Sent For
Two men; friends, are dressed for travelling and carry with them limited baggage and leather purses full of silver coins. They are weary already, having set out at dawn for the destination the messenger shouted up at their still shuttered windows. It is now approaching midday and the sun is resting high in the sky, which makes their progress sluggish, as they are daunted by the late summer heat.
The slighter of the two men and perceivably the more intelligent, walks on a few paces from his friend and looks about him for signs of… well anything really. It is a bleak landscape and an uninteresting dirt road is marked only by the varied flowers along its edge. Guildenstern seems distressed that they continue to grow so well in such persistently scorching weather. For him the flowers are the painful punch line to a pointlessly comedic excursion. He looks wearily at the stones and dirt crumbling beneath his booted feet; and occasionally glances up towards the horizon or above him at a bright but increasingly over cast sky. He seems downhearted.
Rosencrantz wanders behind; though they are actually close enough in age and stature, to be hard to tell apart; Ros is the more childish of the two. He wanders behind Guil, following the tramp of his boots by ear and staring not at the road, but at the pretty wild flowers which mark its verge. To him they are a pleasant perk of the journey, which in his opinion is as nice a jaunt as any other they may have decided to take. He is not pained by the fact that he didn't get to choose their day's activities. He rarely expresses a choice on any other day… Guil is the leader.
Guil: (Distanced, in proximity and emotion) You know, I have no idea where I am going?
Ros: (Mildly irritated) What do you mean? You brought us both out here and now you tell me, in that blasé tone of voice, that you don't know where to head!
Guil: I never said that! I know which directions I am supposed to take… I have been instructed in the paths I should walk.
Ros: So why didn't you just say that? (Confused, he gives a rather weak, exasperated sigh.)
Guil: My dear friend. What I said was that I have no idea where Iam going. I know the way to town… I just don't know where 'I' am going.
Ros: To town… with me! (He pauses to reflect and stops walking, causing Guil to halt and turn to look upon his worried face. As Ros meets Guil's glance he becomes defensive.) Well that was the plan… Have you changed your mind?
Guil: So to town we will definitely go, but from then or by then… who knows what turns we may have made.
Ros: (Smiles broadly and his eyes brighten as he looks up at Guil from where he's been staring ahead of him at the post, beside his friend.) Well Looking at that post over your shoulder, I'd say we take a left!
Guil: (He turns away and looks back onthe road ahead. Sighing, he finds it difficult to make his point clear to his well-meaning friend.)
Ros: (He is excited to have seemingly answered the question, but grows more confused than ever when Guil turns away and his comment isn't met with any gratitude.)
Guil: A left… yes… well, why not? Given our choices…
Ros: (despondently.) Unless you want to go home right now?
Guil: No, we have made a start and my choice is still enough to spur me on.
Ros: (hurt.) If you don't want to go on, then why don't you just say so!
Guil: (thoughtfully.) Sometimes it's too hard to talk about.
Ros: (shocked but assuming the comment to be in jest.) I didn't mean that!
Guil: Well what else can there be? We are on our roads without a map, my friend. We travel together, but our paths are rarely the same. (He smiles as his eyes skirt across the grass verge, seeking a prop for his thoughts.) Where you see a foxglove in a hedgerow, I see… I see the road kill in the ditch! (Musing.) Perhaps the country is not for me.
Ros: (Consoling.) Then to town we must hasten… It is a dreary path.
Guil: Not for you, with your posies!
Ros: (Smiles, but then it hits him that it may have been an insult. He responds damningly.) You don't have to look to the gutter.
Guil: (Thinks for a moment and looks around him at the path and its surrounds.) No perhaps not, there are men who look to the skies for guidance.
Ros: (jovially.) A wish on a comet!
Guil: (Laughs.) A wish on a star and the heavens open… Ah! that would be quite a road to walk.
Ros: (quickly.) But not too soon! (He looks at his friend with a deep concern furrowing his brow; as he fears that Guil has become morbidly suicidal.)
Guil: I don't know where I am going.
Ros: (Accepting and demoralised.) Nor do I.
Guil: Whichever way we walk now, will determine all our paths… if only we knew more about them.
Ros: We could go back? (As though it's the safest option available to them.)
Guil: My friend, you can never go back… save in memory.
Ros: (Hopefully.) Ah but we can make new memories.
Guil: Then we would not be going back, but onwards to the same location.
Ros: (miserably.) I wish we'd never set out.
Guil: It wasn't our choice remember?
Ros: (Fearfully.) I don't…
Guil: It doesn't matter… the path is chosen.
Ros: (aggressively and in denial.) Why should we take it, if it wasn't our choice… let's stop!
Guil: (Looks at Guil forcefully.) We can't do that. (Sentimentally accepting.) We would find no posies on that road.
Ros: (Aggrieved.) So we are to walk against our will?
Guil: (More hopefully and trying to bring a smile back to his friend's face.) Not entirely. Let us walk over these fields. There is no fence and the posies… (With an encouraging smile.) …they are so much prettier over there.
Ros: (Confused.)But we will go to town?
Guil: Yes my friend, it's a way to go.
Ros: But we'll get there by dusk?
Guil: We can but hope, my friend. A lot may happen before darkness falls.
Ros: (Nervous.) And a lot after.
Guil: It was dark this morning.
Ros: And now look where we are.
Guil: Then we must walk. We have been here too long.
Ros: If that were true, you'd think I would remember more about it.
Guil: (Comfortingly.) You remember the foxgloves.
Ros: Yes but I can't take them with me forever… they'll die!
Guil: (Frustrated.) Nothing taken can be put back in its place… that's the whole point.
Ros: I don't want to put it back. It's mine anyway.
Guil: For a time.
Ros: What time is it?
Guil: (Resolved and assured.)Ah, now that would take all day!