TOM STOPPARD Rosencrantz
and Guildestern are dead
A contemporary play written in 1967. It was first
performed in the Old Vic on 11th April 1967. It is written in a
contemporary prosaic way, even though sometimes it resembles William
Shakespeare’s Hamlet and uses simmilar dialogues in verse. It is
composed of three acts.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
GUILDESTERN: Rosencrantz’s friend. He has the same mission as Rosencrantz. He is a very meditative and reflexive character, who is always elucubrating about the purpose of life, death and other philosophical and metaphisical matters. He could also be considered as quicker than Rosencrantz in thinking.
PLAYER: The leader of the tragedians’ group. He seems to know even more than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the story in which they are and their consequent destinies. He speaks confidently about these things.
HAMLET: The prince of Denmark. Son of the recently dead King Hamlet. Nephew to the current king Claudius. He is a passionate, intelligent young boy who will want to revenge his father’s death.
KING CLAUDIUS: King Hamlet’s brother. Now he is married to his brother’s wife. He wants to get rid of Hamlet as soon as possible. That is why he sends him to England.
OPHELIA: A young girl who is having an affair with Hamlet. However, Hamlet’s late madness is causing her problems with her father and therefore with Hamlet himself. She is getting somewhat perturbed as well.
PLOT: The play is mainly based in the characters and plot from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Rosencrantz and Guildestern are found tossing coins. They are having a strange consecution of chances, as eighty-five times in a row they have been getting heads. Guildestern tries to make an analysis of what is happening, appealing to probability laws, philosophy and religion… It is afterwards discovered they are traveling to a place, obeying the orders of the king. However, they do not move an inch from their initial positions. Suddenly, a group of actors appear and the player introduces them. They are happy to have an audience (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) to whom act as a rehearsal. But before that, the King Claudius and the Queen Gertrude appear. Claudius thanks them for their coming and tells them to visit his son Hamlet. They just stay there and rehearse their meeting with Hamlet. Hamlet and Polonius finally enter discussing. Polonius exits and lets Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildestern finally talk.
In the second act, all three have already talked. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern analyse the conversation they have just had with Hamlet. Hamlet and Ophelia re-live the same scenes from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Some time later, the tragedians come back with the player and they will finally interpret The Murder of Gonzago for them. But it is somewhat different to the one represented in Hamlet as it is in fact what is happening to them, as the player explains afterwards. Therefore, it tells about two spies who come to get close to the mad prince following the king’s orders and finally end dying. Neither Rosencrantz nor Guildestern notice the story is quite simmilar to theirs. The player goes and they just wait for Hamlet to come when they find out he is carrying Polonius’s death body after having killed him.
In the third act, Rosencrantz and Guildestern are on a boat. They are being taken to England with Hamlet. They are also carrying a letter for the king of England. The two friends think about the finality of their mission and what their fate is going to be. They are carrying a letter in which Hamlet is described as a wretched being quite apt to be condemned to death. Hamlet, who knows it, replaces the letter with another one. The tragedians appear on boat again. They have been sent to the same place. Rosencrantz and Guildestern read the letter which contains the message to the English king. They discover they are going to be killed due to what this letter says. They feel sorrowful for themselves and realise they are escapeless. Finally, as it had been written, Rosencrantz and Guildestern are Dead.
SPACE: Space is really changing in this play. We see mainly the same spaces in which Hamlet is developed: the boat, the castle, ... Spaces are continuosly varying because of characters.
TIME: The play takes place on the Elizabeth Queen time. We know this because the author makes a reference at the beginning of the play when he talks about Rosencrantz and Guildestern as “two Elizabethans”.
LITERARY RESOURCES: This play can be a little bit difficult to read because the author does not use a really simple language and he also uses long sentences.
PERSONAL OPINION: The play constitutes a new conception of theatre, according to my knowledge hitherto. We are not facing a play with a concrete plot which could be easily summarised. It is full of complex reflections of the characters who try to find out their role and destiny not only in the play but also in their “life”. It might be difficult to understand the play viewed from a realistic point. I would say, the play constitutes what could be considered as a parallel stage to the Hamlet’s stage. Following that topic of the times: “All the world is a stage”, there would be more stages than just the one we see. Therefore, I would say this would be like the backstage, where the things that are not in Hamlet take place. As though the actors when are not acting did not stop being their characters. We are shown the hidden life of the characters, where they elucubrate about the role they have been chosen to play. Therefore, they would be really talking to who created them, this is, the playwright. The player says in one occasion referring to the two friends: “For some of us it is performance, for others, patronage”, referring to the two friends way of life. And afterwards he affirms: “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”. And there is stated the main theme of the play, this is, they are going to do on stage what they would do on a supposed offstage where their characters were alive. Therefore, destiny would be already written and unchangeable. That would be why the player makes comments about Rosencrantz and Guildestern’s role in the play-life and their sure end in death. And that is why they feel disoriented, pensative…about one life which obliges them to die everyday they appear on stage.
Anyway, the plot of the play forms part of a new dramatic tendence which could have had the Irish-born Samuel Beckett as its major representative in England. Therefore, many have found interesting simmilarities between this an Beckett’s most famous play Waiting for Godot. There could be said that from Beckett Stoppard borrows two characters in an inhospit place and takes them as two interprets of the world, making them move from metaphysics to absurd not knowing if there is really a border between reality and fiction. In addition to these metaphysical yearning, there can be found the interrogative rhythms and swift replies in their conversations. The two friends are also placed as waiting for something, they probe coins instead of hats and shoes. They meet diverse people during their wait and have weird conversations with them. Besides, some authors have even found lexical identities between the two plays.
Anyway, the play has a deep plot to be expored and analysed. From it there can be taken many paradoxes, philosophical ideas and black-humoured jokes really witted and interesting which bestow to the play its importance not only in the English theatre, but in the history of the modern European drama.