Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

1. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Though They Still Talk Quite a Bit

2. Consider the following dialogue: From Through the Looking Glass Here the Red Queen began again. “Can you answer useful questions?” she said. “How is bread made?” “I know that, Alice cries eagerly. “You take some flour—” “Where do you pick the flower?” the White Queen asked. “In the garden or in the hedges?” “Well, it isn’t picked at all,” Alice explained: it’s ground—” “How many acres of ground?” said the White Queen. “You mustn’t leave out so many things.”

3. Tom Stoppard • He’s still alive (or at least he was as of yesterday) • Born in Czechoslovakia in 1937. • His family stayed one step ahead of the Nazis and moved to Singapore but were forced to move to India ahead of the Japanese invasion. Wound up living in England.

4. More Stoppard • R and G is his most well known play, though he has written many others. • It was his first important work, first performed in 1966 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Stoppard was just 29. • His most widely known screenplay is Shakespeare in Love. (won an Oscar) • Other screenplays—Billy Bathgate, Brazil, The Human Factor, Empire of the Sun

5. Sources of R and G • Hamlet • Waiting for Godot - he is a big fan of Samuel Beckett. Much of the humor in the play comes from his tribute to Godot. • Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein—20th century Austrian philosopher - but note all the discussion in the play about language, logic, and elements of Existentialism (including free will vs. determinism) • He also alludes to some modern paintings and other works of art.

6. Theatre of the Absurd When Alice goes into the woods where things have no names, she asks, “Who am I?” This question of identity is common in absurdist theatre. • Theatre of the Absurd shows a “sense of the senselessness of the human condition and the inadequacy of the rational approach by open abandonment of rational devices and discursive thought.” The emphasis is on the situation instead of the event. It usually even lacks a plot.

7. Theatre of the Absurd, cont. • Relies upon the image. Since it is purely subjective, it also relies upon the reader or viewer to incorporate his or her own feelings and experiences into the play. • There is a lot of humor in this play, but for some of it you have to read the stage directions and visualize the action.

8. Stoppard’s Opinion of the Play • He says the plot is about “two bewildered innocents.” • He says he wrote it “to entertain a roomful of people with the situation of R and G in Elsinore.” • He says R and G does not embody any particular philosophy and that “one doesn’t write a play and hide something in it to see if people can find it at all.”

9. More • “To me R and G is a play about two Elizabethan courtiers at a castle, wondering what’s going on. That’s what it’s about.” • Says having people looking for meaning in his plays is like going through customs and having the agent, “come up with all manner of exotic contraband like truth and illusion, the nature of identity, what I feel about life and death. I hate to admit the stuff is there, but I can’t for the life of me remember packing it.”

10. Further on the Same Point • “one is the beneficiary and victim of one’s subconscious: that is, of one’s personal history, experience and environment.”