guildenstern: Who are they?
- The Player: They're dead.
- The Player: There's a design at work in all art surely you know that? Events must play themselves out to an aesthetic, moral and logical conclusion.
- Guildenstern: And what's that in this case?
- The Player: It never varies. We aim for the point where everyone who is marked for death dies.
- Guildenstern: Marked?
- The Player: Generally speaking things have gone about as far as they can possibly go when things have got about as bad as they can reasonably get.
- Guildenstern: Who decides?
- The Player: Decides? It is written.
- Guildenstern: 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, poetic - only this, a comic pornographer and a rabble of prostitutes!
- The Player: You should have caught us in better times. We were purists then.
- Rosencrantz: Shouldn't we be doing something... constructive?
- Guildenstern: What did you have in mind? A short, blunt human pyramid?
- Rosencrantz: Is that southerly?
- Guildenstern: We came from roughly south.
- Rosencrantz: Which way is that?
- Guildenstern: In the morning, the sun would be easterly. I think we can assume that.
- Rosencrantz: That it's morning?
- Guildenstern: If it is, and the sun is over there for instance, that would be northerly. On the other hand, if it's not morning and the sun is over there, that would still be northerly. To put it another way, if we came from down there, and it's morning, the sun would be up there, but if it's actually over there and it's still morning, we must have come from back there, and if that's southerly, and the sun is really over there, then it's the afternoon. However, if none of these are the case...
- Rosencrantz: Why don't you go and have a look?
- Guildenstern: Pragmatism. Is that all you have to offer?
- Rosencrantz: I merely suggest that the position of the sun, if it is out, would give you a rough idea of the time. Alternatively, a clock, if it is going, would give you a rough idea of the position of the sun. I forget which you are trying to establish.
- Guildenstern: I'm trying to establish the direction of the wind.
- Rosencrantz: There isn't any wind.
- [the shutters blow open and a paper windmill which Rosenkrantz is holding starts spinning]
- Rosencrantz: Draughts, yes!
- Guildenstern: Whose serve?
- Rosencrantz: Err...
- Guildenstern: Hesitation! Love... one.
- Rosencrantz: Whose go?
- Guildenstern: Why?
- Rosencrantz: Why not?
- Guildenstern: What for?
- Rosencrantz: Foul! No synonyms! One... all.
- Guildenstern: What in God's name is going on?
- Rosencrantz: Foul! No rhetoric! Two... one.
- Guildenstern: What does it all add up to?
- Rosencrantz: Can't you guess?
- Guildenstern: Were you addressing me?
- Rosencrantz: Is there anyone else?
- Guildenstern: Who?
- Rosencrantz: How would I know?
- Guildenstern: Why do you ask?
- Rosencrantz: Are you serious?
- Guildenstern: Was that rhetoric?
- Rosencrantz: No.
- Guildenstern: Statement! Two all. Game point.
- Rosencrantz: Another curious scientific phenomenon is the fact that the fingernails grow after death, as does the beard.
- Guildenstern: What?
- Rosencrantz: Beard.
- Guildenstern: But you're not dead.
- Rosencrantz: I didn't say they only started to grow after death. The fingernails also grow before birth - though not the beard.
- Guildenstern: What?
- Rosencrantz: BEARD! What's the matter with you?
- [pause]
- Rosencrantz: The toenails, on the other hand, never grow at all.
- Guildenstern: The toenails on the other FOOT never grow at all.
- Rosencrantz: ...no.
- [Rosencrantz has been flipping coins, and all of them are coming down heads]
- Guildenstern: Consider: One, probability is a factor which operates *within* natural forces. Two, probability is *not* operating as a factor. Three, we are now held within un-, sub- or super-natural forces. Discuss.
- Rosencrantz: What?
- Guildenstern: Rosencrantz?
- Rosencrantz: What?
- Guildenstern: Guildenstern?
- Rosencrantz: What?
- Guildenstern: Don't you discriminate at ALL?
- Rosencrantz: Oh! You mean - you pretend to be *him*, and I ask you questions!
- Guildenstern: Very good.
- Rosencrantz: You had me confused.
- Guildenstern: I could see I had.
- Rosencrantz: How should I begin?
- Guildenstern: Address me.
- Rosencrantz: My honoured Lord!
- Guildenstern: My dear Rosencrantz!
- Rosencrantz: ...Am I pretending to be you, then?
- Guildenstern: Certainly not. Well, if you like. Shall we continue?
- Rosencrantz: My honoured Lord!
- Guildenstern: My - dear fellow!
- Rosencrantz: How are you?
- Guildenstern: Afflicted.
- Rosencrantz: Really? In what way?
- Guildenstern: Transformed.
- Rosencrantz: Inside or out?
- Guildenstern: Both.
- Rosencrantz: I see. Not much new there!
- Guildenstern: [shouting] Well, go into detail! Delve!
- Rosencrantz: Do you want to play questions?
- Guildenstern: How do you play that?
- Rosencrantz: You have to ask a question.
- Guildenstern: Statement. One - Love.
- Rosencrantz: Cheating.
- Guildenstern: How?
- Rosencrantz: I haven't started yet.
- Guildenstern: Statement. Two - Love.
- Rosencrantz: Are you counting that?
- Guildenstern: What?
- Rosencrantz: Are you counting that?
- Guildenstern: Foul. No repetition. Three - Love and game.
- Rosencrantz: I'm not going to play if you're going to be like that.