Work Text:
An old man surveys the banks of the Styx.
TS: I should have known.
CHARON: Sträussler?
TS: Yes?
CHARON: Stoppard?
TS: Yes?
CHARON: Don’t you discriminate at all?
TS: Ha ha, very funny.
CHARON: This won’t be a very long trip. Someone got the flu and didn’t have time to finish reading your biography. But she knows enough, or almost. Come on, get in.
The boat moves. Two men come into view, looking a little lost.
TS [waving joyfully]: Rosencrantz! Guildenstern!
ROS: Who’s that?
GUIL: Does he know us?
ROS: Perhaps he could help us sort out this name business?
TS: Oh—I wasn’t expecting you to be able to hear me…
GUIL: Do you make a habit of being imperceptible?
ROS: A suspicious character, no doubt about it.
TS: In my line of work one must be comfortable with invisibility. Observation. Being a spectator may be an appalling business—
ROS [quietly]: —my line!
TS: —but it is the basis of a writer’s craft. I was a reporter, you know, I learned shorthand and sat around at council meetings and chronicled the happenings of the world. The role was descriptive, not participatory. Although I admit I could not help putting in my oar, so to speak, at certain moments. Eventually that was what appealed most. A period of invisibility, powerlessness, followed by a period of total control: from passerby to puppetmaster.
ROS: Oh. I see.
GUIL: Anyway. Now that you’re here, perhaps we can start getting to the bottom of all of this.
TS: I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid I have to go.
GUIL: You really must stay.
ROS: You’re the only one around here talking sense—
GUIL: —help us out—
ROS: —move us forward—
GUIL: —of this mess—
ROS: —give us this day our daily lore—
The boat moves away from them.
CHARON: What was all that about?
TS: Guilt, I should think. Well, you do feel for them, don’t you—eternal life as metaphor is a fate worse than death, although I admit I never expected to be confronted with it so directly at a time like this.
CHARON: No better time.
The boat poles into the mist, exiting SL.
GUIL: Damn, damn, damn.
ROS: Well, he seemed nice.
GUIL: Nice like a fat little boy with two goldfish in a bag is nice. His mother might love him, but what about the fish?
ROS: I’m sure he’ll come around again later.
GUIL: Your confidence inspires.
Lights up on an office. One young man sits behind a desk, another before it.
TYNAN: You were a fan of the stage.
STOPPARD: I admired—
TYNAN: You adored Beckett, Pinter, Osborne. And Peter O’Toole.
STOPPARD: Peter’s a good friend.
TYNAN: One whom you worshiped, more than a little bit. Did he really steal your girl?
The boat has come back on from SR and the old man is observing this repartee.
TS: Isabel…!
From SL, Ros & Guil watch too.
GUIL: So let’s work this out.
ROS: Here he is, a young man of obscure background—
GUIL: An indifferent man of no principles.
ROS: A moral man of many stances.
GUIL: An upstart.
ROS: A prodigy.
GUIL: A complete nobody.
ROS: He’s surely somebody—or will be.
GUIL: What I’d like to know is where we come into the picture.
ROS: And why?
TYNAN: You poach irrepressibly from history and literature. Other people’s fictions, other people’s lives… What do you have to say to the critique from Derek Marlowe that your work fails to convey genuine emotion?
Stoppard defends himself—a long speech.
TS: I remember this. They all loved to accuse me of being unsentimental, cerebral, of standing for nothing. Good old Ken didn’t live to see how deeply I took it to heart. I got much more serious, while retaining a red streak of frivolity. Typically one has a principled youth and shakes off anger in one’s old age but I seem to have gone about it the wrong way round.
CHARON: Worked out for you, though?
TS: Oh, very much so.
TYNAN: How much have you earned from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern?
STOPPARD: Er… a hundred, a hundred fifty thousand?
TYNAN: Your agent informs me the number is well over three hundred thousand pounds.
STOPPARD: Don’t know why you had to ask me, then.
He finishes his cigarette and lights another. Critic and playwright continue their interview with Ros & Guil listening in.
ROS: I’m beginning to feel taken advantage of. Three hundred thousand pounds… that’s a lot of heads.
GUIL: By all rights we should never have to work again.
ROS: By all wrongs—
GUIL: To have profited off our misery?
ROS: Although I’m sure he didn’t mean it.
GUIL: Writers always mean it. Meaning is their line of work.
ROS: Putting words in your mouth.
GUIL: And, worse—into yours.
