Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Summary and Analysis

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.