Where We Went Wrong
I stand her on a scaffold in the rain, hands bound, eyes shut, noosed, trying to remember where Rosencrantz (for I remember now that I am not he) and I went wrong. My life flashes before my eyes—how cliché. Everyone says this happens when they are about to die, which makes it seem strange that anyone says it happens. Where did we go wrong?
I met Rosencrantz Hildesson on my first day of school It was a dark winter's—night, I suppose (one couldn't logically call it a day), and we had to walk to school by torchlight. I lived in southern Denmark, so it wasn't as cold as it could be, but it was definitely uncomfortable. When I saw the schoolhouse, I ran, thinking that it would be at least marginally warmer therein.
It wasn't.
I sat in the back row, where it was cold, but possible to conduct normal conversation while Master Karlsson droned on about addition, which I could already do.
"What's your name?" asked I of the boy next to me.
"Rosencrantz Hildesson. You?"
"Guildenstern Bengtsson."
My new acquaintance pulled the carrying string off his chalkboard and began to tie knots in it—fatefully, one was a noose. We met with a noose, and we would die by one. Strange, isn't it?
"Master Karlsson's my uncle," Rosencrantz grumbled. "Not anywhere near so interesting as my other ancestors."
"Oh, who were they?"
"Well, there was Erik Marksson—he fought in the battle of Hastings as some sort of commander. And Mum says I'm descended from Leif Eriksson."
"She says. Funny, though, my mum says the same thing. Hello, cousin Rosencrantz."
"Hello, cousin Guildenstern."
So we were friends, and, probably only in our (and our mothers') imagination, cousins.I found Rosencrantz to be the clownish sort. By the age of nine he had taught himself to juggle eight balls, he tinkered with bits of string, rocks and paper under the desk, and he was constantly getting in trouble, and maybe nine times out of ten he deserved it. This began to rub off on me, and, to our chagrin, we were moved to the front of the class.
"Bengtsson/Hildesson," Master Karlssson would often say to the wrong one of us with a crack of his cane, "What are you doing?"
"Master Karlsson," the one not cracked would say, "my name is Bengtsson/Hildesson."
Crack. "Do not speak unless you are spoken to." Crack.
"But sir," the one just cracked would say in a patient voice, for we went through this at least five times a week, "you were speaking to me. I'm Bengtsson/Hildesson."
Crack. "I was not speaking to you; I was speaking to the one next to you." Crack, turn to the original sinner—who usually had fewer cracks at the end than the one who was not originally getting in trouble. "What were you doing?"
Need I say I was glad to leave when I turned fifteen?
My father, a man of some means, had enrolled me in an English university, there being a distinct lack of them in Denmark. After much pleading with his parents, Rosencrantz got in, too. So, in July of 1543, Rosencrantz and I boarded a ship that would bear us to England—Cambridge, to be precise. Another fateful move, for it was there that we met Hamlet, crown prince of Denmark.
He was the melodramatic sort. Very hotheaded, reasonably intelligent, quite handsome, scheming, but not good at politics—disastrous in a crown prince. We became friends, and he agreed to teach us to fence once we got to school. He, not being sick of it yet, was very amused with Rosencrantz's tinkerings. Rosencrantz had never been on a ship, and this opened up a whole new world of energy to power his toys. It also gave him an audience for his singing and comedy routines. Some used me. He got his whole passage fee back from the crew, with profit—I only got half my passage, but I'm not the clown Rosencrantz is.
University was dull once one got used to all the trouble it entails. A society of nobody but very young men and old men lends itself to trouble. Hamlet, a friend of his named Horatio, Rosencrantz and I quickly ascended the troublemakers' hierarchy to troublemakers-in-chief, and I was their lowly assistant, being at least somewhat sensible. If anything untoward happened, the nearest professor would catch the nearest one of us (even if he happened to be me) and give us the cane. We all grew into men—or perhaps just went through university—sporting ugly bruises.
In our dormitory, we all had things that we would probably be doing at any given moment. Rosencrantz multi-tasked. He would invent things or juggle generally dangerous objects while he played question-and answer with me (nobody else understood the game at all—neither did we, really) and/or argued philosophy with Hamlet and Horatio. He has a habit of doing everything at once. Hamlet wrote stories and plays, argued philosophy with everyone but me, as I am no philosopher, and talked at length about his problems while he taught us to fence. Horatio was a born philosopher. He would play solitaire often, and we learned that whenever he played solitaire he was in a mood to argue philosophy. I hope you never know how tiring it is to live with three philosophers who pay you to do their homework, because for four years, that was who I lived with. I was paid five shillings to do their homework, plus a tenth of whatever they paid while I was doing it. I read books, sometimes aloud just to annoy them, while they argued philosophy, and I was always on guard duty while they, for example, cracked eggs into the laundry. I had the most favor among the professors, and when I was feeling particularly generous I would get them out of trouble. Hamlet and Horatio never got our names straight—indeed, I think that university is when Rosencrantz and I became a single unit. We no longer introduced ourselves, "I'm Guildenstern, he's Rosencrantz," but "We're Rosencrantz and Guildenstern." I know of nobody else who does that. Perhaps it's where we went wrong.
No. We must have gone wrong when we agreed to go to Elsinore with Hamlet and Horatio. We (sometimes I feel like I'm using the royal "we" instead of the collective one—apologies) became Sir Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, or Sir Guildenstern and Rosencrantz.
No. We ultimately went wrong when we agreed to spy on Hamlet for the king. That was possibly the stupidest thing we had ever done, but he was the king. Still is, probably. That is the answer.
Zounds, they took a long time to drop the trapdoor.