Take your pick: from Shakespeare to the present.

STERN (pointing to several empty seats): Why are they empty?

ROLE: They, you see, are for future Hamlets. Play me, and I too will be sitting pretty, if not here then on a stool off to the side. Instead, here we’ve come all this way—from world to world—and have to stand. You know what, let’s forget this land of achievements and go to the land of conceptions: there’s plenty of room there.

STERN: No. I must look here. What’s that? (Over the tops of the arches—high up—rush sounds of applause, then silence.)

ROLE: That was a flock of clappings. They fly in here too sometimes: like birds of passage—from world to world. But I can’t stay any longer: I’ll be missed in conceiverdom. Come with me. Do.

STERN shakes his head, his guide leaves; he is alone—among words, in words. Like a beggar staring through a shop window, he gazes hungrily at the rows of roles. He takes one step, then another. He hesitates. His eyes, working their way through the semidarkness, now descry, motionless in the depths, the magnificent figure of Richard Burbage.

STERN: That’s the one.

But then another Hamlet, who has long put his book aside the better to observe the newcomer, rises from his seat and bars the way. STERN steps back in alarm, but the ROLE too is embarrassed and almost frightened: stepping out of the semidarkness into the light, it reveals the holes and patches on its borrowed and badly made cloak; its stubbly face wears an ingratiating smile.

ROLE: Are you from there? (STERN gives an affirmative nod.) It shows. Perhaps I could ask you: why am I no longer acted? Have you heard? Everyone knows, of course, that Zamtutyrsky* the tragic actor is an arrant drunk and a scoundrel. But it’s not fair. To begin with, he didn’t learn me. You can imagine how pleasant it is to be not-learned: either you are, or you are not. In that benotbeness, in the third act, we got so muddled that if not for the prompter … And since then, not a single performance. Not one call: to existence. Tell me, what’s become of him? All washed up is he? Or has he changed types? If you go back, give him a talking-to. It’s not fair: he created me, he should play me. Otherwise—(STERN tries to push past the parody, but it keeps talking). For my part, if there’s anything I can do …

STERN: I’m looking for the book in the third act.* I’ve come for its meaning.

ROLE: Why didn’t you say so? Here. Only don’t forget to return it. Zamtutyrsky, like you, built his whole performance around this book: he didn’t know me at all, so he’d wander around the stage and whatever happened—he’d look in the book. “Since Hamlet can look in the book in the third act,” he’d say, “then why not in the second, or in the fifth? He doesn’t take his revenge,” he’d say, “because he doesn’t have time: he’s a busy, bookish, erudite man, an intellectual; he reads and reads, can’t tear himself away: he’s too busy to kill.” So if you’re curious, have a look: the Polevoi* translation, Pavlenkov* edition.

STERN pushes past Zamtutyrsky’s leech-like role and proceeds into the depths of the perspective to the proud profile of BURBAGE. He stands there, not daring to speak. BURBAGE doesn’t notice at first, then his eyelids slowly rise.

BURBAGE: Why is he here, this being that casts a shadow?

STERN: That you might welcome him as a shade.

BURBAGE: What are you trying to say, newcomer?

STERN: That I am a man who has envied his shadow: it can grow smaller or larger, whereas I am always equal to myself, the same man of the same inches, days, and thoughts. I have long since ceased to need the sun’s light, I prefer the footlights; all my life I have searched for the Land of Roles; but it refuses to accept me. I am only a conceiver, you see, I cannot complete anything: the letters hidden inside your book—O great image—shall remain forever unread by me.

BURBAGE: You never know.