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Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead 501
Littérature GB, Civilisation GB (AN00501V)
Université Toulouse-Jean-Jaurès
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Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead
Introduction
→ written by Tom Stoppard, also known for Jumper (1972) and Arcadia (1993) → first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 24th August 1966
sparknotes/lit/rosencrantz/ youtube/watch?v=-t5UTLkfoUs (Benedict Cumberbatch) youtube/watch?v=bD9iaPUpTTw&t=29s (full play) youtube/watch?v=_qo-r0epuqM (trailer, Daniel Radcliffe)
Characters
Both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are meant to be “everyman” figures more or less average men who represent humanity in general.
Rosencrantz : He is decidelly the more easygoing of the two. Rosencrantz spends a great deal of the play confused by both what is happening around him and Guildenstern's reactions to their situation. Rosencrantz is pragmatic and seeks simple and efficient solutions to the pairs' problems rather than philosophical explanations of them, a trait that leads Guildenstern to believe that his friend is complacent (complaisant/auto-satisfaction) and unable/unwiling to think seriously and deeply. However his apparently straight forward attitude of pragmatism and breezy bewilderment (egarement jovial) peels back to reveal deeper feelings. Despite their frustrations and problems, Rosencrantz doesn't lose sight of Guildenstern feelings and he tries to cheer his friend by helping him to win several easy bets. Rosencrantz also tries to help Guildenstern in a more serious way by encouraging him to find personal happiness. Rosencrantz postitive attitude reaches his limits twice when he feels terror and realizes his own mortality. He is not the philosophical man like Guildenstern but he is nevertheless capable of sensitive thoughts.
Guildenstern : He is more anxious then Rosencrantz about the strange circumtances in which they find themselves. Unlike Rosencrantz, he desesperately wants to understand their situation and he tries to reason his way through the incidents that plague (tourmenter/tracasser) them. Guildenstern believes that there is a rational explanation for their situation, it leads him to sudden bursts of strong emotions as he grows increasingly frustrated by his inhability to make sense of the world around him. Guildenstern's angry despair reaches its peak near the end of the play when he and Rosencrantz are about to die without having understood anything, he attacks the Player in a fit of fury and hopelessness. Although Guildenstern is certainly angry at Rosencrantz, he quickly consoles and comforts his friend when the need arises. Guildenstern is capable of compassion and sympathic understanding. Although he often acts as he would rather be alone than be with Rosencrantz, Guildenstern's final speech in the play has him alone on stage turning to look for his friend, unable to tell which one of them is which.
The Player : He is the most mysterious of the play's characters. He seems to posses a far greater understanding of the events than does either Rosencrantz or Guildenstern. The Player's witty (spirituel) speeches ofthen hints at the possibility that he could reveal the truth if only Rosencrantz and Guildenstern knew how to ask the right questions. The Player's unexplained mastery of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's experiences extends to their final moments when he seems to have anticipated their deaths and the complicated mix of feelings they go through. Although the Player occasionally seems embarassed by his profession, he generally retains a haughty (hautaine) attitude, secure in his knowledge of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's fate. He also knows that his troupe fills an unaknowledged social need and will therefore always be in demand.
The Player's confidence is also apparent in his serious belief in the indentity of the theater in general and the Tragedian's performances. The Player's conbination of a shameful appeance with dazzling wit (esprit eblouissant), mysterious power and confidence makes him unlikely but fascinating ringmaster for the play's circus of confusion Tragedians : A group of traveling males actors. The tragedians specialize in melodramatic and sensationalistic performances. They're wiling to engage in sexual entertainement if the price is right.
Hamlet : The prince of Denmark and a childhood friend of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Hamlet is thrown into a deep personal crisis when his father dies and his uncle takes the throne and marries Hamlet's mother. Hamlet's strange behavious confuses the other characters, especially R and G.
