This really worked for me, probably because it felt very much like the other books and movies that were fundamental to what I think is funny. I need to go back and watch Lion King 1 1/2.

I never feel fully qualified to review books of this caliber with any hope to encompass everything they stand for. But Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is approachable and easy and terribly difficult to spell, as far as a book can be classified as approachable. And I feel like saying a few words on it won't result in a lynch mob.

When we are taught to look at a known scene with fresh eyes / from a fresh perspective in Creative Writing classes, it's commonplace to immediately leap to inanimate objects and personify abstract concepts. This out of the box approach to creativity has become so thoroughly canvassed that it fits into the box quite nicely now. But maybe, just maybe, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is the end result one actually seeks in those exercises - a novel approach to a known plot, and one which brings quite a bit of new to the old. Part of this novelty that it brings obviously has to do with it having been written in 1966. The influences in this book are decidedly modern, and the writing doesn't bother to hide it. But the other part of the novelty might just lie in the reimagining - in bringing secondary characters to the forefront and having their ruminations and their (very good) jokes narrate the entire story.

Having said all this, I did feel at times that the book trod a dangerous line between being reminiscent of Waiting for Godot and of being Waiting for Godot.

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.

December of Drama 2015, day eighteen

"There's definitely, definitely, definitely no logic
To human behaviour."
--Human Behaviour, by Bjork

This is obviously genius material, original "metatheatre" that still somehow reads like it always should have existed. Theater geeks may love it for the repackaging of Hamlet, presented from the viewpoint of two of the minor characters who are nevertheless killed off near the bloody finale, but it's also great for the absurdist and existentialist touches. I normally don't raise this issue with plays I read, but I feel like I'd need to see it performed to fully appreciate it. The third act, with its discussion of death in terms of the art vs. reality theme, was what I enjoyed the most.

rosencrantz and guildenstern often mistake themselves for the other exactly like it happened for my friends dan and phil

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.

من هم تو نمایشنامه‌ی هملت همیشه به نقش این دو نفر فکر می‌کردم... همیشه اعتقاد داشتم بود و نبود این دو نفر تغییری تو روند نمایشنامه به وجود نمیاره و مرگشون هم یه واکنش شدید بوده. تو فیلم هملت به کارگردانی لارنس الیویه هم هر چند بسیار وفادارانه‌ست این دو نفر از داستان حذف شدن... خوشحالم دیدم فقط من چنین حسی نداشتم و این نمایشنامه رو خوندم.

3.5 stars

A very clever play full of humour, witticisms, absurdities, and philosophical introspection.

Guil: No, no, no ... you've got it all wrong . .. you can't act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen - it's not gasps and blood and falling about - that isn't what makes it death. It's just a man failing to reappear, that's all - now you see him, now you don't, that's the only thing that's real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back - an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death.

The play also had "metadrama" elements.
It was a unique perspective on Shakespeare's Hamlet from the point of view of the overlooked ‘side’ characters of Rosencrantz and Guidenstern, who are caught unaware much like rabbits in the headlights, among the crazy events occurring at Elsinore. The sharp and witty dialogues between Ros and Guil are funny as well as deep, hitting upon existentialism, fate, and so on.

Here is one exchange of Ros and Guil on Hamlet,

Ros: A compulsion towards philosophical introspection is his chief characteristic, if I may put it like that. It does not mean he is mad. It does not mean he isn't. Very often, it does not mean anything at all. Which may or may not be a kind of madness.
Guil: It really boils down to symptoms. Pregnant replies, mystic allusions, mistaken identities, arguing his father is his mother, that sort of thing; intimations of suicide, forgoing of exercise, loss of mirth, hints of claustrophobia, not to say delusions of imprisonment; invocations of camels, chameleons, capons, whales, weasels, hawks, handsaws - riddles, quibbles and evasions; amnesia, paranoia, myopia; day-dreaming, hallucinations; stabbing his elders, abusing his parents, insulting his lover, and appearing hatless in public - knock-kneed, droop-stockinged and sighing like a love-sick schoolboy, which at his age is coming on a bit strong.
Ros: And talking to himself.
Guil: And talking to himself.

We are questioning the two characters' reality throughout, are they dead or heading towards their death?

And here's a crux of Hamlet in words of Rosencrantz and Guidenstern.

Guil: I think I have it. A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself.
Ros: Or just as mad.
Guil: Or just as mad.
Ros: And he does both.
Guil: So there you are.

Weird dont read

Pretty brilliant. Love the title. Reading the massive biography of Stoppard by Hermione Lee now and I mean to reread this play soon since I’m now learning more about the evolution of the play.

Updating this to give five stars after seeing the play last night at Chicago’s magnificent Court Theater. I was reminded how beautifully Stoppard overlays Hamlet with existentialism, postmodernism, and absurdism. The fit between the two plays is nearly perfect. And like Hamlet, the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, has important things to say about the close correspondence between life (and death more than life) and theater.

This is a genius play of the behind the scenes of Shakespeare's play Hamlet. The plot follows two minor characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as they engage with the main characters of the play. From the first page to the last, Stoppard offers us new perspectives to one of the most read plays in the world. What I enjoyed the most was the sophisticated dialogue and the subtle humour that permeate throughout the play. While Stoppard remains true to the original, he adds a new dimension to otherwise two forgettable characters.