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Playwright (1937- ) |
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From Czechoslovakia, lived in India and Japan with military family before settling in England |
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Other works: 15-minute Hamlet, Shakespeare in Love, and many other short plays |
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Said Rosencrantz and Guildenstern… was a play to be experienced, not studied |
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Ros - “Rosencrantz’s bag is nearly full.” |
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Guil – “Guildenstern’s bag is nearly empty.” |
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2 minor characters (often confused for each other) |
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Given little & false information |
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No memory |
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Exist only onstage |
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Destined for an untimely death |
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Player (King)– contrast to R&G, accepting, sardonic, real, confident, clear, mirrors conflict between reality and illusion, levels of illusion, relationship of art to life, nature of theatrical fiction |
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Etc. |
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Humor (often covering desperation) |
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Dramatic irony |
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Under the watchful eye of voyeurs (audience) – self conscious use of stage |
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Meaning = onion à keep finding layer after layer of meaning but no single truth |
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word play |
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literary allusions |
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witty banter/repartee |
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rhetorical questions |
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communication breakdowns |
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blank verse and prose |
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repetitions |
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simple and complex |
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ambiguous |
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Existentialism - empty and without logic |
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Farce – making fun of Hamlet and other literary works |
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Theatre of the absurd – except they fill time (not kill time) and are true friends |
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Postmodern – appropriating the past with no particular respect for it (Nietzche = joy in artistic play |
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Metatheatre – theatre about theatre |
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Hamlet by William Shakespeare |
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Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett {except they fill time (not kill time) and are true friends] |
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“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot – significant gestures, assertions or decisions are made only to collapse |
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There's an old joke about the actor who is hired to play the gravedigger in "Hamlet." "What's it about?" his wife asks. "It's about a gravedigger who meets a prince," he says. |
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Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is a play based on the simple notion of “What if?” and changing the point of view |
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Timelessness |
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Directionlessness |
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Illusion vs. Reality |
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Real life struggle of coming to grips with one’s environment and situation |
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“The scientific approach to the examination of phenomena is a defense against the pure emotion of fear.” |
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“Events must plays themselves out to aesthetic, moral, and logical conclusion.” |
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“We drift down time, clutching at straws…but what good’s a brick to a drowning man?” |
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Notes