Claudius : Hamlet's uncle and the new king of Denmark. Claudius is a sinister character who tries to exploit the friendship between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Hamlet to learn what Hamlet believes about the king's marriage to Gertrude
Gertrude : Hamlet's mother and the queen of Denmark. Although she has disgraced herself by marrying Claudius so soon after her husband death. Gertrude does seem to care about Hamlet's well-being and sincerely hopes that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can help her son
Polonius : A member of the Danish court and adviser to Claudius. Polonius is a shifty man, wiling to interrogate Hamlet and even spy on him to learn what he wants to know
Ophelia : The daughter of Polonius and Hamlet's former beloved. Ophelia spends the play in a state of shock and anguish as a result of Hamlet's bizzare conduct
Fortinbras : He is the former king of Norway. In Hamlet, King Claudius sends ambassadors to Norway in the hopes of staving off his invasion and they return with the news that Fortinbras will attack Poland but leave Denmark alone. At the end Fortinbras and his army enter with English ambassadors to announce that Claudius' supposed orders to execute Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have been carried out
Horatio : He was present on the battlefield when Hamlet's father defeated Fortinbras and attended Wittenberg University with prince Hamlet. He is often not identified as any specific court position but simply as Hamlet's friend.
Act I
sparknotes/lit/rosencrantz/section1/
Beginning of Play to Entrance of Tragedians
Rosencrantz watches as Guildenstern flips coins. Each time a coin lands on heads, Rosencrantz gets to keep it. Guildenstern can hardly believe that Rosencrantz has amassed so many coins, but the coins keep coming up heads. He speculates that the two have entered an alternate universe, in which normal laws of probability, time, and chance do not apply. Unlike Guildenstern, Rosencrantz contentedly continues watching (and winning), not bothering to worry about why the coins keep landing heads up. Guildenstern speculates about possible reasons for the run of heads. Guildenstern asks Rosencrantz to describe his earliest memory, but Rosencrantz forgets the question almost immediately. Guildenstern suddenly remembers that the pair has been “sent for.” Then he returns to his speculation about whether they have arrived somewhere in which the usual principles of the world do not apply. Frightened, he uses logic to reassure himself that they have not entered a parallel universe. But, still, he reasons that the coins have landed heads almost a hundred times, a sure sign that the laws of probability have ceased working. He hears music in the distance. As he
wants to see a play as payment. Hesitating, the Player says that they belong to the “blood, love and rhetoric school.” The Player then begins giving his actors directions, all while explaining to Guildenstern that he never removes his actor’s outfit or gets out of character. As the Player moves away, everyone realizes that he has had his foot on the flipped coin. Rosencrantz announces that the coin had actually landed tails, not heads, as was assumed. As he throws the coin to Guildenstern, the lights change.
The Tragedians’ unique brand of performance confuses the two men, even though the group clearly fulfills an unacknowledged social need. Both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern feel alternately attracted to and repulsed by the Player’s offers. Guildenstern gets particularly angry about the exploitation of the young Alfred Player seems much smarter than both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and he even appears to be aware of himself as a character within a play. He refers to the two men as “fellow artists,” even though Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are neither actors nor prostitutes. This label implies that the Player somehow realizes that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are actually two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which Stoppard has borrowed and transformed into the heroes of his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Later in the scene, the Player mentions that he never steps out of character: he is always on stage, and he is always acting. These references to plays, acting, and performance let Stoppard comment on his play as a play, a literary technique known as self-reference, or metafiction. When Guildenstern asks for a play as payment for the lost bet, the Player cannot name a play that his troupe knows how to perform. Instead, the Player claims that the Tragedians belong to the “blood, love and rhetoric school,” implying that the actors know how to perform violence and romance, as well as how to communicate. Although the Player seems to be earnestly and honestly assessing the actors’ range, he is also being somewhat ironic. All plays rely on rhetoric, because by their very nature plays consist of actors reciting lines. By speaking their lines, actors verbally communicate. In other words, all actors employ rhetoric. The Tragedians are thus both actors and prostitutes, which adds yet another level of commentary. Prostitutes perform sexual acts for money, but actors also perform for money. Stoppard implies that the difference between prostitutes and actors might be as small as types of things performed—and the fee received for such performances.
