When Hamlet notices Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he greets them warmly but can't tell them apart. Just as Guildenstern decides they're "marked," Hamlet walks on taunting Polonius. The sight of Hamlet prompts them to practice acting in character, but they muddle their names. Perplexed by what action to take, they stay passive.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern agree to do so, then, alone on stage, lament the absurd incomprehensibility of their situation. Then Claudius and Gertrude enter, welcoming Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and explaining they've been sent for to uncover the cause of Hamlet's recent transformation. Rosencrantz extracts a coin from under the Player's foot, sees it fell on tails, and, suddenly, the lighting shifts the scene to Elsinore Castle.Ī disheveled Hamlet and Ophelia run on stage for a brief, mute appearance. The Player accepts and loses two futile bets to Guildenstern and agrees to pay with a play. Guildenstern is appalled but the Player maintains that people only go to the theater for crude entertainment full of "blood, love, and rhetoric" (and mostly blood). The Tragedians march onstage lead by the Player, who sees Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as a potential audience and tries to entice them into buying a performance with the chance to sodomize the lowliest tragedian, Alfred. They realize they can't remember a past before tossing coins and have only vague recollection of being called by royal summons. Wearing Elizabethan costumes on a blank stage, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are tossing coins, all of which land 'heads.' Rosencrantz is unperturbed by the improbable odds but Guildenstern grows disturbed, demanding Rosencrantz think through potential meanings of the unlikely situation.
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