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.

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….

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.

The best way to go about this book is by going blind. The surprise that arrives in terms of characters introduced in the second act is enough to put bring out the giggle fest.

Narrated by two characters from the play Hamlet, the story isn't much of a story but the existential crisis the two of them (and some!) face. They spend time playing games: tossing coin to word games and watching a "performance" to being part of a "performance". The two "Ros" and "Guil" explore the themes Shakespeare himself went back to: fate, destiny, betrayal, life etc. The characters often exchange names. Stoppard doesn't provide a moment of reprieve when his characters purposely become obtuse and heavy on the narrative.

The ending comes with Shakespearean style again when a character questions their motive, moral and consequences of decisions. Often hilarious and generally profound, this play unravels many of its layers with each read. I read it twice back to back; the first time without any background and the second time, with knowledge of what to expect. Only that the second time the puns Stoppard pulls out of nowhere have an edge of sadness and the running theme of existence a tad sadder.

This play may have a fantastic adaptation on the screen. But the word play can only be savored when read. I wonder how it would be to share a train ride with "Ros" and "Guil".

“One must think of the future.”
“It’s the normal thing.”
“To have one. One is, after all, having it all the time. Now. And now. And now.”
“It could go on forever — well, not forever, I suppose.”


Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is absurd and profound. It’s tragic and comic. Its actors are idiot philosophers sparing over meaning, identity, purpose and death, and finding only the last. In other words, this play is a fairly good mirror of life. All the world’s a stage and all that.

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

Our protagonist are two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, aware only of their petty roles, lacking any other awareness or knowledge of what is going on around them. Between their scenes on stage, they use rapid fire word play jousting with each other and other minor characters (the players) trying vainly to deduce meaning and purpose, and to struggle against the determinism of their roles. Yet the grim truth of play’s ending is inexorable.

“No! It is not enough to be told so little, to such an end, and still finally to be denied an explanation.”

Effortlessly brilliant and hilarious. Equal to any of Beckett's stuff, I think.

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.

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.

A worm's eye view of Hamlet. Two minor characters from Shakespeare's tragedy make their way through the story with only partial information and their own observances. Laugh out loud funny.

The author has taken two unimportant [dare I say expendable?] characters from Hamlet, turned Hamlet on its head and made these two [Ros and Guil, as the author calls them] the main actors: more than a mere plot point as in the original. Also, the Player [leader of the travelling theatrical troupe of tragedians] is very important in moving the action [such as it is] along. Ros and Guil are clueless throughout: why have they been summoned to Denmark? What does the king want them to do? What and why is Hamlet's 'transformation'? What will be their fates? Surreal humor, absurdism, silliness, a touch of sadness, and fantastic wordplay make this play--interspersed with relevant scenes from Hamlet--a modern classic. It's a play within a play within a play... I thought it was hilarious. It would help to know at least a basic synopsis of Hamlet.

It was most witty and I loved the rapid-fire patter, especially when Ros and Guil "play at questions", along with each keeping score [like a tennis match--e.g., "two---love"; "foul"] on the other. I read this play with text in hand watching the movie, written and also directed by Tom Stoppard. The movie had visual elements the play did not; and the play had dialogue that had been cut from the movie. So together, they were a good fit. Later, I read the text aloud. Seeing a theatrical performance would not go amiss. This play is most highly recommended.

Wouldn't have thought I could ever fall so deeply in love with such an absurd, non-sensical play. Bridging the gap between modernism and post-modernism and being a straight-up portrayal of absurdism, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" makes the reader question everything and get no answer at all. And oh, being as lost as the characters is so fun, especially when it comes to a play, whose sole purpose is to be represented on stage. Reading it, however, gives you a whole other perspective on it, not necessarily making you understand anything that makes part of the "big picture", but providing you with small tiny pieces of knowledge that actually come from within, so that you can build that personal bigger picture which was so important to the modernists. And doing all that in a postmodern attitude, by making use of "Hamlet" both in theme as well as in pieces of the play itself, make "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern" a masterpiece in my opinion. I would recommend reading it to anyone, as long as you go into it with a mind open to not understanding a single thing, and yet understanding everything at the same time.

“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.”