"…We'll Know Better Next Time."

A/N: …originally titled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Alive and Well and Living in Paris. But then that would be a bad Broadway joke.

I felt I needed to write something for my favorite play of all time. It's, as far as I can tell from writing it, in keeping with Stoppard's play, tone and such. It's even harder to express the original tone when the writing's in prose, but I think Stoppard would approve. Hopefully.

But speaking of which…

The play known as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead belongs to Tom Stoppard, and not me. Also, the almost original version of Hamlet, which was used to create Stoppard's play, belongs to William Shakespeare and will always belong to him spiritually, no matter what sort of rules concerning public domain exist. Then there's the unknown fellow who wrote the "Ur"-Hamlet, but now we're getting caught up in it…

Enjoy!

A perfectly planned sunrise occurred just over a small shack. Unbeknownst to the shack, it was of the sun's free will to rise on time.

Within the shack was a bed, which stood under an unkempt rug. A washbowl had been left to sit on a dresser next to the bed. All in all, it was a rather dingy sight for such a situation.

A young man stirred on the bed. A bit too gentlemanly-looking for the scenery, he twisted and turned on the dirty, cobwebbed bed. After many moments, he drearily opened his eyes. He immediately closed them afterwards, the early-morning light coming from a crack in the ceiling entering his eyes and worsening his headache.

Moaning in pain, the young man turned over on the bed once more, causing what was under him to groan with him. However, what were under him were not only feathers and metal pieces, for it opened its eyes just as groggily as the young man and blinked.

"Guildenstern!"

The young man on the bed jumped up, his breath catching fearfully. He looked frantically around the shack from his sitting position. "What? What was that?" he said tentatively. "Who are you! Tell me!"

The voice crawled out from under the bed, exposing another gentlemanly-looking young man. He sat next to the bed on the floor, his eyes slowly closing and opening again. Looking up to the other man on the bed, he smiled. "Why…hello."

"Guildenstern" cocked his head. "Do I…know you? I feel as if we have met before."

"I suppose so," the other man said. He lifted himself up wearily and took a sitting position on the bed. "But I could always be wrong. I forget so many things."

"Ah, a syllogism! One: You forget all too many things. Two: You forget any sort of occurrence of the two of us meeting. Therefore, there must be something in our meeting that was not to your liking. I am appalled."

The forgetful man gasped in disbelief. "No, no such thing ever crossed my thoughts! I was only saying –"

"What's your name?" "Guildenstern" cut him off.

A long silence followed, the unnamed young man thinking to himself quite deeply. After several quiet moments, an answer was given. "Well, you see…" Another silence followed. "I have forgotten that as well."

"Well, try again. Think very…very deeply."

"…I should think it's Guildenstern!" The young man beamed with pride in himself for remembering.

Picking himself up from the bed, the other man groaned. "No, no, no. Your name cannot be Guildenstern. It is highly improbable that your name is, in fact, Guildenstern."

"Why ever not?"

"Because", he continued, "my name is apparently Guildenstern. Or so you yourself called me. And it is very unlikely that we are both named Guildenstern. If so, it would make things more difficult for the both of us."

"…I see. Then who am I?"

Guildenstern cocked his head again and clicked his tongue, looking at the young man on the bed. He then replied, "I should think you look very much like a Rosencrantz… Yes, that's it. That must be it. Your name is Rosencrantz."

Rosencrantz smiled. "I remember now. It all makes sense." He gathered himself and stood up to meet his new friend eye-to-eye. "Hello, my name is Rosencrantz."

"And mine is Guildenstern."

"Then I guess we are friends. Shake hands?"

They did so, which left them at a dead end. Rosencrantz fell back onto the bed, feeling dejected.

"Well…we're not dead, right?"

Guildenstern contemplated their surroundings, and finally said, "If death is not, and this is a shack, then I guess…we are, in fact, not dead."

"But what if death is a shack?"

"I just said death is not. You can't…not be in a shack, nor in any sort of object. Death would be much more surprising than this."

Rosencrantz slumped, his head being balanced on his hands. "That's a funny thing. I'm pretty surprised now. I don't see why death would be any more surprising. Not that I'd mind it."

"I suppose so," Guildenstern said, turning around to meet Rosencrantz's gaze with is own. "Why do you ask?"

"…I can't rightly say. I must have forgotten." He tapped his foot, then said, with much hesitation, "… now what?"

Guildenstern sighed, sitting down next to his new friend. "I suppose… I suppose we just have to let things…play out."

"So…we wait for someone or something to give us something to do? That's it?"

"…I guess so."

Rosencrantz nodded, biting his lip. Then it hit him. "What if that doesn't happen?"

That was the last thing Guildenstern had expected to deal with. "…It's what we depend on, isn't it? It has to happen."

At that, Rosencrantz began to give a rebuttal, but then he remembered: It did have to happen. "…this has happened before, hasn't it?" He turned to look at Guildenstern, who was about to say "no". But then he heard a voice in the back of his head, shouting their names and banging on the shack.

"Pale sky before dawn, a man standing on his saddle to bang on the shutters – shouts – What's all the row about! Clear off! – But then he called our names," Guildenstern said slowly, everything coming back to him. He turned back to Rosencrantz, who was still looking at him hesitantly. Looking at Guildenstern, he began to nod again, his eyes growing wider and wider.

"I've… I've said that before. Several times," he finally said.

