3.9: Conflicting Perspectives Answers

Read the excerpt from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard.ROS (flaring): I haven’t forgotten—how I used to remember my own name—and yours, oh yes! There were answers everywhere you looked. There was no question about it—people knew who I was and if they didn’t they asked and I told them. . . .[ROS] I don’t care one way or another, so why don’t you make up your mind.GUIL We can’t afford anything quite so arbitrary. Nor did we come all this way for a christening. All that—preceded us. But we are comparatively fortunate; we might have been left to sift the whole field of human nomenclature, like two blind men looting a bazaar for their own portraits. . . . At least we are presented with alternatives.ROS Well as from now—GUIL —But not choice.ROS You made me look ridiculous in there.

Read the excerpt from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard.GUIL Exactly, it’s a matter of asking the right questions and giving away as little as we can. It’s a game.ROS And then we can go?GUIL And receive such thanks as fits a king’s remembrance.ROS I like the sound of that. What do you think he means by remembrance?

How can characters’ perspectives be revealed in a play?

Read the excerpt from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard.GERTRUDE Good (fractional suspense) gentlemen . . . They both bow.He hath much talked of you,And sure I am, two men there is not livingTo whom he more adheres. If it will please youTo show us so much gentry and goodwillAs to expand your time with us awhileFor the supply and profit of our hope,Your visitation shall receive such thanksAs fits a king’s remembrance. . . .[GERTRUDE] And I beseech you instantly to visitMy too much changed son. Go, some of you,And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is.

Read the excerpt from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard.GUIL (musing) The law of probability, it has been oddly asserted, is something to do with the proposition that if six monkeys (he has surprised himself) . . . if six monkeys were . . .ROS Game?GUIL Were they?ROS Are you?GUIL (understanding) Game. (Flips a coin.) The law of averages, if I have got this right, means that if six monkeys were thrown up in the air for long enough they would land on their tails about as often as they would land on their—ROS Heads. (He picks up the coin.)GUIL Which even at first glance does not strike one as a particularly rewarding speculation, in either sense, even without the monkeys. I mean you wouldn’t bet on it. I mean I would, but you wouldn’t. . . .ROS Heads. . . .. . . (He looks up at Guil—embarrassed laugh.) Getting a bit of a bore, isn’t it?

Read the excerpt from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard.[CLAUDIUS] The need we have to use you did provokeOur hasty sending. . . .Something have you heardOf Hamlet’s transformation, so call it,Sith nor th’exterior nor the inward manResembles that it was. What it should be,More than his father’s death, that thus hath put him,So much from th’understanding of himself,I cannot dream of. I entreat you bothThat, being of so young days brought up with himAnd sith so neighboured to his youth and haviourThat you vouchsafe your rest here in our courtSome little time, so by your companiesTo draw him on to pleasures, and to gatherSo much as from occasion you may glean,Whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus,That opened lies within our remedy.

Read the excerpt from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard.ROS Well I can tell you I’m sick to death of it. I don’t care one way or another, so why don’t you make up your mind.GUIL We can’t afford anything quite so arbitrary. Nor did we come all this way for a christening. All that—preceded us. But we are comparatively fortunate; we might have been left to sift the whole field of human nomenclature, like two blind men looting a bazaar for their own portraits. . . . At least we are presented with alternatives.ROS Well as from now—GUIL —But not choice.ROS You made me look ridiculous in there.GUIL I looked just as ridiculous as you did.ROS (an anguished cry) Consistency is all I ask!GUIL (low, wry rhetoric) Give us this day our daily mask.ROS (a dying fall) I want to go home. (Moves.) Which way did we come in? I’ve lost my sense of direction.GUIL The only beginning is birth and the only end is death—if you can’t count on that, what can you count on?

Read the excerpts from Hamlet by William Shakespeare and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard.Excerpt 1HAMLET. Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you: and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, come, deal justly with me: come, come; nay, speak.GUIL. What should we say, my lord?HAMLET. Why anything, but to the purpose. You were sent for; and there is a kind of confession in your looks which your modesties have not craft enough to colour: I know the good king and queen have sent for you.ROS. To what end, my lord? HAMLET. That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with me, whether you were sent for or no!ROS. [Aside to GUILDENSTERN.] What say you?HAMLET. [Aside.] Nay, then, I have an eye of you. If you love me, hold not off.GUIL. My lord, we were sent for.Excerpt 2GUIL Draw him on to pleasures—glean what afflicts him.ROS Something more than his father’s death—GUIL He’s always talking about us—there aren’t two people living whom he dotes on more than us.ROS We cheer him up—find out what’s the matter—GUIL Exactly, it’s a matter of asking the right questions and giving away as little as we can. It’s a game.

Read the excerpt from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard.GUIL (more intensely) We have been spinning coins together since—(He releases him almost as violently.) This is not the first time we have spun coins!ROS Oh no—We’ve been spinning coins for as long as I remember.GUIL How long is that?ROS I forget. Mind you—eighty-five times!GUIL Yes?ROS It’ll take some beating, I imagine.GUIL Is that what you imagine? Is that it? No fear?ROS Fear?GUIL (in fury—flings a coin on the ground) Fear! The crack that might flood your brain with light!

Read the excerpt from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard. POLONIUS The ambassadors from Norway, my good lord, are joyfully returned.CLAUDIUS Thou still hast been the father of good news.POLONIUS Have I, my lord? Assure you, my good liege,I hold my duty as I hold my soul,Both to my God and to my gracious King;And I do think, or else this brain of mineHunts not the trail of policy so sureAs it hath used to do, that I have foundThe very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy.

How can conflicting perspectives affect a drama?

Read the excerpt from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard.ROS (dumbly) Eighty-five in a row. Tails?/p>GUIL Yes! What would you think?ROS (doubtfully) Well. . . . (Jocularly.) Well, I’d have a good look at your coins for a start!GUIL (retiring) I’m relieved. At least we can still count on self-interest as a predictable factor. . . . I suppose it’s the last to go. Your capacity for trust made me wonder if perhaps . . . you, alone . . . (He turns on him suddenly, reaches out a hand.) Touch. Ros clasps his hand. Guil pulls him up to him.GUIL (more intensely) We have been spinning coins together since—(He releases him almost as violently.) This is not the first time we have spun coins!

Read the excerpt from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard.ROS I’m afraid—GUIL So am I.ROS I’m afraid it isn’t your day.GUIL I’m afraid it is. Small pause.ROS Eighty-nine.GUIL It must be indicative of something, besides the redistribution of wealth. (He muses.) List of possible explanations. One: I’m willing it. Inside where nothing shows, I am the essence of a man spinning double-headed coins, and betting against himself in private atonement for an unremembered past. . . .[GUIL] Two: time has stopped dead, and the single experience of one coin being spun once has been repeated ninety times.

Read the excerpts from Hamlet by William Shakespeare and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard.Excerpt 1HAMLET. To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;No more; and, by a sleep to say we endThe heart-ache and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummationDevoutly to be wish’d.Excerpt 2HAMLET comes down to footlights and regards the audience. The others watch but don’t speak. Hamlet clears his throat noisily and spits into the audience. A split second later he claps his hand to his eye and wipes himself. He goes back upstage.ROS A compulsion towards philosophical introspection is his chief characteristic, if I may put it like that. It does not mean he is mad. It does not mean he isn’t. Very often, it does not mean anything at all. Which may or may not be a kind of madness.