HAMLET: Nymph, In Thy Orisons Be All My Sins Remembered.

HAMLET: Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered.

OPHELIA: Good my lord, how does your honour for this many a day?

HAMLET: I humbly thank you; well, well, well.

OPHELIA: My lord, I have remembrances of yours, that I have longed long to re-deliver; I pray you, now receive them.

HAMLET: No, not I; I never gave you aught.

OPHELIA: My honoured lord, you know right well you did…

(They disappear talking into the wing.)

ROS: It’s like living in a public park!

GUIL: Very impressive. Yes, I thought your direct informal approach was going to stop this thing dead in its tracks there. If I might make a suggestion – shut up and sit down. Stop being perverse.

ROS (near tears): I’m not going to stand for it!

(A FEMALE FIGURE, ostensibly the QUEEN, enters. ROS marches up behind her, puts his hands over her eyes and says with a desperate frivolity.)

ROS: Guess who?!

PLAYER (having appeared in a downstage corner): Alfred!

(ROS lets go, spins around. He had been holding ALFRED, in his robe and blonde wig. PLAYER is in the downstage corner still. ROS comes down to that exit. The PLAYER does not budge. He and ROS stand toe to toe.)

ROS: Excuse me.

Love them. With my entire heart.

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, old time is still a-flying; and this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying.”

— Robert Herrick, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

“Tomorrow, in my experience, is usually the same day.”

— Tom Stoppard, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

“To be taken in hand and led, like being a child again, even without the innocence, a child — it’s like being given a prize, an extra slice of childhood when you least expect it, as a prize for being good, or a compensation for never having had one...”

— Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead