Rosencrantz and Guildenstren Summary

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Author- Tom Stoppard: British. Absurd. Published his breakthrough show in 1967.

Summary:

ACT I.       Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are going nowhere fast, and they decide to take a break and flip coins. After about 99 heads, some players come along, offering to put on a show for them (or just have sex), and at this point, the impossible streak of heads finished and the coin toss turns up tails.  At this point, Ophelia and Hamlet, with his stockings ungartered, rush onstage and bring us into the show Hamlet. here, Ros and Guil have a script and a purpose and a direction (for now), as Claudius directs them to "glean what afflicts him". However, as soon as the other Hamlet characters leave the stage, they run out of dialogue and begin the exasperating circles that brought them back here in the first place. Sometimes they appreciate the diversion of Hamlet characters, but other times they feel put upon and mocked by the royalty who seem so sure of their place, "Don't let them confuse you". Act 1 ends with them finding Hamlet and attempting to talk to him: it has taken them this long to find their purpose, and thus the exposition is over.

ACT II.     It is traditional for the actors playing Ros and Guil to change places and even costumes, and begin reading each others lines. I guess this just adds to the absurdity and goes further with the theme of mistaken identities, putting the audience in the position that they recently mocked of not distinguishing between the two. After an unsuccessful confrontation with Hamlet and a reflection on their lack of direction, Ros and Guil are confronted by the players, who are devastated by their realization at the absurdity of a play that no one is watching, "There we were - demented children mincing around in clothes no man ever wore, speaking words no man ever said...every words vanishing into the thin, unpopulated air". In leaving them in the woods, Ros and Guil abandoned them to their own devices, and took away any measure of place, time and reason. This reflects how Ros and Guil feel, being scooped up and plopped down in one plot after the other. They break the fourth wall a lot, making the audience uneasy about their position and their sense of reality. It here becomes clear that the players understand their sense of entrapment, "We know which way the wind is blowing", while the eternally optimistic Ros and Guil still don't understand. now we get to an interesting scene where Ros contemplates his own mortality, "Its better to be alive in a box than be dead. Not that I'd like to be asleep in a box - for starters, you'd wake up dead!". He isn't quite there, but he is starting to realize what the title has told us all along. The new question raised is, are they already dead? Is the stage or the page of the book the coffin they are lying in, stagnant? They then watch the play, The Murder of Gonzago, and proceed to follow Hamlet in circles, a sense of dread becoming more and more apparent.

ACT III.    They wake up on a boat, "Do you think death could be a boat?", and contemplate their limited freedoms, "One is free on a boat" (except that you can't actually go anywhere) until they try to remember why they are there. A letter is meant to explain everything. It is their last piece of reason to hold onto. "Because it is written" they know it must be true and it must lead them to their fate. They believe that they will make it to England and figure out their next purpose there, they are hopeful, but then Shakespeare, acting through Hamlet, snuffs the light and switched the letters (Because it is written).  Then the players show up and Guil freaks out, again feeling the weight of eminent death, and goes to stab one of the players, to show him that he knows nothing of death, "But no one gets up after death - there is no applause....Who are we that so much should converge on our little deaths? Who are we?", "You are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. That is enough." This line is so sad, because after so much, "they are denied explanation". At the end, they reread the letter, stating that they are to be executed, and then...they disappear.