One of Stoppard's perennially popular works, although it's an early one. It was premiered at the
Edinburgh Fringe on 24 August 1966, with a reduced cast, including
David Marks as Ros and
Clive Cable as Guil. The first professional performance was at the
Old Vic on 11 April 1967, using the current text, with
Edward Petherbridge as Guil and
John Stride as Ros... or possibly, of course, vice versa.
A remark that haunts Stoppard, so I shouldn't repeat it here, is that someone asked him what it was about, and he answered, "It's about to make me rich."
As it opens, Ros and Guil are playing a simple game of chance. Guil takes a coin from his dwindling stock, tosses it, it comes up heads, and Ros wins it. They had played this game many times before, but ninety heads in a row is a new record, and the run started just when the messenger summoned them to the court. Guil isn't bothered by the loss of money, but is aware that something definitely odd is going on.
Another game they play to pass the time when they're not in the play of Hamlet is questions.
GUIL: What good would that do?
ROS: Practice.
GUIL: Statement! One--love.
ROS: Cheating!
GUIL: How?
ROS: I hadn't started yet.
GUIL: Statement. Two--love.
ROS: Are you counting that?
GUIL: What?
ROS: Are you counting that?
GUIL: Foul! No repetitions. Three--love. First game to...
And so on. The
players are a small
troupe, those who will later be asked by
Hamlet to perform in front of the king to reveal his guilt. But they have fallen on hard times,
tastes being what they are. They're of the
blood,
love, and
rhetoric school, and can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, blood and rhetoric without the love, or all three, but the blood is obligatory. For their love scenes all they have is a much put-upon boy called
Alfred, and private showings are available. Of whatever sort of love scene you might like to watch. Privately. Costs extra to join in. Times being what they are.
There are plenty of nice quotable lines, like "There is an art to the building up of suspense" at the beginning; and towards the end, "The sun's going down. Or the earth's coming up, as the fashionable theory has it".