Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: Act 1 Summary & Analysis

The curtain rises on an entirely non-descript set where Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in full Elizabethan costume, have been betting on coin after coin toss for a long time. The stage directions set the scene: every time the coin falls on "heads," Rosencrantz keeps it. Every coin has been falling on "heads," so Rosencrantz holds a bag nearly full of coins while Guildenstern holds one nearly empty. Rosencrantz is unsurprised by the improbable run of "heads," though he appears a bit sheepish to be depriving Guildenstern of all his coins. Guildenstern "is not worried about the money, but he is worried by the implications" of the run of heads. Still, he remains calm.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern continue to toss coins, which continue to fall on "heads" (it's now been 85 times and counting). They admit that they have been tossing coins for as long as they can remember. Rosencrantz is just happy to be winning all the coins, but Guildenstern turns furious, pushing Rosencrantz to question the situation, to fear it. The run of "heads" goes on and Guildenstern returns to a mild, contemplative mood. He muses on what the run might indicate: 1. that he himself is secretly willing it by betting against himself to atone for a forgotten past; 2. that "time has stopped dead" and the run is just one toss repeated; 3. that there has been some divine intervention; 4. that it really is just chance. Rosencrantz admits he can't remember anything before they started tossing coins. Guildenstern thinks hard and remembers a messenger who sent for them.

To Rosencrantz's uncomprehending surprise, Guildenstern goes off on a long rant trying to make rational sense of their situation. Rosencrantz chimes in with "another curious scientific phenomena" that fingernails and beards keep growing after death, bewildering Guildenstern. "But you're not dead," Guildenstern points out. He is determined to focus on how they got here. Together they piece together a patchy memory of a foreign man on horseback waking them by shouting their names at dawn and ordering them by "urgent…royal summons." Yet neither can remember what they were summoned to do.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hear music and the Tragedians march in, carrying their instruments and lead by the Player, who halts his troupe assuming that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are an audience for them. "Don't move!" He tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern mix up their names introducing themselves. The player rattles off the Tragedians' repertoire (they'll perform anything from melodrama to comedy to poetic set pieces to realism), but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern balk at the price and the Player sets off with the troupe.

Guildenstern stops them and asks where they're going and how they came this way. The Player is noncommittal, attributing the meeting to "chance" "or fate" and saying they're going to perform for the court or the tavern that night or the next, or not. Guildenstern mentions he might use his "influence" at court: "I have influence yet," Guildenstern says. "Yet what?" asks the Player, and Guildenstern shakes him violently, insisting he has influence.

When Guildenstern asks about the potential of "getting caught up in the action," the Player happily sends the tragedian Alfred to get dressed as a woman for an "uncut performance of The Rape of the Sabine Women" in which the audience can participate. Guildenstern, trembling and enraged, slaps the Player and professes disgust at the obscenity and lowness. The Player bows sadly and says Guildenstern should have found them in "better times" when they were "purists." He and the Tragedians begin to leave.

Rosencrantz stops them and asks what the Tragedians do. The Player responds that they "do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else." He spits on Rosencrantz's offer to buy a performance with a single coin. He accepts Guildenstern's offer to bet on coin tosses, which all fall on "heads." He accepts Guildenstern's offer to bet that the year of Guildenstern's birth doubled is an odd number and, of course, loses. He offers Alfred up as payment. Guildenstern asks a pathetic, forlorn Alfred what he has left to lose. "Nothing," Alfred replies. Guildenstern chastises his sniffling: "this is no way to fill the theatres of Europe."

In order to make the Player pay his bet with a play, Guildenstern asks him about what play the Tragedians might perform. The Player is puzzled by the idea of "plays" and Guildenstern's suggestion of performing a Greek classic, responding that they really just do "blood, love, and rhetoric" or a combination of two, as long as one of the two is blood. "Blood is compulsory." "Is that what people want," Guildenstern asks. "It's what we do," the Player replies. The Tragedians' begin readying for the play. The Player explains that he will not change into costume or make an entrance onstage since he is always in character and always "on." He remains pointedly immobile for a long time until Rosencrantz prods him to lift his foot, revealing Guildenstern's coin beneath it. The Player exits.

Rosencrantz exclaims that the coin had fallen on tails and throws the coin at Guildenstern, who catches it. The lights suddenly change the stage from exterior to interior. An alarmed Ophelia runs on stage followed by a piteously disheveled Hamlet. They're mute. He scrutinizes her face, then sighs. They exit. Claudius and Gertrude enter and Claudius address Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern" and he, then Gertrude, speak their original lines from Hamlet explaining that they sent for the two to entreat them, Hamlet's dear friends, to find out what has caused Hamlet's recent transformation of character. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern respond with their original lines from Hamlet agreeing to do so. As they're leaving, they bump into Polonius who informs Claudius that the ambassadors from Norway have returned and then exits, rambling mid-speech. Claudius and Gertrude exit too.

Rosencrantz is upset and Guildenstern tries to comfort him, both of them jumbling their words: "it's all stopping to a death, it's boding to a depth, stepping to a head, it's all heading to a dead stop," Rosencrantz exclaims, longing for the time in which there were no questions, when he remembered his name, and answers abounded. "There were always questions," Guildenstern retorts, "To exchange one set for another is no great matter." He reflects that one spends all of life living "so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye" so that when one looks at it head-on, it's "like being ambushed by a grotesque." Rosencrantz remains frustrated and disoriented. Guildenstern tells him that the only beginning is birth and the only end death and that he should relax: "There's a logic at work" and that "to be taken in hand and led" is "a prize, an extra slice of childhood."

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern review Claudius' request, become increasingly perplexed about whether and how to take action, but stay in place. "I feel like a spectator" Rosencrantz remarks. "What a fine persecution," Guildenstern notes, "to be kept intrigued without ever being enlightened." Rosencrantz suggests they "play at questions," which, it becomes clear, means firing questions back and forth. Whenever someone makes a statement, the other person gets a point. Rhetoricals and repetitions also affect the tally. Guildenstern shouts out the score and is winning. "Are you deaf?" Guildenstern asks him. "Am I dead?" Rosencrantz replies. They continue and Rosencrantz starts shouting the score, transferring Guildenstern's points to himself and Guildenstern shakes him violently asking him who he thinks he is. Rosencrantz treats this like a question in the game. They ask each other if the game matters.

Hamlet crosses the stage reading and exits. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern practice being in character by addressing each other by name, but they mix up their names. Then Guildenstern tries to pretend to be Hamlet so Rosencrantz can question him, but this brings about more confusion as Rosencrantz at first can't figure out who's who. Then, with Guildenstern speaking as Hamlet, the two exchange in a back-and-forth that lays out the parameters of Hamlet's situation: his father the king has died; his uncle has married his widowed mother and become the new king "offending both legal and natural practice." Rosencrantz continues to muddle up his, Guildenstern's, and Hamlet's identities.

Guildenstern tells Rosencrantz to go see if Hamlet's there. Rosencrantz peeks offstage where he reports seeing Hamlet talking. He wonders if they should go. "Why?" Guildenstern asks, "We're marked now." Hamlet and Polonius enter upstage mid-conversation. Hamlet is walking backward and telling Polonius that he could be as old as Hamlet if he could go backward. Polonius, aside, remarks that that may be madness but "there is a method in it." When he notices Rosencrantz, he points Hamlet out to him. Guildenstern and Rosencrantz call out to Hamlet who comes downstage greeting them warmly, though he first mixes up their names. They all laugh and Hamlet asks how they are. The lights black out.