The Certainty of Death
26 July 2011

tI liked the film of this play so much that when I was wondering through a secondhand bookshop and saw a copy on the shelf I snatched it up immediately. One of the reasons was because I wanted to actually read the play upon which the film was based (and remembering that the playwright also made the film), and it does seem to be quite faithful. However, unlike the film, the action of Hamlet, around which this play is based, has been pushed further into the background.

tWhile I am probably going over a lot of the ground that I explored in my movie review, I think that it is necessary when approaching this play. There isn't much difference between the play and the film and the major theme, death, permeates right through it. Right from the beginning we are looking towards the ultimate fate that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern face: their death. The second theme that permeates the play is that of the play. The tragedians are major characters in this play, and there is an exploration of reality verses the make believe, and the concept of death permeates this as well.

tThe tragedians perform violent plays. As the player says '… well, I can do you blood and love without rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and I can do all three concurrent and consecutive, but I can't do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory – they're all blood, you see'. While reading this does not have the same impact as Richard Dreyfus actually speaking the lines in the film, it does give a clear indication of the idea of the theatre, and that it is about blood, and indeed it is about death. I spoke to a friend at work and said that the difference between a Shakespearian tragedy and a comedy is that at the end of a tragedy everybody dies, while at the end of the comedy everybody gets married, to which his response was 'so what's the difference then?'.

tThe other interesting thing about the tragedians is that they are nothing without an audience. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sneak away from them while they are performing a play and when they meet up again at Elsinore, the player is deeply insulted, insinuating that without an audience they are simply a bunch of idiots making fools of themselves in the woods. That, in many cases, is so true. Without an audience a play, a song, and even a film, is nothing. It is only the audience that makes them what they are.

tAs for death, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern grapple with the concept of death, yet it is clear that they do not fully understand. it They speak of rather being alive in a box buried underground than dead because 'at least you are alive'. However they are oblivious to their fate, despite knowing that fate is forcing them towards that end. They chastise the player for his understanding of death, because on the stage death is not real. You put on a performance, keel over, and lie motionless, only to get up again. However it seems that to the players death is a performance. When the player is stabbed, he keels over, apparently dead, only to rise up again to a resounding applause. That, they say, is not death. Death is the end, death is final, and when they have reached this part of the play, they already know of their fate, and know that there is no way to avoid it.

tIn a sense I got the feeling that this play, similar to Waiting for Godot, had absolutely nothing happen in it. While there is action occurring behind the scenes (which is Hamlet), nothing is happening when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are concerned. There is no goal, no purpose that they are heading towards, they are only there to be push and pulled in the direction that fate takes them. At the beginning of the play they are summoned, and when at Elsinore, they are ordered about by the major character's in Hamlet, and in the end, through Hamlet's slight of hand, are put to death. It appears that they did not have a choice, and they even wonder at one point, before they are put to death, whether there was a time at which they could have said no. In anycase, the play itself ends with death, that is the death of the major characters in Hamlet. The only ones who seem to survive are the tragedians, but even then, they are no better off than they were at the beginning.

I've also written a blog post on a version that I saw staring none other than Daniel Radcliffe.

“Actors! The mechanics of cheap melodrama! That isn't death! 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.”

I didn't know anything about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead going in (Except having read Hamlet several times, and having the excellent recommendation from a friend) so what I believe this book is about and what it's intention may be, could possibly be at odds.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two minor characters in the play Hamlet, who seem to be killed in the last part of the play almost as an afterthought - brought to the forefront of this play. In this book, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the major characters.

This play is more than anything, about the painful awareness of self and how to reconcile that with one's place in the universe. Occasionally Rosencrant or Guildenstern will address the audience angrily, or engage in games that seem to be bound more by cosmic laws than chance. If the coin is always "heads", which is an astronomically infinite possibility, than maybe the ensuing actions that follow cannot be swayed to change, no matter how impossible or absurd the "destiny" may seem.

But they continue to have to act, within this illusion of free will. This is best illustrated in their interactions with the actors, and the anger directed at them for not dying "real" deaths. Whilst demanding the actors to show them something real, when they themselves aren't real, either, precludes their own onscreen deaths. It's anger at circumstance, anger at destiny, and the desire for will outside of predetermination,

Hamlet himself makes occasional appearances that intersect with moments in the original play - but he's been reduced here to a bit character. He appears whirling into the play, intense and angry and a little absurd. He's become to this play what Rosencrant and Guildenstern were to him in "Hamlet."

