Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

are dead

Author: Tom Stoppard.

Title: “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.” (Comedy in three acts)

Editorial: Faber and Faber.

Year and place of publication: May of 1967, London

Dramatis Personae:

   - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: two Elizabethans well dressed, with hats, cloaks, sticks… and each one with a leather moneybag. Both are nearly persons at prince Hamlet, his friend, and they work for the King and the Queen. There are not big differences among both, they always go together, they are into same problems at the same time. Maybe, Rosencrantz forget all easily, is more quite and conformist, do not complicate his life, than Guildenstern, who is more philosophic and calculating man, he has to found a reason, an explication for everything, beside more impulsive.

   They are represented like puppets in a puppet show, where their superiors control them. They only can obey orders and act how they have saying them, falling unavoidably in their end.

   -The Player: is a man who acts with more persons, five more, and who are called “The Tragedians”. It is not an important character comparing with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but is important in the way he go with these many times remind them have a fate that cannot be changed. Every people are marked, have days counted…the tragedy of the life, of this “bad end unhappily” written for our main characters.

Plot:

   “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead” retold the story of Shakespeare's Hamlet, from the point of view of two of the famous play's most insignificant characters. They spend the time playing with coins at heads or tails totally unworried of destiny has prepared for them. While they meet “The Tragedians”, actors were there casually.

When come back to the castle, King Claudius and Queen Gertrude tell them the strange change of Hamlet and demand them they would find out the reason. They obey and think in questions for him and find the answer, but this plan do not succeed. As soon as they think in actors, they want these represent a play called “The Murder of Gonzago” for Hamlet testify his culpability for to have killed his brother.

They essay for that and more late they know by King, Hamlet had killed also Polonius, and they receive orders of search and find them. When they do it, they must carry a letter for the England’s King with Hamlet. When they read it, on the way their destiny, discover King Claudius want Hamlet dead. However, pirates attack ship and Hamlet escape. Letter will be changed by Hamlet, and now want Rosencrantz and Guildenstern dead.

The play ends with representation of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s death, and Ambassador carrying to Horatio, notice of these has dead.

Space and time:

Play happens in many places, a place, Claudius’s kingdom, England, a ship on the way to England, England… It occurs in ample and open places and during a long time, some days, some weeks, it is not clear. The time is the present in the play, but for us it seems a tale, because the period is not our.

Recourses:

  Stoppard has used short phrases for the moment of confusion especially, long phrases for the thinking and reflection moments, where characters asked himself about life, destiny, death… important questions many times someone asked itself. In addition, he creates tongue twisted in these moments full of confusion and fear about their destinies.

Other way to see how end of main characters arrives are games, to see little by little games of questions and answers, and coins disappear each minute theirs death are more near.

Opinion:

   It is a very good play, that reflect the life, as we can’t control it, been pushed on our destinies without a manner to stop or change it. Because all is written and nothing can be erased, like a vicious circle, an spiral without end. A tragic life, with I am disagree, because nothing is predictable and for that we are the writhers of our own story, our own life. It’s sure always happens things out of our reach against that we must fight and surpass. But we decide what to do, when to do and how to do, and anyone can avoid it.

What a pity do not have read it after “Hamlet” by Shakespeare, what I do other day.