Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

A play by Tom Stoppard

Guil: Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are…condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one – that is the meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it’ll just be shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover, or even suspect, that our spontaneity is part of their order, we’d know that we were lost. (He sits.) A Chinaman of the T’ang Dynasty – and, by which definition, a philosopher – dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him, in his two-fold security (60).
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Ros: (He takes out one of his coins. Spins it. Catches it. Looks at it. Replaces it.)

Guil: What was it?

Ros: What?

Guil: Heads or tails?

Ros: Oh. I didn’t look.

Guil: Yes you did.

Ros: Oh, did I? (He takes out a coin, studies it.) Quite right – it rings a bell.

Guil: What’s the last thing you remember?

Ros: I don’t wish to be reminded of it.

Guil: We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once watered our eyes (60-1).
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Ros: Shouldn't we be doing something... constructive?
Guil: What did you have in mind? A short, blunt human pyramid?
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Ros: Did you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it?

Guil: No.

Ros: 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]
Ros: "Hey you! What's your name? Come out of there!"

[long pause] Guil: I think I'm going to kill you.
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Ros: I don't believe in it anyway.
Guil: What?
Ros: England.
Guil: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then?
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Guil: Is that you?
Ros: I don't know.
[in disgust] Guil: It's you.
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Guil: Bet me the year of my birth doubled is an odd number.
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Ros: [The wind's] coming up through the floor. That can't be south, can it?

Guil: That's not a direction. Lick your toe and wave it around a bit.

Ros considers the distance of his foot.
Ros: No, I think you'd have to lick it for me.

Pause.

Guil: I'm prepared to let the whole matter drop.

Ros: Or I could lick yours, of course.

Guil: No thank you.

Ros: I'll even wave it around for you.

Guil: What in God's name is wrong with you!?

Ros: Just being friendly.
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Ros: Stark raving sane.
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Player: There's nothing more unconvincing than an unconvincing death.