Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966)

 

(Although the above picture is from the 1990 film adaptation, this post is about the play itself.)

 

This extraordinary play introduced me to Tom Stoppard years ago.  I’d rented the movie sight unseen, knowing that I liked Gary Oldman and it presumably had something to do with Hamlet, and immediately fell in love.  I was quick to seek out the script and check out more from Stoppard.  After reading the Coast of Utopia trilogy next, I definitely had a favorite playwright.

 

The story of Hamlet is turned inside out here, told through the eyes of his old school friends.  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, enlisted to “glean what afflicts” the mad young prince, play minor roles in Shakespeare’s play but still meet messy ends.  In this tale, they’re given center stage, muddling uncertainly through their task and heading inexorably toward their tragic finish. 

 

It’s an interesting viewpoint.  I’ve seen this technique before, although it’s more typically a story reworked from the villain’s perspective.  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern aren’t nefarious, and in Hamlet, they’re far from dynamic.  Essentially, they’re pawns in a royal game with little agency of their own.  However, both are of course the protagonists of their own lives, and as such, the play reframes Hamlet to be entirely about them.

 

The play has a strong absurdist bent, part of which comes from their unconscious knowledge that they’re minor characters in someone else’s play.  Left alone onstage too long, they grow antsy for someone more important to appear.  They despair at how little impact they seem to have on events and yearn for something meatier to work with.  “All we get is incidents!” Rosencrantz exclaims.  “Dear God, is it too much to expect a little sustained action?!”  Additionally, their generic interchangeability in Shakespeare’s play is magnified here – no one can tell them apart, to the point where Rosencrantz and Guildenstern themselves are no longer sure which is which.

 

Besides this nudging of the fourth wall, great absurdity and surrealism can be found in the incidental dialogue.  The pair’s actual scenes from Hamlet play out fairly verbatim, but between these scenes are long segments of the two of them basically waiting for something more to happen.  In these sequences, they obviously discuss their situation and try in vain to influence the proceedings, but that just scratches the surface.  They also play word games, philosophize, pick fights with tragedians, tell jokes, and challenge the laws of both probability and fate.

 

This is where the play truly lives.  Stoppard’s sparkling, whip-smart wit comes fast and furious, dancing nimbly between wry, outrageous, and reflective.  There are so many excellent scenes worth mentioning – the game of questions, roleplaying their confrontation with Hamlet, and Rosencrantz’s “dead in a box” speech are a few highlights.  The hapless leading men have an easy, bickering back-and-forth that rival any comedy duo alive or dead.  Rosencrantz’s eager-but-dim logic complements Guildenstern’s penchant for overly-complicated chains of thought, and the two squabble their way through the play with pitch-perfect timing.  Yet, for all that they get on one another’s nerves, they both know that they’re in this impossible, inscrutable situation together, and they always have each other’s backs in the end.

 

Warnings

 

Sexual references and a little swearing.