If with you people, on earth, that is still going on, then—

STERN: Wait, wait. I wanted to see another …

ROLE: I don’t know. Perhaps the orders for post-horses got mixed up. That happens when passing from one world to the other. There is a huge demand just now for Hamlets. Hamletburg is practically deserted.

STERN: I don’t understand.

ROLE: It’s very simple. You requested a Hamlet from the Archives, but they sent you one from the Workshop.

STERN: But then how can we … straighten this out?

ROLE: Again, very simply. I’ll take you to Hamletburg, and you can look for the one you want.

STERN (confused): But where is that? And how do you get there?

ROLE: Where? In the Land of Roles. There is such a place. As for how you get there, that can be neither told, nor shown. I think the audience will forgive us if we … ring down the curtain.

Rar calmly surveyed us. “The Role, in essence, is right. If you’ll allow me, I’ll say: Curtain. Now on to the second position: try to picture a receding perspective inside close-set converging walls crowned with Gothic arches. The interior of this fantastic tunnel is plastered with squares of colored paper all emblazoned, in different typefaces and in different languages, with the same word: HAMLET-HAMLET-HAMLET. Under the polyglot playbills streaming away into the depths are two rows of armchairs vanishing in the distance. Sitting in the armchairs, wrapped in black cloaks, is a succession of Hamlets. Each holds a book in his hands. Each is bent over its pages, his pale face intent, his eyes fixed on the lines. Now here, now there, a turning page rustles and one hears the soft, but incessant:

“‘Words, words, words.’

“‘Words … words.’

“‘Words.’

“Once again I invite you, conceivers, to take a good look at the file of phantoms. Under the black berets of those aggrieved princes you will see the ones who introduced you to Hamlet’s problem, to that long, narrow corridor winding its windowless way through the world. I, for instance, can now clearly make out—third armchair on the left—the sharp profile of Salvini’s* Hamlet frowning over a text only he can see. To the right and farther on, the fragile outline beneath folds of heavy black material resembles Sarah Bernhardt* : the heavy folio with bronze clasps strains her fine weak fingers, but her eyes catch tenaciously at the symbols and meanings hidden within. Downstage, beneath the red smudge of a playbill, is Rossi’s face in anxious folds, a withered cheek in the cup of one hand, an elbow on the arm of the carved chair; the muscles in his knees are tensed, at his temple an artery pulses. Upstage, in the depths of the perspective, I see the softly delineated face of the feminine Kemble,* Kean’s* sharp cheekbones and clenched jaw, and finally, at the vanishing point, head thrown back, an arrogant smile on his lips, eyes half closed, the ironic mask—now flashing, now fading in a shimmer of glints and shadows—of Richard Burbage.* It’s hard to tell from this distance, but he seems to have closed his book: read from cover to cover, it lies immobile on his knees. I shift my gaze back: some faces are in shadow, others are looking away. Yes, and I shift back, incidentally, to the play.”

The door in the depths, rising like a curtain, emits a harsh light and two figures: the ROLE sweeps in with the air of a cicerone, followed by STERN looking shyly about. He wears black hose (undone shoelaces straggling) and a short-skirted doublet donned in haste. Slowly—step by step—they pass down the rows of Hamlets buried in their books.

ROLE: You’re in luck. This is exactly the scene you want.