Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Have Left the Building

One of the more enduring memories from my twenties in Brisbane was an incident regarding a friend of ours. He rang us up once, out of the blue, to let us know that there was a play that some mates of his were putting on called Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead. He was going to go next week, and wanted to know if we wanted to come with him and ‘a few mates’.

As I’m sure you’re already aware, the aforementioned play takes up two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and makes a story out of their quest for existential meaning et al while the events of Shakespeare’s play unfold around them.

We agreed to come and turned up on the night. Our friend was there.

So were around thirty people, all invited at the last minute like we were.

Brisbane, unless something big has changed, is generally not considered to be one of the great theatre going centres of the world.

As one of our other friends commented (also, like us, part of the group of thirty plus), “Imagine you or I phoned up people we knew at random and asked them to come, at the last minute, to an obscure amateur production of a play about two minor characters in a Shakespearian play that you were going to see with your mates.”

The observation didn’t really need to be finished. It was fairly obvious that were I to do that, the end result would not be thirty plus people turning up to the first live play of their lives.

I’ve never really met anyone quite like that since.

But I had a very minor echo of the Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead experience on Monday.

I was standing at the back of another packed McCulloch lecture on the Reformation in England during Elizabeth’s reign. Extra seats have been put in the theatre, ten people are sitting on the ground in aisle. I and another woman are standing at the back. The lecture is packed in a way I have never seen before.

I am holding the last outline for the lecture. Yet another person turns up for the lecture. Because I’m not sitting the exam for this lecture, and because I can see that Michael Jensen is sitting in his normal seat, and I know he’ll have an outline, I hand my copy over. The guy is quite shocked (so far my experience of the English is that they are polite, but not really nice—giving away one’s lecture outline is not, I suspect The Done Thing). I explain that I can get a copy off my friend and photocopy it.

He says, “Is that Michael?”

Not, is that any other of the legion of people packed into this room. Not even is that one of the following five names of which Michael is one. Not even “Is that Michael Jensen.”

“Is that Michael?”

Well, yes, obviously it’s Michael I’m referring to. Who else would it be?

I’ve learned not to give my name when speaking to English people. If I don’t get it right it can make them uncomfortable. So now I wait for them to offer me their name (which they rarely do) and then return the favour.

But I’m beginning to wonder if maybe, at least among theological students and the like at Oxford, I could offer Michael’s name and mention that I know him.

Then I could try inviting them to a play about two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet…MDB