Dead Villains' Hereafter.

Preface: I wrote this a few years back, and am presently revising it for possible publication somewhere. I think it's pretty funny, but the jokes are pretty esoteric and are helped tremendously if one has a passing familiarity with Shakespeare, especially Hamlet. I hope that anyone who invests the time (it's pretty short) will enjoy reading it nearly as much as I did writing it.



Opening scene: Enter Claudius, Polonius, Gertrude, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. All sit on straw in the back of an open, horse-drawn cart, looking alternately confused, resentful, or despondent. The cart, with the shrouded figure of death at the helm, plods along slowly, evidenced by the recorded sound of hoofbeats against a road being played. The characters are to varying degree aware of what is going on: the action of Hamlet is concluded, and these dead villains are being removed to Tragic Villains’ Hell. All are bloodied and/or discolored respective to manner of death. All also have a peculiar narrative insight that might have been useful during their “lives,” but is merely irritating and frustrating in present state. There is a long, uncomfortable silence among them, no one wishing to be the first to speak.

GERTRUDE: ([Henceforth “GER”] sharply breaking the silence, to CLAUDIUS [henceforth CLAUD]): “Gertrude, do not drink.” That was the best you could do, Claudius? I, your loving wife of scandalous circumstances, toast Hamlet during what I believe to be a joyous and festive family reunion, in the process draining a half a goblet of the liquid plague you prepared for him, and “Gertrude, do not drink” is the brilliant advice you have to offer, thou incestuous, murd’rous, damned Dane?

CLAUD: (bitterly sarcastic) Oh, right then, take your son’s side now just because we’ve met our ends and he hasn’t. What a devoted and loyal wife and queen you turn out to be! But...that seems to be a recurring theme, now doesn’t it? A shame you didn't live through this. Perhaps you could have married the next member of my family!

GER: You regicidal, usurping twat! (Pause.) And what precisely are you talking about? He’s just as dead as the rest of us.

CLAUD: Then why exactly isn’t he here, your envenom’dness?

ROSENCRANTZ: (Hereafter “ROS,” still nervous around his royal companions.) Ahem, well, if you’d listened carefully at the orientation seminar before we’d climbed aboard, you might remember that Hamlet and Laertes were sent to Revengers’ Hell, a suburb of ours. It’s rumored to be quite nice, if a bit vengeful. (Pause.) Perhaps he’ll write.

(CLAUD glares at him.)

POLONIUS: (Hereafter “POL,” exclamatory, to apparently no one.) My daughter! My Daughter!

GUILDENSTERN: (Hereafter “GUIL,” awkwardly.) Ophelia, sir, has been sent to Christian Hell, the Lord having fix’d His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter, and all that.

POL: Woe!

ROS: (Cheerfully.) It might not be so bad for her, sir. The Church has abandoned much of the fire and brimstone rhetoric in recent years, preferring to depict Christian Hell as a place of unfulfilled longings and the like. (Pause.) Besides, I’m sure she and Othello will get on famously--form a tragic suicides support group, perhaps. (All but GUIL glare at him.) Sorry.

CLAUD: (Bitterly interjecting.) So let me see if I’ve got this all: Laertes, by benefit of noble motive, gets to join my nephew in some Valhallaesque place of glory and honor; Ophelia, though about as maiden as Queen Hapshetsut over here...

GER: Soft, your regal impotence.

CLAUD: (Ignoring.) ...gets to be pitied for eternity as the virgin martyr, and I’m stuck on an absurdly slow cart to nasty person’s perdition with a poisoned tart, a comically misguided old fool, and two indistinguishable, useless, and recently hanged courtiers who used to attend university with Hamlet. Have I got the gist?

ROS: Beheaded, my liege.

CLAUD: What?

ROS: Guildenstern and I were beheaded. Rather flattering, really, considering our modest station. We were only allowed to reattach our heads by benefit of a recent law enacted by the Damned Villains’ Union declaring eternal dismemberment or immolation to be cruel and not on.

GUIL: Lucky, weren’t we?

ROS: I’ll say. (To CLAUD.) You really were ignoring the orientation, weren’t you?

GER: (Indignant.) Well, s’wounds, he ignores his own wife drinking a cup of vintage Wrath of God, and you suppose he’s going to listen to some fop with a clipboard reading off the intricacies of the hereafter for two hours?

CLAUD: (Sternly.) Gertrude...

GER: I mean, really, he lets the recently vanquished Army of Norway saunter past his palace gate on their way to run an errand before overthrowing his kingdom, and you expect a “posthumous conduct and rules” chat to hold his attention? Be serious!

POL: My daughter!

(GUIL unexpectedly loses his temper, grabs POL by the shirt and begins to shake him.)
GUIL: (Shouting.) Will you not...shut...up? Enough about your daughter, for the love of God! She was a secondary character, almost to the extent which Rosencrantz and I were! She served to give potential narrative insight into Hamlet’s condition, and to give edge to the conflict between him and Laertes! No more! Dead for a ducat! Dead!