Making us aware that each character has their own lens to which they view the story, which could make the hero either villainous, absurd, invisible, or meaningless.

Overall an excellent play, and one I'd like to see live.

After reading a bunch of spark notes I gave this four stars.

I was just as confused as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

GUIL: Do you like plays?

ROS: Plays?

GUIL: Plays.

ROS: I like playing--

GUIL: Do you?

ROS: --although I don't like players.

GUIL: A healthy dose of competition, I suppose?

The PLAYER KING enters, climbing out of a barrel.

PLAYER KING: No, he means me.

GUIL: Ah, what sport do you play?

PLAYER KING: I play all sports, why do you ask?

ROS: I find him insufferable.

GUIL: Ah, big words.

ROS: Word play.

GUIL: Play word.

PLAYER KING (interrupting their inevitable spiral into word play): I call heads.

ROS: There's three of us though. If you call heads--

GUIL: And I call tails--

ROS: Then what do I call?

PLAYER KING: Call the King of England, perhaps?

ROS: Ah. Is he on the heads or tails side?

GUIL: Heads, I'd imagine.

ROS (to the PLAYER KING): Then what are you playing?

PLAYER KING: The edge, I suppose.

All three men muse over this.

GUIL: I'll take these odds

ROS: I will too.

GUIL takes out a coin, flips it, and lets it fall on the floor. It lands on the edge of the coin, balancing on its sides.

GUIL: What are the odds?

ROS: What are the odds?

PLAYER KING: What do I win?

GUIL: Well, another round, I suppose.

ROS: Neither heads nor tails--(to the PLAYER KING) does this mean the middle was your bet?

GUIL: Fortune is a strumpet.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, written by Tom Stoppard, was first performed in a shortened version in August 1966. When it opened in London in 1967, it catapulted Stoppard into the front ranks of modern playwrights. The plot is supposedly simple: the play of Hamlet seen not through the eyes of Hamlet or Claudius or Ophelia or Gertrude, but a worm's-eye view of the tragedy seen from the standpoint of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The blurb on the back of book says that "it is very funny, very brilliant, very chilling; it has the dus of thouht about it and the particles glitter excitingly in the the theatrical air."

Um. Okay. If Clive Barnes from The New York Times says so. But you couldn't tell by my reading. I'm afraid I didn't see any humor in it. I can't say that I thought it was all that brilliant. In fact, it was almost entirely one great big "HUH???" for me. I don't get it. I'm well acquainted with Hamlet and, yes, I do get the bits of the actual play that are sprinkled here and there....but overall everything that had to do with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern made very little sense to me. Their dialogue was very vague and elliptical. Maybe this is one of those plays that do better if seen than read. I certainly hope so, because I can't say that I've gotten anything out this reading--except another candle on my Birth Year Reading Challenge Cake. One star....maybe less.

My brain is a bad actor.

I know it's a bad actor because I read this play and the performance it gave totally fell flat. It messed up all the punchlines. Often it had to go back to read parts that it misread. It even got bored during the middle part and totally phoned in the performance of the first half of the third act. It totally ruined this play for me with its terrible one-note performance. Stupid, stupid brain.

Luckily for me, Tom Stoppard directed a moving pictures version of his play, starring the magnificent Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, and Richard Dreyfuss, and it's available on Netflix. So after I finished reading this play, bewilderedly wondering what about it I should have liked, I pressed play on my computing device. What I saw before me on the screen was a hilarious, creative, meta, terribly intriguing story of two lovable weirdos romping through the world of Hamlet. The tedious coin-flipping scene so dully enacted by my brain was brought to glorious life by the good Sirs Oldman and Roth.

In short, I was just too stupid to see the brilliance of this play simply by reading it. But after seeing the movie, I was able to go back to the written work and appreciate some excerpts with gusto. Your brain is probably a better actor than mine, but if you have any doubts regarding its talents, I'd suggest watching the movie first. That's something I would almost never recommend, but after all, it is a play, something meant to be acted out in front of you rather than just inside that noggin of yours.