TYNAN: Are you uncomfortable with your fame?
STOPPARD: Not at all.
TYNAN: But you’d rather worship than be worshiped, I think. Even now I can feel your idolatry radiating off that leather jacket and towards me. It’s flattering, Tom, but not what one expects in the most feted young playwright of his age. You must stand on your own two feet and not lean so obviously.
TS: This is rather embarrassing—I don’t remember this part. Might we move on? Perhaps Isabel is somewhere around here…
The boat poles past as lights go down on the two young men.
CHARON: Nothing wrong with a bit of idolatry.
TS: Certainly not, but one hates to be reminded of it.
CHARON: Why?
TS: Well, it’s our little secret, isn’t it? Our as in artists, who are really fans, even the critics, especially the critics. Hemingway, Eliot, Beckett… Mick Jagger, Laurence Olivier. Shakespeare! There was nothing so shamefully pleasurable as taking from them. The knowing wink exchanged with the audience member, who in turn receives a little ecstatic jolt of recognition, all up and down the body, like the first puff of a much-needed cigarette. We’re all in on the same glorious secret joke.
Lights up on Tynan, later on, drafting his article….
TYNAN: “People sometimes say that Stoppard, for all his brilliance, is fundamentally a leech, drawing the lifeblood of his work from the inventions of others.”
Lights up on the young playwright, smoking a cigarette …
STOPPARD: “I’ve formed the habit of hanging my plays on other people’s plots. It’s a habit I’m trying to kick.”
Lights down on both young men.
CHARON: Did you? Kick it, I mean?
TS: Possibly. Possibly not. What I proved is that it was not only possible but admirable to be a genuine original while also being completely derivative. Well, proved again, perhaps, after Shakespeare did it first. I rescued Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—plucked them from obscurity. The first play to use another play as its scenery, I think Ken remarked. And you know, it wasn’t even my idea in the first place: it was Ewing, my agent, who thought a work about Rosencrantz and Guildernstern at the court of King Lear might be fun. And there was that Wilde quote… It wasn’t something I would have come up with myself! So we all just go on, poaching and stealing from each other in a gleeful round... No such thing as real newness and nobody would want it if there was—except, perhaps, the modern art curators.
He notices Ros & Guil shambling along.
TS: I still do love them so.
A parade of familiar people move down the river past Ros & Guil.
HOUSMAN: Consider the honor.
TZARA: Consider it a favor.
DOTTY: It’s not so bad.
THOMASINA: Nobody will ever forget you.
GUIL: We never asked to be immortal!
ROS: It’s no better than the alternative!
GUIL: It may be worse!
HOUSMAN: Take it up with him.
GUIL: He’s moving on.
ROS: No time for us.
DOTTY: There’s always time.
TZARA: He’s made sure of that.
THOMASINA: You’re in good company.
Ros & Guil push urgently past the crowd to find the old man on the other side.
GUIL: Take pity on a pair of—whatever we are.
ROS: Charity cases!
GUIL: Innocents!
ROS: Martyrs!
They fall to their knees at his feet.
TS: I’m very sorry, chaps—I’m not sure what it is that you want.
ROS: Neither do we!
GUIL: Could you tell us?
The young man (long scarf, bright Carnaby suit) sweeps in.
STOPPARD: Excuse me. I’ll take care of them.
He gets them up and whispers something to them—we can’t hear it.
ROS: Oh.
GUIL: When you put it like that.
ROS: I would have thought it would be the other way round.
They seem calmed.
TS: What did you tell them?
STOPPARD: Just a little joke, really.
He departs, leaving the old man to climb back into the boat.
TS: Show-off.
Ros & Guil murmur amongst themselves.
TS: So when we’re finished, they’ve all got to—go back to it? Business as usual?
CHARON: That’s about right.
TS [waving goodbye]: Thank you! I’m sorry! Better luck next time!
Ros & Guil amble away from the boat.
ROS: What a lovely man.
GUIL: He could have stayed longer. He could have given us some real answers.
ROS: It was a change of pace.
GUIL: Things proceed apace... I think I hear someone calling our name.
They exit.
CHARON: Nearly there now.
TS: I would have thought there’d be more to it.
CHARON: You’re not the one writing this, she is.
TS: I understand completely. Deadlines—no more of those! Should they ever find it in their hearts to forgive me, I’d be flattered. But I have no expectations. They’re not mine anymore, if they ever were to begin with. Goodbye, Guildenstern, and gentle Rosencrantz…