Le Communard Posted March 28, 2010 Share Posted March 28, 2010 (edited) GUILDENSTERN and ROSENCRANZ: The People of SF The PLAYER: The good Le Communard GUIL: So you've caught up. PLAYER (tops): Not yet! (Bitterly.) You left us. GUIL: Ah! I'd forgotten - you performed a dramatic spectacle by the wayside - a thing much thought of in the New Testament. How did yours compare as an impromptu? PLAYER: Badly - neither witnessed nor reported. GUIL: Yes, I'm sorry we had to miss it. I hope you didn't leave anything out - I'd be furious to think I didn't miss all of it. (The PLAYER, progressively aggrieved, now burst out.) PLAYER: We can't look each other in the face! (Pause, more in control.) You don't understand the humiliation of it - to be tricked out of a single assumption, which makes our existence viable - that somebody is watching... The plot was two corpses gone before we caught sight of ourselves, stripped naked in the middle of nowhere and pouring ourselves down a bottomless well. ROS: Is that thirty eight? PLAYER (lost): There we are - demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow protestations of faith hurled after empty promises of vengeance - and every gesture, every pose, vanishing into the thin unpopulated air. We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened. (He rounds on them.) Don't you see?! We're actors - we're the opposite of people! (They recoil nonplussed, his voice calms.) Think, in your head, now, think of the most... private... secret... intimate... thing you have ever done secure in the knowledge of its privacy... (He gives them - and the audience - a good pause. ROS takes a shifty look.) Are you thinking of it? (He strikes with his voice and his head.) Well, I saw you do it! (ROS leaps up, dissembling madly.) ROS: You never! It's a lie! (He catches himself with a giggle in a vacuum and sits down again.) PLAYER: We're actors... We pledged our identities, secure in the conventions of our trade; that someone would be watching. And than, gradually, no one was. We were caught, high and dry. It was not until the murder's long soliloquy that we were able to look around; frozen we were in the profil, our eyes searched you out, first confidently, then hesitantly, then desperately as each patch of turf, each log, each exposed corned in every direction proved uninhabited, and all the while the murderous King addressed the horizon with his dreary interminable guilt... Our heads began to move, wary as lizards, the corpse of unsullied Rosalinda peeped through his fingers, and the King faltered. Even then, habit and a stubborn trust that our audience spied upon us from behind the nearest bush, forced our bodies to blunder on long after they had emptied of meaning, until like runaway carts they dragged to a halt. No one came forward. No one shouted at us. The silence was unbreakable, it imposed itself upon us; it was obscene. We took off our crowns and swords and cloth of gold and moved silent on the road to Elsinore. ;) Edited March 28, 2010 by Le Communard Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Le Communard Posted March 28, 2010 Author Share Posted March 28, 2010 (edited) Hah: and the irony is complete! But as amusing as it is to me to spit in the wind, now with my dearth of boon companions, I've decided lately its time for me to finds a new calling. Ta-ta, then, gentelmen--there's no fortune to be made in wits and words here. Perhaps I'll stop back for a spot of tea... but perhaps not. No, I've cracked one too many good ones to an empty house--my days prowling FFTF are over. Live long and prosper. Edited March 28, 2010 by Le Communard Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zanarkin Posted March 28, 2010 Share Posted March 28, 2010 (edited) and none is around to hear it, does it still make a sound? Edited March 28, 2010 by Mordecai Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Le Communard Posted March 28, 2010 Author Share Posted March 28, 2010 and none is around to hear it, does it still make a sound? Well, I guess you get credit for trying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Life Posted March 29, 2010 Share Posted March 29, 2010 I can't help but feel that Hamlet might feel a bit left out... Oh well, just one more thing for that kid to mope about. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Le Communard Posted March 29, 2010 Author Share Posted March 29, 2010 I can't help but feel that Hamlet might feel a bit left out... Oh well, just one more thing for that kid to mope about. Pssh, that man can nay tell a hawk from a handsaw. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Original Alear Posted March 29, 2010 Share Posted March 29, 2010 There was actually a production of Guildencrantz and Rosenstern (probably Are Dead but I'm not sure) at my college a year or two ago. I was thinking about going, but a good friend of mine (who was in the play) said it was pretty terrible and I probably wouldn't enjoy it, so I didn't. Also have never read the play. I suspect if I had some prior experience with it I might enjoy this topic more. It also might help to have some knowledge as to Le Communard's relationship to the SF community as a whole, something that seems to be implied as important by the division between "the people of SF" as one actor and you, Le Communard, an individual (supposedly), as another actor. The location of the play outside the forest is a rather interesting choice, implying we would never hear the tree fall as we aren't in it, regardless of whether the sound is made. Don't you see?! We're actors - we're the opposite of people! Huh. Shakespeare already had a tendency to have his characters comment on their role as actors (or Shakespeare's role as an actor). Even then, habit and a stubborn trust that our audience spied upon us from behind the nearest bush, forced our bodies to blunder on long after they had emptied of meaning, until like runaway carts they dragged to a halt. No one came forward. No one shouted at us. Is it habitual for the audience of the play to be shouting greetings at the actors by this point in the play? It seems like they're asking for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Le Communard Posted March 29, 2010 Author Share Posted March 29, 2010 There was actually a production of Guildencrantz and Rosenstern (probably Are Dead but I'm not sure) at my college a year or two ago. I was thinking about going, but a good friend of mine (who was in the play) said it was pretty terrible and I probably wouldn't enjoy it, so I didn't. Also have never read the play. I suspect if I had some prior experience with it I might enjoy this topic more. It also might help to have some knowledge as to Le Communard's relationship to the SF community as a whole, something that seems to be implied as important by the division between "the people of SF" as one actor and you, Le Communard, an individual (supposedly), as another actor. The location of the play outside the forest is a rather interesting choice, implying we would never hear the tree fall as we aren't in it, regardless of whether the sound is made. Huh. Shakespeare already had a tendency to have his characters comment on their role as actors (or Shakespeare's role as an actor). Is it habitual for the audience of the play to be shouting greetings at the actors by this point in the play? It seems like they're asking for it. Hah--you allmost had me for a second with that one! I suggest if you're interested in determining the deeper meaning of the passage you perhaps study the contextual material provided in the Critical Edition: Post 2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Original Alear Posted March 29, 2010 Share Posted March 29, 2010 Hah--you allmost had me for a second with that one! I suggest if you're interested in determining the deeper meaning of the passage you perhaps study the contextual material provided in the Critical Edition: Post 2. Had you with which one? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Le Communard Posted March 29, 2010 Author Share Posted March 29, 2010 Had you with which one? You mean you weren't being ironic? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Original Alear Posted March 29, 2010 Share Posted March 29, 2010 (edited) I wasn't being ironic in the last two lines of text. Well, I think that the last sentence about the (infrequent but present) tendency to comment on acting w/in Shakespeare's plays is talking a kind of irony in shakespeare, but the statement itself isn't (wasn't meant to be) ironic. The first paragraph was a true story and really was meant as an actual explanation of why I feel I don't fully understand the topic. For instance, it's the community (SF) that expresses anxiety over not being listened to, rather than the individual poster who seems to be expressing an interest in leaving FftF. I feel like some of the things I expect from one party are expressed by the other. Edited March 29, 2010 by SeverIan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zanarkin Posted March 30, 2010 Share Posted March 30, 2010 (edited) Well, I guess you get credit for trying. It was a question my 8th grade science teacher gave us when she started teaching the topic of sound. The title just reminded me of it :P Edited March 30, 2010 by Mordecai Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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