I have to say, right off the bat, that Stoppards's Arcadia is simply the best play I have read to date.
But this isn't far behind. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is an exceptionally good piece of writing - a youthful prank bursting with theatrical mischief and literary flair. Stoppard's philosophizing playfulness here is clearly indebted to the music hall absurdism of Beckett's Waiting for Godot, a play I much admire also. His writing is just so crystal clear and pristine, and it's lost none of it's fresh and inventive appeal.

It's plot is quite straightforward - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are in the (metaphorical/literal) wings of the great events going on stage in Hamlet's struggle for vengeance on the man who murdered his father and usurped the throne. Stoppard juggles reality and ideas, the philosophy of chance and purpose, memory and death, he pulls all the strings in all the right places, it's simply one of the great scripts of 20th-century theatre. I simply don't agree with some who feel it's dated. No way!

Stoppard gets the thumbs-up again. Bravo Sir!

Excellent. I cannot believe I gave up watching the film a while ago (especially since it featured one of my two favourite Tims in the world). I suspect watching a live performance would indeed be a 5 star experience.
I loved Stoppard's wit so much, I could quote him endlessly. And of course, discuss existentialism over a bottle of dry red.

Meh--

There are moments, for sure, when the dialogue soars to lyrical beauty and the absurd situation Rosencrantz & Guildenstern find themselves in go beyond just the metatheatrical commentary on minor characters in a major play not getting any explanations: are we not all in this boat headed to England, not knowing why we are on it, without anyone giving us any explanations? In this vein the play reminded me of Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes a bit. And then there's also the poignant rumination on death through the mockingly un-serious acting of Player (who, by the way, is my favorite character in the play, really).

But for me, the play is too squarely in the modernist style of absurdism a la Beckett or, to some extent, the Russian absurdism of Daniil Kharms—meaning, while I can appreciate the absurdist/nonsensical elements in it, it's not the kind of work I enjoy to my heart's content. Plus—and this has to do with my sense of humor—I found none of Guil and Ros's antics funny (though I might have to see them acted out on stage).

A good play if you love Beckett. Not so much if you don't.

It was odd. I did not enjoy reading it. It's a play, in case you aren't aware. And it's about a couple of minor characters in Hamlet. I do not recommend unless you particularly enjoy odd plays.

In the story of your life, who do you think should play the part? For me, I would love to have Kate Hudson circa Almost Famous for younger me and Meryl Streep for an older me. I have been told that I look like a mash-up of those two on many occasions. They are both fantastic actresses and singers. Did I mention that the story of my life would be a musical? Of course it must be a musical. But those two would never do it. Because they are big stars. And even in the story of my own life, I am a minor character.

And thus is the story of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters from Hamlet. I re-read that brilliant Shakespeare play not long ago and felt a bit of love for these two weirdos. Called to the palace by the king and queen to spy on Hamlet and figure out what was wrong with him, these two characters end up being the comic relief of the otherwise tragic play (the king can't tell them apart, they flub some of their lines, and never really know what they are supposed to be doing). They are definitely minor characters who never get to be part of the main action. That's me. I live my life, and like to think I am the center of my life, but I don't have a lot of control over what happens around me. That's all of us, really.

Tom Stoppard wrote this absurdist play as a re-interpretation of Hamlet from the point of view of these minor characters, reducing the main characters to a bit of side action. We don't get to read the epic soliloquies or read about the tragic deaths, but the central theme is the same: we have no control over death, and it is coming for all of us.

But the author takes this a bit further by making us wonder what happens, not when the hero dies, but when the minor characters die. In the Shakespeare play, they didn't even get an on-screen death; an ambassador told of their deaths to the two people left after the massive tragedy. In the story of their own lives, though, they would have thought it important.

This play is highly comical, extremely entertaining, and thought-provoking. Although a short read, it is packed full of clever observances and foreshadowing beginning from the very first page. If you think you know the story of these two men by reading Shakespeare, you might be wrong. Maybe there was more to them. Maybe they had their own story. I think Tom Stoppard told it brilliantly.

Witty, Hilarious, Insightful & Intriguing! A Brilliant Play! I Loved It!