There was a trend in pop culture, just as I was leaving my adolescence, to make baby versions of things. Muppet Babies. Tiny Toons. It seemed like everything had a double in children. Was there Baby Magnum P.I.? Probably not. But there could have been and it would have been hilarious. Sounds like that trend blew through the English Renaissance as well and there may have been The Baby King’s Men or perhaps the King’s Babies or previously, Lord Chamberlain’s Children. I picture toddlers wandering around the stage in little ruffs, with little swords and skulls – maybe some tiny sized goblets.
It probably wouldn’t be as funny as this kid as a drunk tourist video  – but it would likely be pretty entertaining.

So there’s a company of children putting on shows and the shows would appear to feature some singing and loud crying. People love them doing the crying on whatever the topic or question might be. I’d love to know more about these children’s companies. It’s clear these were a trend in Shakespeare’s London and that this is a dig at them. And I suspect that this is someone’s thesis somewhere. And I’d be curious to read it.

These child companies remind me of one of my favorite TV sketches. It’s called Shutterbugs and in it, these showbiz agents behave just like showbiz agents do with adults, except they traffic in children. They make a movie featuring all children. It’s Lil’ 9-11 – those kids are crying out on the top of question.

This answer makes me think that Hamlet’s thinking of rustiness in the same way we might – that is that the players have slowed down and haven’t been performing as much. Rosencrantz indicating that they’re still at it, at the same old speed would suggest that the question had to do with a decline in production.
But no, these players are churning out shows the way they have always done. I would like to see the players home season before the little eyases turned up and chucked them out of business in the city.

It must be hard to be followed and then not followed, to have the world behind you and then scattered to the wind. I don’t know what this is like as I have never been followed by a great many. The followers I have tend to be friends and family, bless their hearts, and the occasional unknown. I have never been expert enough at marketing to have true followers. My friends become my fans and my fans become friends and the blend creates a lovely mix of support. But mostly, I have hungered for followers, with no idea how to get them. That is painful. To have so much of my work not seen at all, not received, as if I were singing my song in an empty cave but would having followers and losing them be worse? I wonder.

I see that this theatre story has gone on for hundreds of years. Theatre is always on the edge of death due to some innovation or other. In this case, it’s the little eyases but when movies were invented, they were foretold to be the death of theatre.

Probably when the Greeks did their thing, some kind of new mask was reported to put all the others out of business.

The web is probably the death of theatre. Also YouTube. Also email. Also projections. Also turntables. Also Kickstarter. Also everything.

But theatre, always in the process of dying, is also never dead, never dying, always fighting for breath, perhaps but kicking all the way.

If I were in the market for naming a theatre company, I’d consider this one. What’s interesting though is that this company of players is not identified by name but by their specialization and home-base. What does it take to become THE tragedians of the city? Is there only one company doing tragedies? Or did they beat out the other aspiring tragedians with a Priam-Off and the other companies were compelled to slink off to either become the tragedians of the rural township or the comedians of the city of the cabaret-ists of the city or the melodramatists of the city or the absurdists of the city, leaving this particular company with the title.

Is this the problem with contemporary theatre? That we longer offer service but instead try to sell our wares in the marketplace? I love the notion of theatre as service. Sometimes, when it’s going well and an audience is moved and it means something to them and they’re so grateful you turned up to share what you made, it does feel like a service. The best kind of service. But most of the time, plays seem to be of service to themselves, to the egos of the people in them and people who made them and the people who presented them. Which, you know, fair enough, sometimes we have to do things for ourselves but I love the idea of turning up somewhere, laying out the parameters of my theatrical wares and asking, “How may we be of service?”

But of course that would depend on us being a part of a culture of service. Because implied in this offer of services is a return in patronage. We turn up, offer you a play, we put it on for you, you reward us with some funds to help get us to the next location, provide some service for the next royal benefactor.

The worlds we run in now are so cash strapped, if we turned up at the YMCA on 14th St and said, “How might we be of service?” They might put us to work mopping the floors.

The dictionary says this usage of cote is obsolete. Unlike its usage as a shed for animals. Funny, because Shakespeare uses both. Here, it is to skirt, to pass along side of. In As You Like It, the sheep cote is on sale. One is now obsolete, officially. The other, likely in use in places that have need for animal shelters, and therefore to the rest of us, it’s as good as obsolete. I like this usage of Cote, though, this skirting idea.

Before I looked it up, I thought cote might relate to coat and that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were tagging along on the coattails of the players for a second. Instead, it’s another garment, a skirt. Relating to the French both of a skirt and also Cote d’azur. As in the coast. Which I suppose skirts the sea. Or the land. Depending on your point of view.

Thinking of these guys forming a little coast around the players somehow gives the image of passing a great deal more poetry. It makes what could be simple skirting an image I’d like to see in a painting: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern cote the Players.

I’d like to understand the logistics of the Players’ lives. This is probably due to the fact that I find my own Players’ life a bit unsatisfactory and I tend to romanticize the past, to see the world of traveling bands of actors as romantic and full of delights. However, this line makes me think that a player’s life hundreds of years ago was as full of uncertainty as a player’s now.

It would seem that these players don’t have a contract to perform anywhere. They just turn up at places and offer up their services. How they are received, where they sleep, what they are fed would seem to be up to the patrons they throw themselves on the mercy of.

This Lenten entertainment would suggest a stripped down Spartan’s welcome. Maybe shelter. Maybe some crusts of bread. Maybe a barn to perform in. Every journey the Players make, a proposition, a risk, a venture. No guarantee. And lets say some Prince doesn’t reward them adequately for services rendered, you can’t really complain, those sorts of people TEND to have the authority to chop off heads.

Romantic to travel the land, performing players, making theatre wherever one can find a space. But probably very smelly. Very dusty. Very uncertain. Very hungry at times. Probably it’s better now. Even if you do have to keep your day job.

This seems like a lie. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a way that it is not. Is there any way that he really laughed about the player’s approach at just that moment? He listened to that whole speech about what a piece of work man is and then suddenly thought, “Oh! We saw the players on the way here. If Hamlet is so undelighted with man, he’s going to be a real dick to those actors when they get here. Isn’t that funny?”
The closer I look, the more distinctions there are between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They’re played like they’re twins. And Stoppard’s play heightens the effect that they can’t keep their identities straight. But I’m looking at a page of text right now and on it, I see a lot of back and forth between Hamlet and Rosencrantz with only one (rather important) line from Guildenstern. Guildenstern doesn’t speak much but when he does, he tells the truth that Hamlet’s been asking for.

It makes me wonder about Guildenstern. Has he been sort of swept up in Rosencrantz’s wake? If he’d been on his own, could he have actually been a friend to Hamlet? Or is he just a quieter character? Less skilled at lying, maybe but just as guileful. There’s no indication that he laughs when Rosencrantz does in this “man delights not me” section. But then, there’s also no indication that he doesn’t. You’d have more lines if you played Rosencrantz but you’d have a lot of interesting decisions to make if you played Guildenstern. How allied with Rosencrantz is he? Is he silent here because he’s conflicted? Or stupid? Or distracted? Or afraid to implicate himself? There is so much potentiality in silence.