sparknotes/lit/rosencrantz/section3/
Change of Lights to End of Act
As the lights come up, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are now inside, watching as Ophelia rushes past, followed by Hamlet. Silently, Hamlet grabs Ophelia but quickly releases her and runs offstage. Ophelia runs off as well. Then Claudius and Gertrude enter. Speaking Shakespearean English, Claudius confuses Rosencrantz with Guildenstern, then explains that he wants their help in determining what is wrong with Hamlet, their childhood friend. Speaking lines taken directly from the play Hamlet, Claudius says that Hamlet has recently changed, perhaps as a result of his father’s death. Gertrude echoes Claudius’s comments. Also in Shakespearean English, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern promise to do whatever they can to figure out what is bothering Hamlet. Polonius enters to say that he wishes he knew why Hamlet has changed so drastically. Everybody but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern leaves. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try to figure out what has just happened. Guildenstern comforts Rosencrantz by telling him that they will soon understand why they are there and what they need to do to return home. They start discussing possible causes of Hamlet’s madness, essentially repeating the speeches made earlier by Claudius and Gertrude. Together, they decide to probe Hamlet using questions and answers. They practice, borrowing the scoring used in tennis, but succeed only in further confusing each other. Whether they are seriously interested in the answers to each other’s questions, or whether they want to beat the other one at the game, is not clear. Hamlet enters without speaking, then leaves. Immediately, Guildenstern suggests that Rosencrantz pretend to be Guildenstern, while Guildenstern pretends to be Hamlet so that they can practice the question-and-answer game. After a while, Rosencrantz
begins asking Guildenstern questions about what has recently transpired at Elsinore, the court of Denmark. They conclude confused, because Hamlet seems to have lots of reasons to be upset: his father has recently died under murky circumstances, and his uncle has usurped the throne to become king and married his mother, Gertrude.
Hamlet comes back in, confusing his companion Polonius with riddles. He excitedly greets Rosencrantz and Guildenstern but mistakes one for the other as the stage goes dark.
Whereas Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a tragedy with occasional moments of comedy, Stoppard’s play is a comedy with occasional moments of tragedy. But both plays attempt to portray the complexities of life. According to the plots of both plays, Claudius has summoned Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to help with Hamlet. But, as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern lucidly realize, Hamlet has many reasons to be upset: he has just lost his father, the crown (Claudius has become king of Denmark, even though Hamlet is of age and capable of governing), and his mother (she remarried very quickly after the death of Hamlet’s father). Nobody, including the men themselves, seems able to tell Rosencrantz from Guildenstern, which is funny but also sad, as it comments on the difficulties of establishing a firm identity in a chaotic world. Like life, the two plays have moments of joy and sadness, and neither is wholly funny nor entirely tragic. Stoppard takes lines directly from Hamlet as a way of emphasizing the relationship between his play and Shakespeare’s play. On the one hand, without Hamlet,Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead would not exist. Stoppard borrows heavily from Shakespeare’s text, including the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and he incorporates lines verbatim from Shakespeare into his own work. Whenever Rosencrantz and Guildenstern speak to a character from Hamlet, they switch from modern English to Shakespearean English. Although they do not notice the difference, we as readers are meant to pick up on the change in language. On the other hand, Stoppard’s versions of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are very different from the two men found in Hamlet. Whereas Shakespeare’s portrays the two men as goons with little personality, Stoppard gives the men individual characteristics and far more lines than in the original play. They think, feel, joke, gamble, and reason. Stoppard lets Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try to function independently from both Claudius, their king, and Shakespeare, their original creator. Stoppard wants to emphasize Hamlet as not solely the greatest work of drama in the English language but as a play capable of speaking to us on a human, visceral level.
Act II
sparknotes/lit/rosencrantz/section4/ Beginning of Act to Entrance of Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, and Ophelia
Hamlet claims to be mad only when the wind blows from a certain direction, a statement that thoroughly puzzles Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Polonius comes in to say that the Tragedians have arrived, and Hamlet and Polonius leave. osencrantz angrily states that they have learned nothing from talking to Hamlet, because Hamlet beat them at their question-and-answer game. While Hamlet answered just three questions, he asked twenty-seven. The answers he gave were alternatively sarcastic and enigmatic, so Rosencrantz and Guildenstern learned nothing and thus cannot conclude whether Hamlet is actually mad. They then spend several minutes trying to figure out the direction of the wind, with Rosencrantz playfully offering to lick Guildenstern’s finger. Guildenstern angrily passes on Rosencrantz’s offer, then muses that the pair are simply cogs in fate’s machine. Rosencrantz flips a coin but does not tell Guildenstern whether the coin was heads or tails. Polonius enters with Hamlet and the Tragedians. Hamlet announces that tomorrow the Tragedians will be performing a play, The Murder of Gonzago. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern cryptically greet the Player with a series of one-liners about words, but the Player irritably responds by accusing the pair of abandoning his group on the side of the road.
scene iv, of Hamlet, in which Hamlet kills Polonius. As the Player narrates, Gonzago’s Lucianus mistakenly kills the king’s adviser, and the king decides to send his nephew to England in the company of two spies. The spies and Lucianus arrive in England by ship, only to discover that Lucianus has vanished and that the letter that the king gave them to give to the English king has been replaced with a letter ordering their own deaths.
