| Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead | |
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Grove Press, 1968 edition |
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| Written by | Tom Stoppard |
| Characters | Rosencrantz Guildenstern The Player Alfred Hamlet Tragedians King Claudius Gertrude Polonius Ophelia Horatio Fortinbras Soldiers, courtiers, and musicians |
| Date premiered | 26 August 1966 |
| Place premiered | Edinburgh Fringe Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Original language | English |
| Subject | |
| Genre | Tragic comedy |
| Setting | Shakespeare's Hamlet |
| IBDB profile | |
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is an absurdist, existentialist tragicomedy by Tom Stoppard, first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966.[1] The play expands upon the exploits of two minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet, the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The action of Stoppard's play takes place mainly "in the wings" of Shakespeare's, with brief appearances of major characters from Hamlet who enact fragments of the original's scenes. Between these episodes the two protagonists voice their confusion at the progress of events of which—occurring onstage without them in Hamlet—they have no direct knowledge.
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The main source of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is Shakespeare's Hamlet. Comparisons have also been drawn to Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot,[2] for the presence of two central characters who almost appear to be two halves of a single character. 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.
The title is taken directly from the final scene of Shakespeare's Hamlet. In earlier scenes, Prince Hamlet ordered the deaths of the two messengers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. By the end of Shakespeare's play, Prince Hamlet, Laertes, Ophelia, Polonius, King Claudius and Gertrude all lie dead. An ambassador from England arrives to bluntly report "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead" (Hamlet. Act V, Scene II, line 411) and so they join all the stabbed, poisoned, and drowned key characters. By the end of Hamlet, Horatio is the only main figure left alive.
The play concerns the misadventures and musings of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters from William Shakespeare's Hamlet who are childhood friends of the prince, focusing on their actions with the events of Hamlet as background. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is structured as the inverse of Hamlet; the title characters are the leads, not supporting 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 discover Hamlet's motives and to plot against him. Hamlet, however, mocks them derisively and outwits them, so that they, rather than he, are executed in the end. Thus, from Rosencrantz's and Guildenstern's perspective, the action in Hamlet is largely nonsensically comical.
The two characters, brought into being within the puzzling universe of Stoppard's play by an act of the playwright's creation, have generally interchangeable, yet periodically unique, identities. Thus, the two often confuse their own names, as do the other characters when referring to them. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern 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, yet they depart from these ideas as quickly as they come to them. At times Guildenstern appears to be more enlightened than Rosencrantz; at times both of them appear to be equally confounded by the events occurring around them.
After the two characters witness a performance of The Murder of Gonzago—the story within a story in the play Hamlet—they find themselves on a boat taking prince Hamlet to England with the troupe that staged the performance. They are intended to give the English king a message telling him to kill Hamlet. Instead, Hamlet discovers this and switches the letter for another, telling the king to kill Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. During the voyage, the two are ambushed by pirates and lose their prisoner, Hamlet, before resigning themselves to their fate and presumably dying thereafter.
Major themes of the play include existentialism, free will vs. determinism, the search for value, and the impossibility of certainty. As with many of Tom Stoppard's works, the play has a love for cleverness and language. It treats language as a confounding system fraught with ambiguity.
The play opens with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern betting on coin flips. Rosencrantz, who bets heads each time, wins ninety-two flips in a row. The extreme unlikeliness of this event according to the laws of probability leads Guildenstern to suggest that they may be "within un-, sub- or supernatural forces". The reader learns why they are where they are: the King has sent for them. Guildenstern theorizes on the nature of reality, focusing on how an event becomes increasingly real as more people witness it.
A troupe of Tragedians arrives and offers the two men a show. They seem capable only of performances involving bloodbaths. The next two scenes are from the plot of Hamlet. The first, involving Hamlet and Ophelia, takes place off-stage in the Shakespeare. The second is taken directly from Hamlet, and is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's first appearance in that play. Here the Danish king and queen, Claudius and Gertrude, ask the two to discover the nature of Hamlet's recent madness. The royal couple demonstrate an inability to distinguish the two courtiers from one another, as indeed do the characters themselves to their irritation.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern attempt to practice for their meeting with the Prince by one pretending to be Hamlet and the other asking him questions, but they glean no new information from it. The act closes with another scene from Hamlet in which they finally meet the Prince face to face.
