PLAYER: Right! We haven't got much time.

GUIL: What are you doing?

PLAYER: Dress rehearsal. Now if you two wouldn't mind just moving back… there… good… (TO TRAGEDIANS) Everyone ready? And for goodness' sake, remember what we're doing. (TO ROS and GUIL :) We always use the same costumes more or less, and they forget what they are supposed to be in you see… Stop picking your nose, Alfred. When Queens have to they do it by a cerebral process passed down in the blood… Good. Silence! Off we go!

PLAYER-KING: Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart

PLAYER jumps up angrily.

PLAYER: No, no, no! Dumbshow first, your confounded majesty! (To ROS and GUIL :) They're a bit out of practice, but they always pick up wonderfully for the deaths-it brings out the poetry in them.

GUIL: How nice.

PLAYER: There's nothing more unconvincing than an unconvincing death.

GUIL: I'm sure.

PLAYER claps his hands.

PLAYER: Act One-moves now.

The mime. Soft music from a recorder. PLAYER - KING and PLAYER - QUEEN embrace. She kneels and makes a show protestation to him. He takes her up, declining his head upon her neck. He lies down. She, seeing him asleep, leaves him.

GUIL: What is the Dumbshow for?

PLAYER: Well, it's a device, really-it makes the action that follows more or less comprehensible; you understand, are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.

The mime (continued) –enter another. He takes off the SLEEPER's crown, kisses it. He has brought in a small bottle of liquid. He pours the poison in the SLEEPER's ear, and lei him. The SLEEPER convulses heroically, dying.

ROS: Who was that?

PLAYER: The King's brother and uncle to the Prince.

GUIL: Not exactly fraternal

PLAYER: Not exactly avuncular, as time goes on.

The QUEEN returns, makes passionate action, finding the KING dead. The POISONER comes in again, attended by others (the two in cloaks) . The POISONER seems to console with her. The dead body is carried away. The POISONER woos the QUEEN with gifts. She seems harsh awhile but in the end accepts his love. End of mime, at which point, the wait of a woman in torment and OPHELIA appears, wailing, closely followed by HAMLET in a hysterical state, shouting at her, circling her, both misstate.

HAMLET: Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad! She falls on her knees weeping. I say we will have no more marriage! (His voice drops to include the TRAGEDIANS , who have frozen.) Those that are married already (he leans close to the PLAYER - QUEEN and POISONER , speaking with quiet edge) all but one shall live. (He smiles briefly at them without mirth, and starts to back out, his parting shot rising again.) The rest shall keep as they are. (As he leaves, OPHELIA tottering upstage, he speaks into her ear a quick clipped sentence.) To a nunnery, go.

He goes out. OPHELIA falls on to her knees upstage, her sobs barely audible. A slight silence.

PLAYER-KING: Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart

CLAUDIUS enters with POLONIUS and goes over to OPHELIA and lifts her to her feet. The TRAGEDIANS jump back with heads inclined.

CLAUDIUS: Love? His affections do not that way tend, Or what he spake, though it lacked form a little, Was not like madness. There's something In his soul o'er which his melancholy sits on Brood, and I do doubt the hatch and the Disclose will be some danger; which for to Prevent I have in quick determination thus set It down: he shall with speed to England.

Which carries the three of them- CLAUDIUS , POLONIUS , OPHELIA -out of sight. The PLAYER moves, clapping his hands for attention.

PLAYER: Gentlemen! (They look at him.) It doesn't seem to be coming. We are not getting it at all. (To GUIL :) What did think?

GUIL: What was I supposed to think?

PLAYER (To TRAGEDIANS) : You're not getting across!

ROS had gone halfway up to OPHELIA ; he returns.

ROS: That didn't look like love to me.

GUIL: Starting from scratch again…

PLAYER (to TRAGEDIANS) : It was a mess.

ROS (to GUIL) : It going to be chaos on the night

GUIL: Keep back-we're spectators.

PLAYER: Act Two! Positions!

GUIL: Wasn't that the end?

PLAYER: Do you call that an ending?-with practically everyone on his feet? My goodness no– over your dead body.

GUIL: How am I supposed to take that?

PLAYER: Lying down. (He laughs briefly and in a second has never laughed in his life.) There's a design at work in all art surely you know that? Events must play themselves out aesthetic, moral and logical conclusion.

GUIL: And what' that, in this case?

PLAYER: It never varies-we aim at the point where everyone who is marked for death dies.

GUIL: Marked?

PLAYER: Between "just desserts' and "tragic irony" we are given quite a lot of scope for our particular talent.  Generally speaking, things have gone about as far as they can possibly go when things have got about as bad as they reasonably get. (He switches on a smile.)

GUIL: Who decides?

PLAYER (switching off his smile) : Decides? It is written.

He turns away. GUILgrabs him and spins him back violently.

(Unflustered.) Now if you're going to be subtle, we'll miss each other in the dark. I'm referring to oral tradition. So to speak.

GUILreleases him.

We're tragedians, you see. We follow directions-there is no choice involved. The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means. (Calling.) Positions!

The TRAGEDIANS have taken up positions for the continuation Of the mime: which in this case means a love scene, sexual and passionate, between the QUEEN and the POISONER - KING .

PLAYER: Go!

The lovers begin. The PLAYER contributes a breathless commentary for ROS and GUIL.

Having murdered his brother and wooed the widow-the poisoner mounts the throne! Here we see him and his queen give rein to their unbridled passion! She little knowing that the man she holds in her arms-!

ROS: Oh, I say-here-really! You can't do that!

PLAYER: Why not?

ROS: Well, really-I mean, people want to be entertained-they don't come expecting sordid and gratuitous filth.

PLAYER: You're wrong-they do! Murder, seduction and incest –what do you want-jokes?

ROS: I want a good story, with a beginning, middle and end.

PLAYER (to GUIL) : And you?

GUIL: I'd prefer art to mirror life, if it's all the same to you.

PLAYER: It's all the same to me, sir. (To the grappling LOVERS) All right, no need to indulge yourselves. (They get up. To GUIL :) I come on in a minute. Lucretius, nephew to the king! (Turns his attention to the TRAGEDIANS) Next!

They disport themselves to accommodate the next piece mime, which consists of the PLAYER himself exhibiting a excitable anguish (choreographed, stylized) leading to an impassioned scene with the QUEEN (cf. "The Closet Scene," Shakespeare Act III, scene iv) and a very stylized reconstruction of a POLONIUS figure being stabbed behind the arras (the murdered KING to stand in for POLONIUS ) while the PLAYER himself continues his breathless commentary for the benefit of ROS and GUIL .

PLAYER: Lucretius, nephew to the king… usurped by his uncle and shattered by his mother's incestuous marriage loses.. his reason… throwing the court into turmoil and disarray as he alternates between bitter melancholy and unrestricted lunacy… staggering from the suicidal (a pose) to the homicidal (here he kills " POLONIUS ") … he at last confronts his mother and in a scene of provocative ambiguity- (a somewhat oedipal embrace) begs her to repent and recant. (He springs up, still talking.) The King- (he pushes forward the POISONER - KING) tormented by guilt-haunted by fear –decides to despatch his nephew to England-and entrusts this undertaking to two smiling accomplices-friends– two spies