Rosencrantz stops the rehearsal. The two spies in the play are dressed in the same clothes as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Rosencrantz thinks he recognizes them but cannot quite place them, ultimately deciding that the spies have mistaken him for someone else. The Player tells Guildenstern that the play features eight deaths in all, and Guildenstern grills the Player about presuming to represent death on the stage. The Player responds by claiming that people only believe in stage deaths, not real death, and says that audiences believe only what they expect to see. As he makes this remark, the spies slowly die, and Guildenstern says that death is not something that can be acted. The Player throws covers over the bodies of the dead spies, and the stage goes black.
Rosencrantz becomes more and more upset with their circumstances, and his anger clouds his judgment. He cannot understand why people keep entering and exiting, and he despairs over trying to help Hamlet, who walks by muttering the “To be or not to be” soliloquy from the play Hamlet. Rather than trusting his instincts and going to his troubled friend, Rosencrantz merely equivocates back and forth, hashing out the pros and cons of helping Hamlet. His anger and confusion prevent him from doing anything meaningful or significant, and he misses an easy opportunity to cheer up his friend. A few minutes later, after Guildenstern tells him to be quiet, Rosencrantz attempts to actually do something: he grabs a person whom he believes to be Gertrude and tries to make a joke. While Rosencrantz attempts to dispel his confusion through action, Guildenstern tries to use reason to figure out what has happened. But, as with Rosencrantz, Guildenstern remains utterly confused. Guildenstern cannot understand the Player’s cryptic comments relating to which characters live and which characters die. He resists the idea that some things are fated to occur, even though neither he nor Rosencrantz questions how they were magically transported from the road into the interior of Elsinore in Act I. Whereas Guildenstern wants to know the hows and whys, the Player affects an “it is what it is” attitude. Likewise, the Player explains that language is inherently ambiguous and only has real meaning when coupled with action. Neither acting nor talking is enough. Through his commentary on the dumb show, the Player urges the pair to stop talking, to stop equivocating, and to start making choices, or acting, in the nontheatrical sense of the word. Art directly mirrors life when the spies enter dressed as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Upon seeing the spies, Rosencrantz stops the rehearsal, because he thinks he recognizes the actors. He does not, however, give any sign that he recognizes the actors precisely because they resemble Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He merely notes that the coats look similar when he reaches out to touch the clothing of the spy that looks like him. Although Rosencrantz wants art to have a story, complete with a beginning, middle, and end, Guildenstern prefers art to resemble life as closely as possible. That the spies bother Rosencrantz and not Guildenstern demonstrates the great extent to which Guildenstern has gotten his wish: the dumb show has become their life. The Murder of Gonzago, the play that the Tragedians are practicing, depicts the recent events at Elsinore, as Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and the reader learn from the Player’s commentary. The Player reminds Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that life, like the kind of art that Rosencrantz wants, has a beginning, middle, and end. He synthesizes the pair’s two different definitions of art by telling Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that The Murder of Gonzago ends in eight deaths. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end, as does life, and, like life, which itself always ends in death, the play too ends in death.
sparknotes/lit/rosencrantz/section6/
Change of Lights to End of Act
In the darkness, shouts are heard, indicating that Claudius has responded angrily to the Tragedians’ production. The lights slowly come back on. It is dawn, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are lying
on the floor in the same position and costumes as the dead spies were moments ago. The pair tries to figure out which way is east, and Guildenstern predicts that people are about to begin streaming into the room and confusing them. Immediately thereafter, Claudius calls from offstage and then enters, telling the men that Hamlet has killed Polonius. Claudius asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to find Hamlet and Polonius’s body. They struggle to decide what to do, afraid to leave each other and unsure of where to go spots Hamlet in the wings. Guildenstern decides they should trap Hamlet, and the two men tie their belts together and hold them across one side of the stage. Rosencrantz’s pants fall as he removes his belt. Hamlet enters on the other side of the stage, dragging Polonius’s body, and quickly exits when he sees Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They call Hamlet back in, and he returns alone, refusing to tell them what he has done with Polonius’s body. Hamlet accuses them of being Claudius’s pawns. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern walk with Hamlet to one side of the stage, where they see Claudius about to enter. Following Hamlet’s lead, they bow their respects, only to have Hamlet sneak away from them as they do. Hamlet has tricked them into bowing in the opposite direction of Claudius, who enters behind Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Claudius urges them to bring in Hamlet, but, before they have to act, Hamlet arrives escorted by guards. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern discuss their situation and the fact that they now have to escort Hamlet to England. Hamlet and the soldier enter. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern discuss the changing of the seasons, noting that warmth and light seem to be draining away. In the distance, they hear the music of the Tragedians. Hamlet asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to go ahead of him, and Guildenstern wonders if they should go. Rosencrantz tells him that they may as well continue since they have already come so far, saying that anything may still happen. The stage goes black.
