Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Works like this are proof that the boundary between fanfiction and independent art is completely arbitrary, and perhaps totally meaningless. Yes, this play is a derivative work of Hamlet, but not only does it not really require you to have read its famous forebear (although you certainly should, for many reasons beyond giving this some context), but Stoppard's reflections on mortality, chance, and the contingency of life stand on their own. There is no reason whatsoever that philosophy can't be funny, and even on the page the dialogue and action is hilarious, as poor old R & G wander through this frequently metafictional work that fills in the gaps of Hamlet, meeting their ultimate fate in a way that's both inevitable given what happens show more without their knowledge in Hamlet as well as poignant purely on its own. I could go on and on about how skillfully Stoppard uses tropes like the play-within-a-play, or how he nods to other famous existentialist works like Waiting For Godot, but this is about as close to a perfect comic play as it gets these days. show less

Hamlet retold through the point of view of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two extremely minor characters who end up dead for no particular reason. Stoppard uses this rich canvas to closely examine themes of time, memory, and mortality. What is it like to be caught up in the torrent of a story and to be swept along without choice or understanding. There is much to relate to in this absurd, surreal, and thoughtful play.

Tom Stoppard writes witty, upside down plays from odd perspectives, and this is one of them. R & G, minor characters from Hamlet, are the focus here, and the events in Hamlet are viewed from their perspective. It's a comedy and one of the running jokes is that no-one can figure out which is R and which is G. There is some question as to whether the whole play is a flashback and R & G are already dead, or whether they simply cannot avoid their fate. I enjoyed the scene on the boat (when they are sailing with Hamlet to England) the most. Occasionally the fourth wall is broken. The play begins with a coin toss--and the question throughout the play is: rigged or chance. Another question the play confronts: how real is the theater? And its show more opposite: how real is life? show less

This Stoppard play is an old favorite. I first devoured it in high school when the copy of Hamlet we were given to read included the snippet where they play the 'Questions' game.

The premise is quickly explained. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern find themselves travelling to the court of Denmark with very little idea of who they are and what they're doing - and they want to find out. While the play Hamlet marches toward its bloody end around them, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do their best to fulfill the only role they've been given - to 'glean what afflicts' Hamlet. In between scenes in which they interact with the characters in Hamlet, they struggle with a no longer existing law of probability, their own existence and purpose, and whether show more they have any choice in their actions or in their fates.

The play (even just reading it) is gloriously funny, but also quite poignant towards the end. My family and I still play 'Questions' to this day. I did think there was a bit of a weakness as Rosencrantz is 'only good for support' and had little original to say, but it was clearly a conscious choice of the author's and it still leaves room open for Rosencrantz to shine in other ways (as ably demonstrated by Gary Oldman in the movie version).

As with most plays, of course, the true genius is sure to come out during performance, and while no one was staging it around here, I truly enjoyed the Gary Oldman/Tim Roth movie. While it didn't use the same bare-bones staging that the play's script suggests (and thus avoids some of the Waiting for Godot similarities), it helped to put some of the scenes more in perspective by including more snippets from Hamlet.

A great read, a great movie, but I suggest brushing up on Hamlet before reading - you'll get more out of it.

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Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is written as the inverse of Hamlet - practically a sort of textual foil. While Hamlet confronted the difficulty of action and the gravity of death, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead approaches it from the opposite angle, that life is mundane and death is absurd.

The setting of the drama (or lack thereof) is also inverted: most of the scenes of this play take place in Hamlet's "offstage," as we see the title characters gambling or hanging out with the players when they're not performing. When the play does touch back on Hamlet, incorporating scenes from the original, they sound "acted" in contrast to the candid and quotidian scenes of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Really, Rosencrantz and show more Guildenstern seem to be the only characters in the play who are unaware that they are in a play, actors with or without their consent.

As one of the players says, "We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else." It's an irreverent piece of PoMo, taking the piss at Hamlet's expense. The irreverence isn't meant to undermine the point of the drama completely, but just to make both the audience and actors aware of the theatricality and limitations thereof on stage. show less

"... we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation." (pg. 88)

An odd, oh-so-clever play, and at times I thought I ought to hate it. The dialogue is drawn out and regurgitative, and the jokes are sometimes laboured, like a misfiring comedy sketch. It's hard to piece together what Stoppard is trying to do at times – it can seem a bit throwaway.

