---
title: '<cite class="play">Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead</cite>'
author: Ben
type: quotes
date: 2020-07-11T15:32:14+00:00
url: /quotes/rosencrantz-and-guildenstern-are-dead/
categories:
  - Uncategorised

---
<blockquote class="no-first-blockquote">
  <p>
    You don&#8217;t understand the humiliation of it&mdash;to be tricked out of the single assumption which makes our existence viable&mdash;that somebody is <em>watching</em>&#8230;
  </p><footer>Player</footer>
</blockquote>

<blockquote class="script">
  <p class="script-line__character">
    Guil
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__text">
    The truth is, we value your company, for want of any other. We have been left so much to our own devices&mdash;after a while one welcomes the uncertainty of being left to other people&#8217;s.
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__character">
    Player
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__text">
    Uncertainty is the normal state. You&#8217;re nobody special.
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__character">
    Guil
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__text">
    But for God&#8217;s sake what are we supposed to <em>do</em>!
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__character">
    Player
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__text">
    Relax. Respond. That&#8217;s what people do. You can&#8217;t go through life questioning your situation at every turn.
  </p>
</blockquote>

> [Death is] just a man failing to reappear, that&#8217;s all&mdash;now you see him, now you don&#8217;t that&#8217;s the only thing that&#8217;s real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back&mdash;an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death.<footer>Guildenstern</footer> 

<blockquote class="script">
  <p class="script-line__character">
    Ros
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__text">
    We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat?
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__character">
    Guil
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__text">
    No, no, no&#8230;Death is&#8230;not. Death isn&#8217;t. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can&#8217;t not-be on a boat.
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__character">
    Ros
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__text">
    I&#8217;ve frequently not been on boats.
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__character">
    Guil
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__text">
    No, no, no&mdash;what you&#8217;ve been is not on boats.
  </p>
</blockquote>

<blockquote class="script">
  <p class="script-line__character">
    Ros
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__text">
    But what&#8217;s the point?
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__character">
    Guil
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__text">
    Don&#8217;t apply logic.
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__character">
    Ros
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__text">
    He&#8217;s done nothing to us.
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__character">
    Guil
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__text">
    Or justice.
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__character">
    Ros
  </p>
  
  <p class="script-line__text">
    It&#8217;s awful.
  </p>
</blockquote>

> (_Quietly_) Where we went wrong was getting on a boat. We can move, of course, change direction, rattle about, but our movement is contained within a larger one that carries us along as inexorably as the wind and current&#8230;<footer>Guildenstern</footer>