The action in this section of the play emphasizes the Player’s earlier comment about death within plays: characters who are written to die must die. Readers familiar with the play Hamlet know that Hamlet kills Polonius, because Shakespeare, the author of the play, wrote the plot that way. As a character, Hamlet may or may not have killed Polonius as a result of his madness. But, ultimately, his motivations do not matter in Stoppard’s work. Hamlet must kill Polonius, because that is what Shakespeare’s stage direction says he must do. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern get excited about the murder of Polonius because it gives them a chance to actually attempt to do something. Guildenstern does not contemplate the reasons for the murder or try to use logic, perhaps because he has taken the Player’s earlier call to action to heart. First, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern literally march around the stage. Then, they decide to set a trap for Hamlet using their belts. But their plan leads only to slapstick: Hamlet enters with the body, then exits quickly. Then, tricked by Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern bow to emptiness when Claudius enters from another side of the stage. By the end of the act, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern cannot do anything, for Hamlet has been captured by guards. As usual, their misunderstanding of the situation causes them to miss their opportunity to make a choice that might cause an impact or affect some kind of change. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have minor roles in Hamlet and major roles in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Earlier in Act II, Guildenstern expressed his desire for art to imitate life. When the lights come up, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are positioned exactly as the spies were positioned during the rehearsal for The Murder of Gonzago, the play within a play. But, as when Rosencrantz vaguely recognized the spies, here Guildenstern laments the fact that now that the men are awake, people will soon begin entering, asking them to do things and making the men feel very confused, all of which has been happening throughout the entire play. Guildenstern’s comments are meant to be funny but should also remind readers of Stoppard’s literary project: he wanted to see what would happen if he removed two characters from Hamlet and gave them their own play.
Act III
sparknotes/lit/rosencrantz/section7/
Beginning of the Act until the Letter Switch
But neither he nor Guildenstern remembers who has the letter for the English king. As in Act I, they decide to assume roles and act in order to discover or remember something. They cannot imagine a future, but neither can they recall the past. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exist solely in a never- ending present, a state of mind that partly explains their constant confusion. They cannot learn from their mistakes, nor can they conceive of acting in any way other than what they have done before. When confused, they gamble or role-play. Each moment exists separately from the one that came before or the one that is to come, so that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are constantly being surprised by their situations.
sparknotes/lit/rosencrantz/section8/
Morning until the End of the Play
Rosencrantz watches the morning dawn and says that things could have turned out worse than they have. The two men hear the sounds of the Tragedians’ music. Rosencrantz walks around the stage, trying to find the source of the music. He soon realizes that it is coming from the Tragedians, inside the barrels. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sit and listen until the song comes to an end, at which point the Player and his group emerge. The Player reveals that their play angered Claudius to such an extent that they had to escape in costumes and stow away onboard the ship. Guildenstern tells the Player that they are free now that things are out of their control, although he and the Player agree that their freedom is of a very limited nature. As they speak, Hamlet walks down to the audience and spits in their direction. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern discuss Hamlet’s condition and strange behavior and try to sum up their situation. This summation frustrates Rosencrantz, who laments that they experience only disconnected scenes without any overarching narrative. As he finishes, pirates charge the ship. The scene erupts into chaos, and Hamlet, the Player, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern run around the stage before leaping into the three barrels. The lights and sounds slowly die out. When the lights come back on, only two barrels remain. Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and the Player emerge from the barrels and notice that Hamlet is missing. Guildenstern despairs over this new development, and his irritation causes him to snap at Rosencrantz, who tries to appease him by offering him a must-win bet. Guildenstern knocks Rosencrantz down, lashing out in anguish over the pointlessness of their situation and life in general. Rosencrantz responds by saying that they need to carry on. The pair begins to act out their meeting with the English king anew, and this time Guildenstern opens the letter and discovers that it has been substituted for a new letter, which orders the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The Player summons the rest of the Tragedians from the barrel. The Tragedians form an intimidating circle around Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who still cannot quite believe what has happened. The Player tells them that death is common, and Guildenstern responds furiously, denouncing the Player’s belief that death onstage is equivalent to real death. Guildenstern grabs a knife from the Player and stabs him. The Player slowly dies while the Tragedians watch. Guildenstern claims