Guildenstern wasn't sure what to say, until he gave a small chuckle and looked down at his hands on his lap. "I thought it sounded familiar." Rosencrantz joined in the chortling.

Rosencrantz stood up, stretching his legs for just a moment. He turned his back to Guildenstern, now facing the makeshift door of the shack. There was a piece of paper, torn in various places along the edge, sticking out between the wooden planks making up the door.

"That's funny," he whispered. Guildenstern looked up for a second at the sound of Rosencrantz's voice, who pointed to the paper. "That," he continued. "That. That…"

"…wasn't there before. Last time I checked." Guildenstern jumped up and walked over to the paper. Taking it out of the door, he did his best to straighten out all the crinkles. He read it, looked up before taking a double-take, read it again.

"Here," he said in a shocked tone. "Read this." He handed the paper to his friend, who took it curiously. He took a look at the text, very neatly inked in a manner unlike anything he'd ever seen, and read aloud:

"Lincoln High School Does Hamlet

On December 13-14 and 20-21, Lincoln High School for the Arts gave an open-to-the-public presentation of William Shakespeare's great play, The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark. A very well-known writing, the students were able to successfully create a psychologically chilling outlook on the text, which is very rarely done in such a traditional fashion. The principal of the "

The paper was ripped to a halt there, stopping Rosencrantz from reading any further. He looked over the paper. Guildenstern was standing and looking at him, his mouth agape.

"Hamlet", he murmured, almost like a mantra. "Hamlet…Hamlet… That was him. You do remember him, don't you?" Rosencrantz nodded, trying to say "yes", but not being able to use his voice.

Their legs gave out from under them, and they fell onto the floor. They were stuck. They had nothing else to say, now that no one was prompting them. No one was analyzing their lines our character development. They no longer existed to those who had written them and used them.

It was Rosencrantz who talked first after that discovery. It took him a while to formulate his thoughts into words, but he finally succeeded. "We're… Guildenstern, we're free."

Guildenstern blinked in confusion. "But we're out on our own now. What are we supposed to do? We have nothing to…to play off of. Rosencrantz, what's going to…going to happen to us?" This was the most emotional Guildenstern has probably ever been.

Sitting and trying to hold back tears that wouldn't fall anyway, Guildenstern felt strong hands grab his shoulders. Rosencrantz had moved behind him, and he continued to wrap his arms around his friend's shoulders.

"It's alright. Everything will work out just fine. We don't need to be prompted…I wouldn't think we would need to be prompted, anyway. Unless I'm wrong, which I…which I could be." He thought about that for a moment, his arms still around his friend. "That…didn't help very much, did it?" he asked his friend.

Guildenstern laughed quietly. "No, not really." He continued to laugh to himself, even after Rosencrantz took his arms away. He looked up, seeing his friend has taken a seat on the edge of the bed. Guildenstern pulled himself up and onto the same bed, sitting next to Rosencrantz.

"So…" Guildenstern began, "I guess we are free, aren't we?"

Rosencrantz replied, "I suppose we are."

"…but we can't be too safe, correct?"

"What do you mean?"

Guildenstern reached into a small bag at his side and pulled out a gold coin. Tossing it to Rosencrantz was all he needed to do to set off the, apparently, common ritual. He tossed it into the air and caught it, then turned it over onto the back of his other hand. Looking to Guildenstern nervously, he continued to lift his hand and look at the coin.

"…heads. It's heads," he gulped.

Guildenstern refused to believe it. "Try again."

Rosencrantz tried again, even more nervously.

"Heads."

"No. Try again."

"Are you absolutely positive, dear friend?"

"If I'm not, I don't know who is."

Rosencrantz flipped over the coin for a third time.

"Tails!" He tried again. "Heads. Tails. Tails. Heads. Tails." He smiled and looked up to his friend, who was smiling just as much. "It's an even chance!"

"Perfect. We are free. We truly are free!" The two embraced gleefully.

"…so…" Guildenstern broke the embrace first, pocketing his coin. "What should we do? Now that we're not being dictated?"

Rosencrantz stopped to think. Then he gave a goofy grin. "How about England?"

"…honestly."

"I am." The two smirked, standing up together and heading towards the planked door. Stepping out of the shack, Guildenstern took Rosencrantz by the shoulder and, still walking, asked, "England still exists, doesn't it?"

"That depends on whenever we get there," he replied, jokingly shaking off his friend's hand. The two walked off into the wild unknown, perhaps seeking England, perhaps seeking whatever they would come across, as happy as they would ever be together. Nothing else.

After they had left, a piece of paper appeared in the place of the first, though no one was around to read it like before. A few minutes later, a strong northerly wind picked it up, ripping it out of its nook. The wind let up, dropping it to the feet of a simply-clad man. He noticed the rustling by his boot, so he picked it up and read it silently, taking in each inked word, just as regulated in inking as the first paper:

"December 23, 8 o'clock: At the Glasgow Catholic Church, the Glasgow Tragedians will be giving a public preview of their production of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, which will open the next day at 3 o'clock. Admission for the preview is free."

Crumpling the paper in his gloved hand, the Player King smiled and shrugged. At least there would be another audience.

End

Post A/N: I'm not sure whether there is a Lincoln High School for the Arts, Glasgow Catholic Church, or a group known as the Glasgow Tragedians. If there are any of these in existence, feel free to tell me. And if they happen to exist, and you are offended at the use of them and pretend compliments, feel free to tell me that, too.

Sincerely,

Faust Prouvaire