(ROS interrupts, tapping GUIL on the shoulder, causing him to release the terrified POL. He withdraws a brochure from his pocket, unfolds it and points out a certain section to GUIL, who reads it attentively before resuming his seat, slightly embarrassed.)

GUIL: (Sheepishly.) Sorry.


CLAUD: What?

GUIL: Seems I nodded off a touch myself during the “penalties” phase of the seminar.

CLAUD: And?

GUIL: Well it seems...

ROS: ...that due to ubiquitously infelicitous use of language during his life...

GUIL: ...that the Lord Polonious is only allowed to speak the words “my daughter...”

ROS: ...along with varied exclamations of woe such as “woe,”“o woe,” and “woe is me...”

GUL: ...for the rest of eternity under the “no tremendous loss” sublaw.

CLAUD: Ah, well then. That quiets one of us at least.

GER: Enough, murtherer and villain.

CLAUD: Aye, woman, a self-murtherer for wedding a lodestone of death such as thou art. Can’t hide our doddering old fool here behind a curtain without you shouting a contrived “help, ho” to get him discovered and unseem’d. A month after you fetch your son’s school chums to help us figure out what he’s about and–look!–what a lovely necklace of gore they get to wear into perpetuity! Every male who's had the dire misfortune to be alone with you in the last year is now stumbling somewhere about in the underworld wondering just where it all went askew. I begin to think my brother’s untimely death was inevitable. Sleep with a black widow long enough and some poison is simply bound to come your way.

GUIL: Excuse me...

GER: (Testy.) What do you want?

GUIL: (Gathering assertiveness.) You know, the partial correctness of the King here aside, I’ve been a bit curious as to what exactly we (motioning to ROS and himself) are doing here? I mean right, sure, (He extends a hand to stop ROS, who is again fumbling for the brochure) in a purely technical and dramatic sense, we were your co-conspirators. But it isn’t as if we did anything all that wrong, now is it? We show up at you summons like a couple of good, obsequious courtiers in search of preferment--“a King’s remembrance,” if I recall–have a couple of utterly baffling conversations with your oh-so-much-more-clever-than-us melancholy Prince, get on a boat with him and a mysterious letter, and, next thing you know, I feel my liberated head bouncing about on some dirty English floor. As if we knew that your insecure yet homicidal spouse here had ordered the death of Prince Hamlet! He didn’t have to redirect his aggression toward us! We were, at best, accidental spies! “Yeah, yeah, that’s tragedy” you say. Well, where does fair enter into this equation, I’d bloody well like to know?

(Before anyone can respond, the stage lights turn up slightly and the sound of the horse’s hoofbeats slows.)

POL: O, I am slain!

Exeunt.

Scene 2: The cart is now at rest in a dismal room that appears to be a cross between a ruined gothic cathedral and a London Jobcentre. The dead villains have disembarked and now stand in a lengthy queue before a large desk except GER, who stands apart. At the desk sits a clerk whose garb is a mix of Venetian soldier and Britrail ticket inspector. He has a gaping chest wound which bleeds assiduously onto the desk and floor, but seems not to notice. He has silent conversations with each successive person in line, who then depart offstage until CLAUD comes to the fore.

GER:(Aside.) Although my ruinous counsel hath found ruin,
These hellish mercies greet me none too soon.
Libid’nous, friv’lous, cruel, incestuous I,
Wish only that my Hamlets did not die.
Engaged aboard a dam’ned cart of fools,
I, woodcock, am ensnared by dramatic rules.
And tho’ God hide redemptive light from me,
I would but pray for better company. (Exit.)

CLERK: Right, who’s first?

CLAUD: Nay, not first. Second, in birth, and hell, and all, that’s me.

CLERK: That was lovely. You’re Claudius?

CLAUD: He.

CLERK: (Bored, officious.) Right. Says here (Refers to a document.) you murdered your brother, stole his crown, married his wife under false pretenses, were ratted out by his ghost, set a trap for his revenging son, and were undone by your own treachery. Yeah?

CLAUD: I suppose...

CLERK: And it also says you were a ubiquitously worthless monarch, constantly on the piss, unable to consolidate power, intelligence effectively, quiet the masses, or defend the state. That all correct?

CLAUD: To an extent...

CLERK: Right. Well, seems you’ve been sentenced to the Inefficient Usurpers Ward, where you’ll get to hear MacBeth recite that “life’s but a walking shadow” bit 1,000 times daily until the end of recorded drama. As an additional bonus, King Richard III, (the fictitious version) will view you as a direct competitor and assassinate you in a grisly manner not less than fortnightly. Away with you.
(Enter GUARDS, who take CLAUD and forcibly lead him away.)

