Some 360 years before Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead was first performed in Edinburgh, Will Shakespeare himself attends a performance.
His mind races faster than a horse galloping downhill. Try as he will, he can’t mistake her meaning. If Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is dead itself—a century dead!—then Hamlet must be older yet. But his head had only a little more hair, and that only a little less gray, when he wrote it. An impossibility—an impossibility he has just seen staged.

Variants

(1)
  1. “We Haven’t Got There Yet” by Harry Turtledove, Tor.com Original Fiction, 19 March 2009 [webzine].
    2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Harry Turtledove