that the Player’s death represents nothing more than the fulfillment of his inexplicable fate. The Tragedians applaud. The Player gets up and says that his performance was only adequate, before telling Guildenstern that the only deaths people believe in are stage deaths. The Player shows Guildenstern that the knife is fake. As he dies, the lights dim and the Player says that death is common and that light vanishes with life. Guildenstern replies that real death is not theatrical but is simply the absence of anything. Rosencrantz slowly stops clapping. The stage is silent. Rosencrantz realizes the end is near and wonders how they were caught up in this terrible situation. He asks if they might remain on the ship and just avoid their fates, then he gives way to anguish, saying that they have done nothing wrong. But he also asks Guildenstern if they did in fact go wrong somewhere. Tellingly, neither man can remember. Rosencrantz announces that he is glad to be done with it all, and he vanishes from the stage. Guildenstern does not notice, and instead he tries to recall their actions from the beginning, believing that they must have had an opportunity to
prevent all that has befallen them. Guildenstern realizes he is alone and begins crying out for his friend, but he is unable to remember if he is Guildenstern or Rosencrantz. He says that they will be better off the next time around, and he vanishes, leaving the stage in momentary darkness. The stage lights come up to reveal the corpses of Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, and Laertes on the ground. An English ambassador announces that they have carried out Claudius’s orders and executed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Horatio laments that Claudius ordered no such thing and begins his account of how the tragedy of Shakespeare’s play unfolded. As he speaks, the lights descend and music rises, drowning him out.
As characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become more sympathetic as the play goes on. In Act I, their sheer inability to focus on a topic or come to a conclusion distances the men from the reader. In Act II, they really want to help their old friend Hamlet, but they also mindlessly obey Claudius, who asks them to capture Hamlet after he kills Polonius. Rosencrantz also fails to comfort Hamlet when he spies Hamlet walking around, muttering to himself about whether to commit suicide. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not judge Hamlet for the murder, but neither do they honor Polonius by trying to figure out why he was killed. In Act III, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have the opportunity to save Hamlet from death: they could destroy the letter ordering his execution. That they fail to destroy the letter is largely due to their inability to understand the world. The other events of the final act make Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem pathetic, which might elicit readers’ sympathies. After all, at the end, Rosencrantz practically begs to be spared. When he receives no answer from offstage, he gives up and walks off. Guildenstern too mourns the fact that he does not understand why they, two ordinary men who did not hurt anyone, have been fated to die. As the men become more sympathetic, they more fully inhabit their “everyman” roles. In other words, as readers begin to recognize elements of themselves in the men’s plight, and as they see the connections between the play and real life, sympathy for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern begins to grow. Stoppard forces readers to interpret or visualize the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He does not portray the men being killed, so readers must first decide for themselves whether the men are really dead and then imagine what those deaths looked like. As the Player explains, people only believe in deaths they witness on the stage. Having not witnessed the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, according to the Player’s logic, people will not believe in the men’s deaths men themselves seem to waiver between believing in their deaths as decreed by Hamlet’s letter and believing that they will not actually die. As each man leaves the stage, he implies that he will do better next time, as if he at least believes he will be given another chance to live. As the Player points out in Act II, when a character is written to die, that character must die without exception. Ultimately, though, readers must decide for themselves what happens offstage to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Unlike that of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet’s fate is portrayed on stage. Those familiar with the play Hamlet know that he disappears from the ship and goes back to Elsinore. Although readers do not witness his travels or death, they do see his corpse in the final scene of Stoppard’s play. He dies, as do Claudius, Gertrude, and Laertes. The play’s final words belong to Horatio, a character from Hamlet, who sums up the story of the prince of Denmark and the events at Elsinore. Stoppard ends with Shakespeare’s words rather than with his own as a way of acknowledging the importance of the earlier work. The entire play functions as a metaphor for the absurdity of life. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern constantly make ridiculous comments, and the men are wholly unable to understand their specific circumstances or the larger forces at work in the world. In the play, as in life, things often happen for no real reason. People struggle to develop identities, to imbue their lives with meaning, and to do something significant, but, in the end, everybody dies. We want a world in which the good are rewarded and the bad punished, but that world simply does not exist. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead points to horrific truths: the world is chaotic, life is random, and the possibility of achieving success is slight.
