Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

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Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is a humorous, absurdist, tragic and existentialist play by Tom Stoppard, first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe August 26, 1966. A 1990 film version starred Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the title characters and featured Richard Dreyfuss as the Player. The play expands upon the exploits of two minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Synopsis

The play concerns the misadventures and musings of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters from William Shakespeare's Hamlet who are friends of the Prince, focusing on their actions while the events of Hamlet occur as background. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is structured as the inverse of Hamlet; the title characters are the leads, not minor players, and Hamlet himself has only a small part. The duo appears on stage here when they are off-stage in Shakespeare's play, with the exception of a few short scenes in which the dramatic events of both plays coincide. In Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are used by the king in an attempt to find out about Hamlet's motives and to plot against him. Hamlet, however, mocks them derisively and outwits them, so that they, rather than he, are killed in the end. Thus from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's perspective, the action in Hamlet does not make much sense. By contrast, the Player, also a minor character from Hamlet, seems to know a great deal about theatrical conventions and Hamlet in particular, despite being a character in the play himself.

The two characters, brought into being within the puzzling universe of the play, by an act of the playwright's creation, and those they encounter, often confuse their names, as they have interchangeable yet periodically unique identities. They are portrayed as two clowns or fools in a world that is beyond their understanding; they cannot identify any reliable feature or the significance in words or events. Their own memories are not reliable or complete and they misunderstand each other as they stumble through philosophical arguments while not realizing the implications to themselves. They often state deep philosophical truths during their nonsensical ramblings, however they depart from these ideas as quickly as they come to them. At times one appears to be more enlightened than the other; however this position is traded off throughout the course of the drama.

After the two characters find themselves witnessing a performance of the Murder of Gonzago, they take a boat to England with the troupe, are ambushed by pirates and lose their prisoner before resigning themselves to fate.

As with many of Tom Stoppard's works, the play has a love for cleverness and language. It treats language as a joy, a toy and a confounding system fraught with ambiguity.

Themes

• Existentialism - why are we here? Why should Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do anything unless someone asks them to? They find themselves as pawns in a gigantic game of chess, yet make no effort whatsoever to escape.
• Free will vs. determinism - is it their choice to perform actions, or are they fated to live the way they do? The implication the play gives is that it does not matter what choices Rosencrantz and Guildenstern make, they are trapped within the logic of the play, and cannot escape, being fated to follow a destiny determined by the plot. Hamlet ends with the news of their deaths, so they have to die.
• Search for value - what is important? What is not? Does anything matter? If we are all going to die, why do we continue to live?
• Futility of Language - Do words always mean what we say they mean? How do we know what words with multiple meanings mean? Why do words mean what they mean? How do we interpret what is being said to something sensible when it is not? How do words determine madness?
• The Impossibility of Certainty -

These themes, and the presence of two central characters who almost appear to be two halves of a single character, are shared with Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and the two plays are often compared. Many plot features are similar as well. The characters pass time by playing Questions, impersonating other characters, and interrupting each other or remaining silent for long periods of time. Other authors have also experimented with characters who (partially) understand that they are fictional — for example, in Frank Baker's classic Miss Hargreaves: A Fantasy, in Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World, in Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy, in Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, and in Paul Wühr's Das falsche Buch. Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series also makes heavy use of characters who understand that they are fictional.

Stage production history

The play had its first incarnation as a 1964 one-act, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear. The expanded version under the current title was first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe August 26, 1966. A National Theatre production at the Old Vic premiered April 11, 1967; the National Theatre revived the play at the Old Vic in 1974 and at the Lyttelton Theatre in 1995.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern had a year-long Broadway run October 9, 1967 – October 19, 1968 initially at the Alvin Theatre, transferring to the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on January 8, 1968, It was nominated for eight Tony Awards, and won four (including Best Play); three of the actors were nominated for Tonys, but none of them won. It had a 1987 New York revival by Roundabout Theatre at the Union Square Theatre.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead in Television and Cinema

• The play was filmed in 1990, with screenplay and direction by Stoppard, starring Gary Oldman and Tim Roth in the title roles, respectively, Richard Dreyfuss as the Player, Joanna Roth as Ophelia, Ian Richardson as Polonius, Joanna Miles as Gertrude, Donald Sumpter as Claudius and Iain Glen as Hamlet.

• The Anime TV series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya contains a fragment of a performance of the play and a direct quote of the line "Consider - One: Probability is a factor which operates within natural forces. Two: Probability is not operating as a factor. Three: We are now held within un-, sub-, or supernatural forces."

• In the same way that The Lion King has similarities to Hamlet, The Lion King 1 1/2 has similarities to Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Timon and Pumbaa are the leads instead of the minor characters they are in the original, while the Lion King himself (Simba) plays only a cameo role. The duo appears on stage here when they are off-stage in the Lion King, except for some scenes in which the events of the two films coincide.

References

• Stoppard, Tom. Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. 1967. Reprint, Grove Press, 1991.
• ​Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead​ at the Internet Broadway Database Accessed 8 October 2006.
• Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead at IMDb Accessed 8 October 2006.
• A Tom Stoppard Bibliography: Chronology at sondheimguide.com. Accessed 8 October 2006.

External links

• Lecture by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College
• Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead at Rotten Tomatoes
• Analysis and background on the play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead