Universität Mannheim SS 2005
Proseminar II: Classics of 20th Century British Drama

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead

by: Karl Mattern

Index

Introduction 3

The play 5

Post-modernism in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead 9

Metadrama in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead 17

Conclusion 21

Introduction

The play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in its present form is the result of several drafts and older versions of this play, which Tom Stoppard wrote and staged. The first one was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern meet King Lear and was performed by amateur actors at a Ford Foundation cultural picnic in Berlin, in 1964. In this form the play was a one-act comedy in verse.¹ In the following years the title changed and Stoppard rewrote the play into prose. At the Edinburgh Festival in 1966 the play had its break through and soon later its script was bought and produced by the National Theatre at the Old Vic. According to the Sunday Times it was “the most important event in the British professional theatre of the last nine years.”² The reason for the enthusiastic reactions towards the play is the fact that it illustrates the confusion of mankind in the post-modern world. Today’s pluralism leaves the individual all to himself. The unity, which used to be created by religion, class or moral values, has been split up in favour of countless parallel existing societies with their own moral ideals and goals. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is a comical depiction of two friends looking for an orientation in a world, which to them has lost its orders and values. By using Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are the two courtiers from Elsinore, from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Stoppard shows an unknown perspective of Hamlet. It is the one of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Without knowing the entire plot they experience the action from their point of view and constantly try to find explanations of their roles and future in the play. The lack of orientation and the absence of reliable values in this strange world remind the audience of the contemporary pluralistic society and its problems. Even though the matter is serious Stoppard manages to establish a comical atmosphere, which includes a certain self-critique as selfcontrol to prevent Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead from becoming in any way idealistic or instructive. To show this I will analyse the play from a post-modern perspective and thereby focus on the metadramatic features, which make up for the self-control of the play. At first I will describe the plot and setting of the play. Secondly I will define postmodernism and metadrama for an analysis of the play. In the context of metadrama some textual allusions to Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot will be described.

The setting

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead focuses on the situation of these two characters known from their minor roles in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In both plays they appear as two courtiers at Elsinore who, without being able to avoid it, are caught up in the action and eventually get killed without ever finding out why they got involved. Stoppard’s play looks behind the scenes of Hamlet and depicts Ros and Guil (that is how the two friends call each other casually) as questioning the ongoing action. They are the stage characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who are inescapably imprisoned in their roles both trying to understand what is going on and taking their existence on stage for reality.

The entire text is strictly limited to the way Ros & Guil perceive the Hamlet plot. Their speculation about the purpose of their existence begins when Claudius commands them to court. It continues when they try to find out what is going on with Hamlet who obviously is bad-tempered. Finally they are chosen to bring Hamlet away from Elsinore to England without really knowing why. Only an audience familiar with Shakespeare’s play knows at this point that Ros & Guil have been selected to accompany the courtly agitator on the journey to the place of his execution. Hamlet however finds the letter expressing this request. To save his life he exchanges his name with those of Ros & Guil and flees leaving behind the two honest subjects from Elsinore who are doomed now. Ros & Guil have the problem of a discrepancy of knowledge. Neither of them knows the Hamlet plot and it is left up to them to make sense of the orders they are given. This discrepancy is emphasized by the design of the play. The action of all three acts can be divided into two different categories. Tim Brassell referred to them as ‘on-stage’ and ‘offstage’ sections:³

The on-stage sections are incorporated from Hamlet (introducing Hamlet, Ophelia, Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, Horatio, Fortinbras and the 1st Ambassador) and contain passages where Ros & Guil are explicitly involved in the Hamlet plot. Consequently, as Shakespeare’s original version suggests, these sections take place at Elsinore where the drama unfolds, with Ros & Guil playing their roles known from Hamlet as two obedient courtiers carrying out the wishes and demands, which are expressed by the royals surrounding them. The off-stage sections are newly written texts. They work like additions and tell the story around the on-stage action with Ros & Guil on their way to Elsinore, their stay at court and finally the crossing to England on a boat together with Hamlet. Off-stage Ros & Guil try to make sense of their confusing situation of being given orders and handling the complicated character of Hamlet. They lack information and constantly question everything they experience in order to understand it:

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1 Rusinko, p.29

2 Ibid, p.29

3 Brassell, p.39