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