The act opens with the end of the conversation between Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Hamlet. Guildenstern tries to look on the bright side, while Rosencrantz makes it clear that the pair had made no progress, that Hamlet had entirely outwitted them.
The Player returns to the stage. He is angry that the pair had not earlier stayed to watch their play because, without an audience, his Tragedians are nothing. He tells them to stop questioning their existence because, upon examination, life appears too chaotic to comprehend. The Player, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern lose themselves in yet another illogical conversation that demonstrates the limits of language. The Player leaves in order to prepare for his production of the "Murder of Gonzago", set to be put on in front of Hamlet and the King and Queen.
The royal couple enters and begins another short scene taken directly from Hamlet: they ask about the duo's encounter with the Prince, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern inform them about his interest in the Tragedians' production. After the king and queen leave, the partners contemplate their job. They see Hamlet walk by but fail to seize the opportunity to interview him.
The Tragedians return and perform their dress rehearsal of The Murder of Gonzago. The play moves beyond the scope of what the reader sees in Hamlet; characters resembling Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are seen taking a sea voyage and meeting their deaths at the hands of English courtiers, foreshadowing their true fate. Rosencrantz does not quite make the connection, but Guildenstern is frightened into a verbal attack on the Tragedians' inability to capture the real essence of death. The stage becomes dark.
When the stage is once again visible, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern lie in the same position as had the actors portraying their deaths. The partners are upset that they have become the pawns of the royal couple. Claudius enters again and tells them to find where Hamlet has hidden Polonius' corpse. After many false starts they eventually find Hamlet, who leaves with the King.
Rosencrantz is delighted to find that his mission is complete, but Guildenstern knows it is not over. Hamlet enters, speaking with a Norwegian soldier. Rosencrantz decides that he is happy to accompany Hamlet to England because it means freedom from the orders of the Danish court. Guildenstern understands that wherever they go, they are still trapped in this world.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern find themselves on a ship that has already set sail. The audience is led to believe that the pair has no knowledge of how they got there. At first, they try to determine whether they are still alive. Eventually, they recognize that they are not dead and are on board a boat. They remember that Claudius had given them a letter to deliver to England. After some brief confusion over who actually has the letter, they find it and end up opening it. They realize that Claudius has asked for Hamlet to be killed. While Rosencrantz seems hesitant to follow their orders now, Guildenstern convinces him that they are not worthy of interfering with fate and with the plans of kings. The stage becomes black and, presumably, the characters go to sleep. Hamlet switches the letter with one he has written himself, an act which takes place off stage in Hamlet.
The pair discovers that the Tragedians are hidden ('impossibly', according to the stage directions) in several barrels on deck. They are fleeing Denmark, because their play has offended Claudius. When Rosencrantz complains that there is not enough action, pirates attack. Hamlet, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern and the Player all hide in separate barrels. The lights dim.
When the lights come on again, Hamlet has vanished (in Hamlet it's reported that he was kidnapped by pirates from the ship). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern panic, and re-read the letter to find that it now calls for them to be put to death instead of the prince. Guildenstern cannot understand why he and Rosencrantz are so important as to necessitate their executions.
The Player tells Guildenstern that all paths end in death. Guildenstern snaps and draws the Player's dagger from his belt, shouting at him that his portrayals of death do not do justice to the real thing. He stabs the Player and the Player appears to die. Guildenstern honestly believes he has killed the Player. Seconds later, the Tragedians begin to clap and the Player stands up and brushes himself off, revealing the knife to be a theatrical one with a retractable blade. The Tragedians then act out the deaths from the final scene of Hamlet.
