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Acclaimed as a modern dramatic masterpiece, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead is the fabulously inventive tale of Hamlet as told from the worm's-eve view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare's play. In Tom Stoppard's best-known work, this Shakespearean Laurel and Hardy finally get a chance to take the lead role, but do so in a world where echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, where reality and illusion intermix, and where fate leads our two heroes to a tragic but inevitable end. Tom Stoppard was catapulted into the front ranks of modem playwrights overnight when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead opened in London in 1967. Its subsequent run in New York brought it the same enthusiastic acclaim, and the play has since been performed numerous times in the major theatrical centers of the world.… (more)
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As the play opens we meet Ros and Guil in "a place without any visible 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.
There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is't to leave betimes? Let be.
Unfortunately, our boys are trapped as mere characters in a play, doomed to enact the same story to the same fateful end, over and over again. Yet somehow, they never quite manage to achieve Hamlet's state of acceptance.
I will be curious to learn what my students think of this one!
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is at once comic, deep, and absurd. It focuses on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters from
The play opens with the two friends flipping coins. Each time, the coin inexplicably turns up heads - almost one hundred times in a row. Rosencrantz takes this phenomenon in stride, but Guildenstern is worried and tries to think of possible explanations. This strange and unnatural set of events set the tone for the rest of the play.
Throughout the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern banter back and forth hilariously and confusingly. Take this excerpt, for example:
GUIL: Has it ever happened to you that all of a sudden and for no reason at all you haven't the faintest idea how to spell the word - "wife" - or "house" - because when you write it down you just can't remember ever having seen those letters in that order before...?
ROS: I remember -
GUIL: Yes?
ROS: I remember when there were no questions.
GUIL: There were always questions. To exchange one set for another is no great matter.
ROS: Answers, yes. There were answers to everything.
GUIL: You've forgotten.
ROS (flaring): I haven't forgotten - how I used to remember my own name - and yours, oh yes! There were answers everywhere you looked. There was no question about it - people knew who I was and if they didn't they asked and I told them. (pg. 38)
No one in the play, including Rosencrantz and Guildenstern themselves, know which character is which:
ROS: My name is Guildenstern, and this is Rosencrantz.
GUIL confers briefly with him.
(Without embarrassment.) I'm sorry - his name's Guildenstern, and I'm Rosencrantz. (pg. 22)
In reading the play, I am told before each line who is speaking it, but it's probably more difficult to keep them both straight when watching the play. Stoppard definitely does this on purpose - the audience can't tell the two main characters apart, the other characters can't tell the two main characters apart, and even the two main characters themselves struggle with their identities. Does it matter who is who? Are the two characters and their roles interchangeable? Does this concept translate to people in the real world?
One of my favorite lines in the play comes during Act Three when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are on the ship to England. The ship is attacked by pirates, allowing Hamlet to escape. Guildenstern starts to panic - they are supposed to deliver Hamlet to the English king and now cannot:
GUIL (rattled): But he can't - we're supposed to be - we've got a letter - we're going to England with a letter for the King -
PLAYER: Yes, that much seems certain. I congratulate you on the unambiguity of your situation.
GUIL: But you don't understand - it contains - we've had our instructions - the whole thing's pointless without him.
PLAYER: Pirates could happen to anyone. Just deliver the letter. They'll send ambassadors from England to explain... (pg. 120)
"Pirates could happen to anyone"! I love it! I literally laughed out loud when I read that.
I loved Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and definitely plan to reread it at some point. It helps to have read or seen Hamlet before reading or seeing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead because the plays overlap.
It was most witty and I loved the rapid-fire patter, especially when Ros and Guil "play at questions", along with each keeping score on the other [like a tennis match--e.g., "two---love"; "foul"]. I read this play with text in hand watching the movie, written and also directed by Tom Stoppard. The movie had visual elements the play did not; and the play had dialogue that had been cut from the movie. So together, they were a good fit. Later, I read the text aloud. Seeing a theatrical performance would not go amiss. This play is most highly recommended.
It was, of course, every bit as clever in this later reading.
But as my friend Heather points out, "at least there is the comfort of companionship."
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 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.
Notable quotes:
Guildenstern: “The scientific approach to the examination of phenomena is a defense against the pure emotion of fear. Keep tight hold and continue while there’s time. Now—counter to the previous syllogism: tricky one, follow me carefully, it may prove a comfort. If we postulate, and we just have, that within un-, sub- or supernatural forces the probability is that the law of probability will not operate as a factor, then we must accept that the probability of the first part will not operate as a factor, in which case the law of probability will operate as a factor within un-, sub- or supernatural forces. And since it obviously hasn’t been doing so, we can take it that we are not held within un-, sub- or supernatural forces after all; in all probability, that is. Which is a great relief to me personally” (17).
Guildenstern: “Consistency is all I ask!”
Rosencrantz (quietly): “Immortality is all I seek…” (45)
Player: “Well, it’s a device, really—it makes the action that follows more or less comprehensible; you understand, we are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style” (77).
Guildenstern: “…And then again, what is so terrible about death? As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don’t know what death is, it is illogical to fear it” (110).
I particularly like the idea of building a story around minor characters in another work. It feels like real life; there's always more than what you are seeing, and there are other ways of seeing things..
I think seeing it performed would add a tragic dimension to it, not accessible to me in merely reading it.
I should probably have saved this for my dimly-planned re-read of Hamlet. For that matter, I should have re-read Hamlet six months ago before I tackled Infinite Jest.