This is a short script I wrote (at two in the morning) for an HL English presentation where I got to choose any literary work I wanted (and I have never had so much fun doing an english presentation.)

My Statement of Intent (for all the litnerds): Through the use of figurative language and rhetorical devices, Stoppard suggests the inherent meaninglessness of words and the futility of using them to comprehend the nuances of an absurd world.

Deceptive Simplicity

An alternative script, taking place immediately after Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's meeting with Hamlet, in which they admit that they were 'sent for'. Hamlet has just left the room.

Ros: He murdered us.

Guil: Alternatively, we succeeded in convincing him of our deceptive simplicity.

Ros: Our simplicity may not be so deceptive.

Guil: What on earth is that supposed to mean?

Ros: It means that…that [he has confused himself, slowly]… on the surface, we seem to be simply deceptive, but we are, in reality, deceptively simple. Or…is that the truth?

Guil: Since when has it mattered?

Ros: Oh never mind, it's all hopeless.

Guil: [optimistically] As in devoid of hope or free of it?

Ros: [dejectedly mumbling] Rhetoric, one-love.

Guil: Don't you start!

[Large pause]

Ros: [sigh] He's depressed isn't he?

Guil: Denmark's a prison, is it?

Ros: I should hope not. What on earth do we do now?

Guil: It is almost poetic. There are two roads and we must choose which to travel on.

Ros: What are the roads?

Guil: Oh I don't know, but if feels as if there must be two of them. Two is a good number. Neither lonely nor crowded. It's a number I can be comfortable with.

Ros: We might as well take both at once.

Guil: Not while someone is watching!

Ros: Or rather, it depends on whom.

Guil: [muttering] they're all the same.

Ros: Pardon?

Guil: [loudly] I said, 'for once I'm game'.

Ros: Not while he prefers to be bound in a nutshell

Guil: No, I suppose not.

Ros: But that's ridiculous, isn't it? I say Denmark is a wonderful place. A nutshell has a hundredth of the space and probably a thousandth of the comfort. And yet he wishes he were in one…

Guil: We must not take that so literally-

[pause]

Ros: [yelling] Oh how could a man be so dense!

Guil: [shrugging] Give us this day our daily sense.

Ros: [worried] His small affliction will spread like on a butterfly's wings

Guil: Maybe to the King.

Ros: Where it will cause a hurricane of misfortune.

Guil: No, let's not be so dismal…

Ros: Yes, for I, the noble Guildenstern, will fix it!

Guil: No!

Ros: No?

Guil: Rosencrantz!

Ros: Yes?

Guil: Rosencrantz!

Ros: [confused] I can hear you, Guildenstern.

Guil: There was once a time when things were easier. I don't know when it was but…Oh forget it!

Ros: But what of the Prince?

Guil: What of him?

Ros: Well we're his friends, aren't we?

Guil: How do we know that?

Ros: We were told.

Guil: Told by whom?

Ros: The King.

Guil: And whom did he learn from?

Ros: From the Prince, I believe.

Guil: And from whom learned he?

Ros: The two of us. We were with him, weren't we?

[pause]

Guil: [slowly] Somewhere here, there is a problem…

Ros: Maybe. But I don't suspect it has anything to do with our meeting with him.

Guil: Yes, yes, our meeting. Him, and his rhetorical ways. He probably knew the truth the moment he set eyes on us! We were the ones giving him information while he slithered his way out of our every attempt with such elaborate language. It's true, however, that one of his sentences was of more value than most of our prattle.

Ros: [taken back] As a pragmatist, I object.

Guil: Such brevity, yet it conveys something of the inner nature of yearning. He spoke so highly of this place but still named it a prison. Such frustration, almost as if the very object of his affliction had been rewarded with a metaphorical crown.

Ros: [solemnly] Yes. And I strongly believe pink to be nonexistent as a color. I mean, have you ever actually seen it? Looked at it and tried to piece it somehow into a rainbow? [in frustration] It never works, does it?

Guil: As if someone had done him wrong.

Ros: I suppose we can agree to disagree.

Guil: [wistfully] As if his life was a play and he, a desperate puppet attempting to restore order to the screenwriter's chaos.

Ros: Why must the screenwriter be chaotic? I agree, such that we should agree to disagree.

Guil: [confused, then gives up] The silliness of words!

Ros: Only when you speak them.

Guil: They are like water slipping through the stones of a dam.

Ros: Only on your tongue.

Guil: As difficult to pin down as a salmon-fish leaping through a river.

Ros: Really? I always thought that to be simple.

Guil: You are not a bear, my dear Guildenstern.

Ros: And is Hamlet a bear, my dear Guildenstern?

[pause]

Guil: [sigh] We may as well wait for the old man.

Ros: Old man?

Guil: The one with the white beard.

Ros: You must mean 'grey'. 'Grey beard'.

Guil: How do you know?

Ros: [flaunting knowledge] Old men have grey beards, it is common knowledge.

Guil: And you are certain of this?

Ros: Very.

Guil: But certainty is arrogant!

Ros: Why is it?

Guil: Because you are stating that despite such un-, sub-, or super-natural laws as Probability and Chance, you claim to have knowledge they do not possess. As in, you claim this without ever having lined up every old man in existence and carefully judged the shade of his beard. You may as well be boasting to the skies of your intelligence, announcing to every man that you know more than him. The overconfidence it requires!

Ros: …Or you may just be alive.

Guil: And then, how does one tell white from grey? Is there a certain shade of white, which you proclaim to be 'white', and as a point of black is added it magically becomes grey? Yes, white is the color of these walls, and grey is like stone, but there are other shades. A continuum must be observed closely.

Ros: Why can't we choose to ignore them?

[pause]

Guil: I don't understand you.

Ros: [sarcastically] And I don't understand Prince Hamlet

[pause]

Guil: [suddenly clear] We are making this unnecessarily complicated. The truth is incredibly simple; his father dies moments before his uncle usurps both his throne and his wife. He, a young man of innocent and relatively straightforward upbringing, is devastated by the ill fate of one parental figure and the shamelessness of the other, and is driven to denial via mental affliction. Now, his uncle-father and mother-aunt come to us seeking our great experience in dealing with their nephew-son, not knowing that we have seen neither his form nor his clever tongue for ten years.

Ros: [mutters quietly] That is simple to you?

Guil: Pardon?

Ros: I said 'the sky seems rather blue'.

Guil: Yes, yes it does. Especially since we are indoors. [Deep in thought] This way, we can assume it to be blue and there is nothing to say otherwise. Nothing to deny it, or to laugh in our faces.

Ros: [As a distraction] The part about us being his childhood friends is still debatable.

Guil: But only through the use of excessive logic.

Ros: There's something I've been wondering. Why on earth did the Prince not become King upon his father's death? Why resort to such usurpation?

Guil: One must not question the actions of nobility. Their logic is very different from ours.

Ros: 'Ours' as in that of the common man?

Guil: No, as in that of you and I. We can be sure of nothing else.

Ros: And what happened to the arrogance of certainty?

Guil: It is useful, when one is trying to un-muddle himself from philosophical confusion.

Ros: Then you must need it often.

Guil: As you say, Rosencrantz.

We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style - Tom Stoppard.

So I'm aware that there's probably a complete lack of readers in this fandom, but if you've managed to stumble across this, maybe leave some feedback?