The lighting shifts so that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the only ones visible. Rosencrantz still does not understand why they must die. Still, he resigns himself to his fate and his character disappears. Guildenstern wonders when he passed the point where he could have stopped the series of events that has brought him to this point. He disappears as well. The final scene features the last few lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet. The Ambassador from England announces that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
Metatheatre is a central structural element of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Metatheatrical scenes, that is, scenes that are staged as plays, dumb shows, or commentaries on dramatic theory and practice, are prominent in both Stoppard's play and Shakespeare's original tragedy Hamlet. In Hamlet, metatheatrical elements include the Player's speech (2.2), Hamlet's advice to the Players (3.2), and the meta-play "The Mousetrap" (3.3). Since Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are characters from Hamlet itself, Stoppard's entire play can be considered a piece of metatheatre. However, this first level of metatheatre is deepened and complicated by frequent briefer and more intense metatheatrical episodes; see, for example, the Players' pantomimes of Hamlet in Acts 2 and 3, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern's obsessive role-playing, and the Player's "death" in Act 3. Bernardina da Silveira Pinheiro observes that Stoppard uses metatheatrical devices to produce a "parody" of the key elements of Shakespeare's Hamlet that includes foregrounding two minor characters considered "nonentities" in the original tragedy.[5] Pinheiro notes that Stoppard alters the focus of Hamlet's "play-within-a-play" so that it reveals the ultimate fate of the tragicomedy's anti-heroes, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. However, this alteration ultimately culminates in an absurdist anti-climax that runs counter to the effect of "The Mousetrap" in Hamlet, which effectively reveals the guilt of the King. While Rosencrantz and Guildenstern confront a mirror image of their future deaths in the metadramatic spectacle staged by the Players, they fail to recognize themselves in it or gain any insight into their identities or purpose.[5]
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 on August 24, 1966, by the Oxford Theatre Group. The play debuted in London with a National Theatre production directed by Derek Goldby and designed by Desmond Heeley at the Old Vic. It premiered on April 11, 1967, with John Stride as Rosencrantz, Edward Petherbridge as Guildenstern, Graham Crowden as the Player, and John McEnery as Hamlet. [6] In 2011 the play was revived in a production directed by Sir Trevor Nunn, opening at Chichester Festival Theatre before transferring to the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London's West End (June-August 2011). It starred Samuel Barnett and Jamie Parker. Tim Curry was originally scheduled to appear, but dropped out due to ill health and was replaced by Chris Andrew Mellon.
The Royal National Theatre production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern had a year-long Broadway run from October 9, 1967, through October 19, 1968, initially at the Alvin Theatre, then transferring to the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on January 8, 1968. The production, which was Stoppard's first on Broadway, totalled eight previews and 420 performances.[1] It was directed by Derek Goldby and designed by Desmond Heeley and starred Paul Hecht as the Player, Brian Murray as Rosencrantz and John Wood as Guildenstern. The play was nominated for eight Tony Awards, and won four: Best Play, Scenic and Costume Design, and Producer; the director and the three leading actors were nominated for Tonys, but did not win.[7] The play also won Best Play from the New York Drama Critics Circle in 1968, and Outstanding Production from the Outer Critics Circle in 1969.
A 1971 college production was coincidentally also the first college performance by later-acclaimed Shakespearean actor Richard Hauenstein. He played Guildenstern, with David Massey as Rosencrantz and Jack Harris as the Player King. The production was directed by West Hill.
A revival in Burbank, California during the early 1980s featured Matthew Faison as Guildenstern and Lane Davies as Rosencrantz.
The play had a 1987 New York revival by Roundabout Theatre at the Union Square Theatre,[1] directed by Robert Carsen and featuring John Wood as the Player, Stephen Lang as Rosencrantz and John Rubinstein as Guildenstern. It ran for 40 performances from April 29 to June 28, 1987.
Several times since 1995, the American Shakespeare Center has mounted repertories that included both Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, with the same actors performing the same roles in each; in their 2001 and 2009 seasons the two plays were "directed, designed, and rehearsed together to make the most out of the shared scenes and situations".[8]
The play was adapted for a film released in February 1990, with screenplay and direction by Stoppard. The motion picture is Stoppard's only film directing credit: "[I]t began to become clear that it might be a good idea if I did it myself—at least the director wouldn't have to keep wondering what the author meant. It just seemed that I'd be the only person who could treat the play with the necessary disrespect."[9] The cast included Gary Oldman as Rosencrantz, Tim Roth as Guildenstern, 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.
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