(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.
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