After many a viewing of Tom Stoppard’s film adaption of his play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” (many… many… viewings… I mean, c’mon… Tim Roth and Gary Oldman circa 1990? uh… yeah!) I thought that it might make a nice, light, summer read. Right. I should have just picked up the new James Patterson.

I’m not complaining… no way no how. This play is awesome. Ros and Guil, Guil and Ros… they are two parts of one big bumbling(?), bewitching oaf. I just want to hug them and ruffle their hair and maybe run my hand down their chests… and….

ROS: What are you playing at?
GUIL: Words, words. They're all we have to go on.


Whoomp! There it is! That’s the whole point to all of this right? Words, words, words. I am passive aggressive by nature therefore I rely heavily on innuendo and jest. I’m more likely to crush on a well written character than a well defined underwear model. Booknerd indeedy.

ROS: Fire!
GUIL: Where?
ROS: It's all right – I'm demonstrating the misuse of free speech. To prove that it exists.

You have to love Ros/Guil---or Ruil or Gos… or whatever—you just HAVE to, get it? Ok?… they are wise in their perplexity… they have no idea where they have been and seemingly always forgetting where they are headed. They amuse themselves by playing Questions and flipping coins. They are fearful and hesitant and yet they get it. They know that the big bad world is undeniably big and bad.

ROS: I'm afraid –
GUIL: So am I.
ROS: I'm afraid it isn't your day.
GUIL: I'm afraid it is.

Their bond. Their yin yang of hope and despair. Their wordplay. I laughed, cried, peed a bit, snorted and guffawed. That’s worth 5 stars, isn’t it?

GUIL: You scream and choke and sink to your knees, but it doesn't bring death home to anyone – it doesn't catch them unawares and start the whisper in their skulls that says – "One day you are going to die."

OMG. They’d be perfect Smiths fans….

— dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over...death is not anything...death is not...It's the absence of presence, nothing more...the endless time of never coming back...a gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound...

consider me Affected! really enjoyed this one. definitely reminded me of waiting for godot, which i’m glad about because it also reminded me how much i love waiting for godot, and i have discovered how much i love this play and i can definitely see myself rereading it for ages to come

First time I've had to read the summary to understand a play. I think there were so many combinations of styles I couldn't figure out what was going on up until the end.
It was interesting to see some side characters' perspectives, though.

A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds, or to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; until – “My God” says a second man, “I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn.” At which point, a dimension is added that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third witness, you understand, adds no further dimension but only spreads it thinner, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are the thinner it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience… “Look, look!” recites the crowd. “A horse with an arrow in its forehead. It must have been mistaken for a deer.”

Hamlet occurs incomprehensibly in the margins as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try to figure out who they are, why they're here, and the meaning of life, death, logic, probability, theatre, words.

GUILDENSTERN: Our names shouted in a certain dawn... a message...a summons... There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said--no. But somehow we missed it.

