He Murdered Us

When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern play questions with Hamlet in Tom Stoppard’s inversion of Hamlet , Rosencrantz says that the score was “Twenty-seven-three.” “He murdered us,” he adds, and then says it again for good measure.

As Marjorie Garber notes in her  Shakespeare and Modern Culture , Stoppard wants us to remember the original play, twice.  ”Twenty-seven-three” is precisely the score in the question game in Shakespeare’s play (Act 2, scene 2, when R&G first show up).  Stoppard counted.

Plus, that “He murdered us” plays a dual role.  Hamlet trounces them in questions, but then he also murdered them.  The past tense is important for Stoppard’s play, obsessed as it is with stage death.  Rosencrantz doesn’t say that Hamlet will murder, but that he has murdered.  So he has, in the just previous performance of Hamlet , and in the one before that, and in the one before that, back to the first performance.