Author: Tom Stoppard-British playwright who was knighted
in 1997. He was born in Czechoslovakia
and left for Britain during the Nazi era.
This play was his first play to gain recognition.
Setting: The
beginning is set in a place “without any visible character.” Act II is set in Hamlet at the palace. Act III is set on a boat on the way to
England.
Significant Characters:
·
Rosencrantz:
the rather dim one out of the two friends. He doesn’t seem to know much and prefers to
live blissfully in ignorance, however, he also has more of the emotional
feelings between the two of them. He
often confuses his name with Guildenstern’s name and can’t remember who is
who. He also remains fascinated by dull
things such as flipping a coin again and again.
·
Guildenstern: the smarter one of the pair. He has some intelligence, but whenever he
tries to say something, he shows that he only knows parts of things because the
things he mentions are only half-correct.
He often worries about things that he can’t control and tries to reason
through everything. He is aware that he
doesn’t know and can’t remember things, but all he can do is worry about
it.
·
Player: the leader of the acting group. He encounters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
multiple times and engages in bets and conversation. They each try to take advantage of each
other. He basically directs the play
since we discover that part of what Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do are part of
the play that the players put on for Hamlet.
Plot: Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern are two friends traveling. They aren’t sure what they are
supposed to be doing or where they are going.
They just know they are traveling and that they were woken up by a
messenger. They have no direction
because they left their guide behind in a rush to get to wherever they are
supposed to go. In the opening of the
play, they are flipping coins and every single one ends up heads. This is abnormal and Rosencrantz seems
fascinated by it while Guildenstern tries to find an explanation. The two talk to each other basically wasting
time. They play a questions game, try to
figure out what they are doing and flip the coin. Then, they encounter the players. The Player and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
make bets. We learn that the players are
more than players and offer Alfred to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to pay for
their debt. However, the two just want a
play to be put on, which is what the Player wanted too.
In Act
II, the two are at Elsinore, having just arrived. They meet with the king who tells them to
figure out why Hamlet is acting crazy.
They go about trying to figure out how to do that and can’t figure it
out. Hamlet goes up to talk to them and
they don’t pick up anything about him.
The two follow the directions of the king, but don’t know how to do
anything by themselves. Nothing moves
forward because of what they do, but only because of what happens to them. Hamlet kills Polonius and the King sends them
on a trip to England. At first, the two
enjoy their time on the ship but then Hamlet escapes when the “pirates”
attack. They discover that the letter
the King originally gave them now orders for them to be killed upon
arrival. They discuss with the Player
the meaning of death and then they just disappear. At the end, the messenger arrives at Elsinore
to tell everyone that Hamlet is dead.
Motifs: The motif of “we’re all just actors on the stage
that is the world” is present throughout this play just like in Hamlet. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are often aware
that they are just on a stage. They go
to the edges of the stage and look out at the audience or do things to provoke the
audience. They also don’t seem to be in
control of their own lives-they are thrust from scene to scene without warning
and just go about doing whatever they are told.
Another motif is the confusion of identities. This goes along with the actor motif. Both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern mix up
their own names and the other characters in the play can never seem to keep
them apart either. They are like actors
with no true identity, just whatever identity they are given.
Style: This play
is written in the absurdist style but also takes influences from Hamlet.
There is a blending of subject matter and styles between the two plays,
which sometimes creates confusion. There
isn’t a lot of descriptive detail, just the interactions between the
characters. The play also feels like it doesn’t
actually “go” anywhere since Rosencrantz and Guildenstern don’t know what they
are doing and can’t make their own decisions.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern speak in the modern English language, but
the characters from Hamlet use the
old Shakespearean language. Many of the
lines that the Hamlet characters use
are exactly from the play and Stoppard just puts them into his play. This creates a blending of plays, with events
from one becoming part of the events of the other. Some events that happen in Hamlet become the stage directions in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and some
events that happen in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
turn out to have occurred on stage in Hamlet.
Theme: The world is a confusing place and events are
often not in a person’s control so the only thing one can do is take advantage
of the situation.
Explanation: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are thrust into
a world of confusion where they don’t know where they are going, why they are
going or what they are supposed to do.
They can only keep going with what everyone else tells them to do
because they are just pawns in the whole story of Hamlet. They don’t have
control over what happens because, as they are aware of, they are merely actors
on the stage. The many stage directions
Stoppard uses helps show how little control the characters have. Everything must be done exactly as it was
written. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern never
really take advantage of their life and do anything with their life, so they
waste time as they get closer to their deaths.
Their final journey on the boat represents their life-they can move
around on it but are always going in a direction towards their death. They are never able to break out of that path
and live a satisfying life.
Quotes:
“…for all the compasses in the world, there’s only one
direction, and time is its only measure.” (72)
This was a major motif in this novel. The idea of direction and whether
everyone has a choice in their life path and what direction they are going in
or if their path is already determined and you can have some choice, but only a
little bit like on a boat. Just like
this novel, the only thing that really passes is time and Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern have one direction to go in, but they don’t know where they are so
they can’t figure out which way to go.
“…we are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity
what it lacks in style.” (77)
Just like in Hamlet, there is a motif dealing with the
language and the importance of it.
Through Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Stoppard shows how the same words
can be used in many different ways and how it can be confusing. This shows the flaws in language and brings
to light the problems with language.