“Come ha detto molto filosoficamente Socrate, poiché non
sappiamo cos’è la morte, è illogico temerla.”
Teatro dell’assurdo. Un cammeo all’Amleto che diventa opera indipendente. Rosencrantz e Guildenstern sono i due amici del principe di Danimarca. Adesso li ritroviamo in un dialogo che continua all’infinito fatto di gag e divertimenti per noi spettatori. Ma il viso è serio e guai a chi ride.
“G. Uno: sono io che lo voglio. Dentro, in fondo all’anima, io sono l’essenza di un uomo che lancia monete a due teste e che scommette contro se stesso per espiare un passato che non ricorda. .Due: il tempo si è fermato e la singola esperienza del lancio di una moneta si è ripetuta novanta volte. Tre: intervento divino, un atto di benevolenza dall’alto per premiare lui, come è stato per i figli di Israele; ovvero un castigo per me, come per la moglie di Lot. Quattro: una spettacolare conferma del principio che ogni singola moneta lanciata in aria singolarmente ha tante probabilità di ricadere sul lato testa quante sul lato croce e dunque non c’è alcuna ragione di sorprendersi ogni singola volta che ciò accade. ”
I momenti esilaranti sono molti, come il gioco delle domande o del lancio della moneta, ma sono affiancati ad attimi di grande serietà legati alla caducità della vita, alla follia del povero Amleto, alla morte. Una lettura molto interessante, di grande effetto.
“ Probabilmente nasciamo con l’intuizione di essere mortali. Prima ancora di conoscerne la parola, prima ancora di sapere che esistono le parole, veniamo fuori, insanguinati e urlanti, con la consapevolezza che, per quante bussole possano esserci al mondo, la rotta è comunque una sola, e il tempo è la sola unità di misura."
“ La realtà della morte non ha niente a che fare con ciò che si vede accadere... non è sangue e rantoli e barcollamenti... non è questo che fa la morte. È semplicemente un uomo che non riappare più, tutto qui... ora lo vedete ora non più, questa è l’unica cosa reale: ora è qua e tra un attimo è sparito e non tornerà più... un’uscita discreta e senza preavviso, una sparizione che acquista peso gradualmente, fino a diventare greve di morte.”

Absolutely my favourite play I think. Tom Stoppard's witty alternative version of Hamlet. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the main characters, they aren't aware they are in a play but are trying to make sense of the continuous scene changes and unexpected turns of events. As they start to understand what is happening, they are still unable to alter the scripted events.

After reading this play I will never be able to read Hamlet the same way again. Two characters that are minor in Hamlet take center stage in this amazing play.
I know the ending going in, having read Hamlet, what I got in this play is the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
My favorite dialogue is in Act two when they are discussing what death is with the players. The dialogue is just tremendous.
The ending is heartbreaking because they are no longer minor characters but two people that are dead.

Brilliant. It's fitting to choose the British designation for how wonderful I think this play is, I believe. This play manages to be absolutely stand on its own hilarious, as well as a thoughtful meditation on many issues at the same time. It pushes neither on the viewer/reader on its own, nor predominantly. The satire is executed near flawlessly, and the comedic sensitivity (even in the saddest moments of the farce) could not be more on target. I very much usually wish to have some criticism to make, even of the classics that I review, but after having read this about five times, I still have none. It makes its points, delivers them well, and involves every audience I have seen when attending a production of it.

The only point I would make here is that if you can have some familiarity with Hamlet, I would imagine the play becomes much more funny. I saw it after knowing Hamlet quite well, so I haven't had the opposite experience. However, this is what I am told, and given the context of the play, I don't doubt it.

Having read the play I am now totally enchanted by Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead.

Rosecrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead follows two minor characters from "Hamlet" as all the action from that play sweeps around them. It is absurd, funny, sad and poignant by turns.

Sir Tom Stoppard is quite possibly the greatest playwright of the 20th Century.

I can't wait to watch the filmed version that I got from the library.

I was going to give this two stars. I wasn't enjoying the play, I never really could get into it. I was both bored and confused.

But the reason why I bumped it up to three stars was the last 5 pages. It really wrapped up the story and was a satisfying ending.

I loved Hamlet, so I went into this story with super high expectations. Because of that, I wasn't able to enjoy it as much as I though I was going to.

I fully believe that Hamlet is one of the most brilliant and powerful human stories ever written, and every time I read it I'm in absolute awe. I love what Stoppard does in this play, how brilliantly he plays with two unraveled threads of that story. I love that there are more questions than answers, but how it never feels pretentious, just earnest and poignant and both comic and profound. Like with Hamlet, there is a great deal of philosophical depth for those who wish to explore it, but it's just as easy to get lost in the sheer beauty of language like this:

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”

"Scotland is a geographical accident".--Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom (now) retells the Hamlet tragedy from the point of view of two minor characters; history from the sidelines, as it were. The result is amusing and useful to those who like their history and fiction (same thing) explained not from the left or right but parallel.