DISPATCHES PERSPECTIVE
Trigger Happy
Shoot first, ask questions later
STEVEN POOLE
At the end of Tom Stoppard’s 1990 film of his own 1966 play, Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, the heroes are standing with nooses around their necks. “That’s it then, is it?” asks Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman), with puzzled resignation. “Done nothing wrong. Didn’t harm anyone, did we?” Indeed they didn’t. “There must have been a moment at the beginning when we could have said no. Somehow we missed it,” muses his mate Guildenstern (Tim Roth). “Well, we’ll know better next time,” he adds. “Till then!” cries the mysterious Player – and we cut to the last scene of Hamlet, with the announcement that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the prince’s blameless childhood friends, are, inevitably, dead. Again.