II. Stoppard’s theatre and dramatic tradition
a) Beyond realism When he wrote this play, realistic conventions. Proscenium arch stage and the presence of curtains as the fourth walls structures the stage. Microcosm that represents the whole world outside (macrocosme). Project characters that look like normal human beings, you can relate to them. Dialogue also has to be realistic. Stoppard’s play is a reaction against realism, insisted that theatre is about representations and not simulations.
Realistic conventions : The stage should be the mirror of life experiences Space can be indicated by gesture All the physical elements (plot, directions) have to be obvious on stage Doubling, one actor for several roles Give informations directly to the audience
b) Plays within “ a play within the play “ in Hamlet. Embedded spectatorship and plays. Self-counscious of what is happening, fascination. Reckoning th truth. Two different levels : between reality and illusion : create entertainement by overplaying, absurd.
c) Modernism and the Absurd Georges Orwell → post modernism Rejection of 19th C literary styles. Especially the constuction of poetic language. Full of allusions and references (parody). This influence on the play is represent trough the disruptive effect, intellectual difficulty/complexity (p52-54), individual wandering on who they are (purpose of life and existence), theater and language (echoes to each other, parody to each other, p58). The theater of the absurd, not a linear/logical result of actions but a circle one. Ludicruous and pessimistic view → facts make the great anxiety of death unjustified. General distrust of theories
d) Postmodernism A branch of Modernism p112-114 → language of proses, modern and rethorical
III, Metatextuality : redefinning tragedy and comedy as quest for meaning
a) In the margins of Hamlet b) Intertextuality c) The Quest for Meaning d) Metatextuality Define the text's self-referentiality, the text references its creative process and/or discusses its own genre
Extract p42-50 : Opening of Act I
→ Discussing the role of the author → Elements of the original play (Two Elizabethans) → function of theater/drama in the concept of determination
It's a comic discussion of determisn as a metaohysical concept. Faith has specific names in this passage. Theater becomes the instrument ti discuss this notion of determinism. Re-definied the notion of faith. Use drama/theater as a playful instrument of knowledge.
Playful aspect of the play : put us a state of confusion. Manipulating the characters and the audience. Protagonists : main characters of a play
Dialogue with the past play, create a new theatrical object. Not only bring confusion, it is a creative instrument. Stoppard is bringing new perspective about the role of characters, their purpose. Purposefulness
False familiarity of the opening of the play : barren stage (cover of the book) : scene nue/vide light on the characters and everything around is black : chiaroscuro Interne focalisation : focus on the characters No notion of space and the limits of stage refusing access to the plot and the story
Relation between game and theater : you're supposed to play on rules, metaphor about what theater really is. Mise en abyme du theatre et de ses caracteristiques. Summarize the plot in a metaphorical way. Line 1 to 60 → very long expose scene/ opening scene focus on gesture : interlude, dumb show mock the characters, play with the characters and classical convention (absurd situation) but at the same time it is not the first time that two minor characters opens a play (Hamlet original play)
Paradoxical opening scene : action that lead to no actions, nothing isted of doing it again. Repetition Proleptic effect / analepting effect : foreshadow the fate of the characters, already said in the title
repeat of heads and tail : they're going to loose their heads in the end “ Guil : We're still finding out feet Player : I should concentrate on not losing your heads ” (p144) They're gambling of this, loosing or winning is just a matter of chance.
Cross purposes p44 : they talked about two different things (cross purposes). Concentrate on the game and the other is speculating about all the times they had heads.
“seventy six love” → familiar way of speaking, tennis reference, register very different than the rest of the play (dialect)
long stage directions at the beginning : Timelessness : no time and no space Ros and Guil are symetrical/complementary : place on the stage and description on the stage
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead 501
Matière: Littérature GB, Civilisation GB (AN00501V)
Université: Université Toulouse-Jean-Jaurès
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