CLAUD: O. My offense is rank, it smells to heaven! (Exit.)

CLERK: Not from here it doesn’t. We haven’t got all day. Who’s next?

POL: My...

CLERK: Right. Polonius. I see they’ve already instituted you preliminary punishment. Hell gets more spot on everyday, I say. Says here (Again refers to document.) You were a buffoon unwittingly allied to an insidious tyrant. Yeah?

POL: O, woe!

CLERK: Alright then. Off with you to the Tragic Villains’ Pensioners Home. You can exchange war stories with geriatric corpses from Titus Andronicus and The Spanish Tragedy. Move along.
(Enter guards with a wheelchair, into which they shove POL before maneuvering him offstage. Exit.)

CLERK: Onward, then. Queen Gertrude, says here you were a lascivious trollop who pounced on your husband’s younger brother ere his body was cold before...(Pause.) Queen Gertrude?
(Enter MESSENGER, with a letter.)

CLERK: What’s this, then?

MESSENGER: Letter from Queen Gertrude, sir. (Exit.)

CLERK: (Opens letter and reads aloud.) Dearest Turnkey, Sorry about slipping past you so, but I am now happily wedded to the Lord Polonius and living in the Pensioner’s Home. Send kisses to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Good luck and Godspeed, (no pun intended)–Gertrude. (Pause.) And she’s even enclosed a photograph.

ROS: A photograph? Wasn’t she listening during the “no anachronisms” phase of the seminar?

GUIL: (Sighs.) It would appear not.

CLERK: Well, apart from all this...

GUIL: (From nowhere.) Can I ask you a question?

CLERK: Yeah?

GUIL: How’d you get that nasty chest wound?

CLERK: I bleed sir, but not kill’d.

GUIL: (Triumphant.) I knew it! You’re Iago!

CLERK: Yeah, yeah. They all figure it out sooner or later. Villains without clear motive make up the bureacracy around here. Worst punishment they could devise. Thanks for caring. Now, about you...

ROS and GUIL: Yes?

CLERK: I have here that you were gullible suck-ups, who, although appallingly bad spies, were inherently devoid of malicious intent, and...

(Enter OVERWORLD REPRESENTATIVE, henceforth REP, an American dressed in a smart modern business suit.)

CLERK: (Clearly bothered by the intrusion.) ‘Ew are you?

REP: Sorry to interrupt, but...

CLERK: ...and ow’d you get here?

REP: Well, you see, this is fiction, and we (Points upward.)control it.

CLERK: (Defeated.) Right. Carry on then.

REP: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!

ROS and GUIL: Yes?

REP: You’ve been recalled. Come on, I’ve got a car waiting.

GUIL: (Taken aback.) But this is...

ROS: ...Tragic Villains’ Hell...

GUIL: ...and the only place we’ve ever been...

ROS: ...due to any personal fame or notoriety of any sort. And besides, this is the afterlife, meaning that...

GUIL: ...we’re here for eternity, right?

REP: Don’t be ridiculous.

ROS: What do you mean?

REP: You really think your existence and death are irreversible? Immutable? That you’ve moved from the realm of flesh into that of legend, like Hercules?

GUIL: Well...

ROS: ...we’d hoped.

REP: Well, guess what? Hercules has been busy starring on bad UPN television shows! You are no more granted permanent rest than a belch is. Somebody, somewhere, belches, and that’s the end of it as an episode, but certainly not as an art form. Somebody, somewhere, will pick up where said belcher, who we will designate person “A,” left off, and it may be better or worse, and it certainly won’t be the same, but the narrative started by that ur-belch will continue. Get it?

GUIL: Not even a bit.

REP: Okay, it works like this: you were created by a 400-years-dead, incredibly influential Renaissance English playwright, who himself lifted the plot of his play from earlier sources. There was no such thing as intellectual property, and it wouldn’t matter if there had been. You exist in the public domain now. It's ironic, really: you were written in a style meant to remind your era of a period they considered classical. But now your period seems classical to my modernity, and hence characters like you keep getting excavated and reused. You are, to continue my vulgar but appropriate little analogy, like the indigestion of a previous era. You are the gastric residue of a prior fiction that has resurfaced, perhaps tastelessly, perhaps bringing a bit of relief, but back again nonetheless. You aren't dead, so can't stay here anymore; you’ve been revived.

ROS: Meaning?

REP: Meaning some guy Stoppard’s written a play about you called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, or something like that. Now come on. (Exit.)

ROS: (Puzzled.) Why do I get the feeling...

GUIL: ...that we may be back here again?

ROS: I just don’t know.

ROS and GUIL: Bye Iago!

CLERK: See ya’ later.

(Exit ROS and GUIL, lights come up. From offstage comes the voice of POL.)

POL: My daughter!

• END.