Nevertheless, once you do piece together what the play's trying to do, it becomes much more interesting. It takes two bit-part players from Shakespeare's Hamlet – the titular Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – and focuses on them as they wait in the wings and the plot of Hamlet whirls around them. Shakespeare is good material for this – "every exit being an show more entrance somewhere else," Stoppard reasons (pg. 22) – not least because the Bard often referenced plays and parts and players within his plots. He was meta long before that was a thing. Stoppard not only does well to identify this fruitful territory, but has fun with the more obvious jokes too (for example, Ros and Guil are bemused by the fact that Hamlet talks to himself – i.e. in his soliloquies).

Stoppard also takes the opportunity to use his premise to get rather existential. Our two bit-part players are trying to figure things out – what their purpose is, their motivations and loyalties and so on, as kings and princes scheme dramatically around them. They're not given direction, not as characters nor as human beings. "We have not been picked out simply to be abandoned... set loose to find our own way... We are entitled to some direction, I would have thought" (pg. 16). Don't we all feel that way, in life? All the world's a stage, as I believe someone once wrote – though the name escapes me.

Again, this is in the tradition of Hamlet, which gave us those famous lines "to be or not to be", among others. For all his misfiring absurdist tempo, some of Stoppard's own inclusions (such as death being "just a man failing to reappear" (pg. 62)) prove him worthy of his source. Life, and the play, are only bearable due to "the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute" (pg. 31), and Stoppard does enough to keep this interest going until the final curtain. That's all any of us can do. show less

Tom Stoppard has been writing plays for more than a half century. Some that I have had the opportunity to read or see in performance include Arcadia, Travesties, The Invention of Love, Night and Day, and his great trilogy The Coast of Utopia. But before all of these he burst onto the world theater scene with a dramatic masterpiece titled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Both a tragicomedy and a parody of sorts, it focuses on the two courtiers, Ros & Guil (for short), whose existence we owe to William Shakespeare and his tragedy Hamlet. Stoppard's play exists behind the scenes of Shakespeare's play as we follow the two courtiers on their predicted way to death.

As the play opens we meet Ros and Guil in "a place without any visible show more character". Guil is tossing coins and Ros is calling heads, which is unusual only in that the coin keeps coming up heads and apparently has been for some time. This leads them to a brief discussion of the law averages and the law of diminishing returns. One wonders, they wonder, about the nature of reality and time. Has it "stopped dead"? Can they remember what just happened not too long ago. Guil asks:

"'What is the fist thing after all the things you've forgotten?'
Ros: Oh I see. (Pause.) I've forgotten the question.
Guil: Are you happy?
Ros: What?
Guil: Content? At ease?
Ros: I suppose so." (p 16-17)

Guil speculates that they must be operating under supernatural forces and proceeds to provide a lengthy scientific commentary that is as much designed to ward off fear as it is to convince Ros of Guil's point. But instead of reassuring Ros it leads into a discussion of death and what it is like to be dead. Guil's reassurance to Ros: "But you are not dead." is lost among their speculations. Their tenuous connection with reality is quickly established and with the imminent entrance of a group of theatrical players, "The Tragedians", this theme will be expanded through metaphor and wordplay to the point that the whole play appears as a dream, or more likely a nightmare ending in death.

The nature of their existence as characters reminds one of Godot's Vladimir and Estragon. Indeed, the absurdity of their condition and even some of their dialogue demands such comparison. Stoppard’s play goes beyond the hopelessness of Vladimir and Estragon’s absurd condition and provides much more comic entertainment. The two are shown whiling away their time on the fringes of the “major play”, whose echoes they are eager to absorb but whose significance remains enigmatic. Hence, despite all their efforts to “act”, when the crucial moment comes and it rests upon them to warn Hamlet, they fail. They thus fall short of having the text “rewritten” in their favor, and prepare their own untimely, yet (inter)textually predestined, deaths.
The theme of appearance versus reality is sustained by a profound metadramatic discussion on art versus real life. This begins with the entrance of the Tragedians and their playful invitation for Ros and Guil to be not only spectators but, if they are willing to pay a slightly higher price, participants in the performance of a tragedy--performed for their sole benefit. While they do not join the players the question of appearance versus reality which was suggested even earlier continues to vex the two courtiers. Throughout the play their are comic moments, usually redounding from word play. One moment was reminiscent of an Abbot and Costello routine with Ros and Guil going back and forth with confusion over "what" and "why" (p 68).

The play’s enormous theatricality is afforded by the playful handling of Hamlet as well as the abundant use of (comic) reasoning. We even find Guil mimicking Hamlet with the comment, "Words, words. They're all we have to go on."(p 41) But one wonders what value the words are when the existence of the characters is as fragile as it seems in this play. By foregrounding epistemological uncertainty as ethically relevant, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead announces one of the abiding preoccupations of Stoppard's own future writing. It also entertains the happy reader with a delightfully intellectually stimulating play. show less