Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

1. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Tom Stoppard

2. Tom Stoppard • 1937 – Czech Republic • Father killed during WWII • Mom remarried British officer in India – Kenneth Stoppard; moved to England • Left school at 17 and became a journalist • Hated it and became theater critic • First play 1960; R&G 1966; film version in 1990 • Oscar 1998 – Shakespeare in Love

3. Thematic Topics • Free will versus fate • Role in a mechanical universe (think Grendel) • Death • Personal Identity – minor versus major characters • “Art imitates life which imitates art” – post-modern ideal • Philosophical play – theater of the absurd • Not concerned with intellectual depth; distances anxiety by placing it on a metaphysical plane

4. Rosencrantz vs. Guildenstern • Seemingly indistinguishable – together they make an Everyman • Rosencrantz • Accepts situations without question • Movie vs. play (scientific hypotheses) • Guildenstern • Intellectual • Hopes world is about chance not predestination • Both are confused …

5. Philosophies of the Play • Theatre of the Absurd • Type of play which first became popular during the 1950s and 1960s espousing the philosophy of Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus. • The human condition is basically meaningless; thus, “Camus argued that humanity had to resign itself to recognizing that a fully satisfying rational explanation of the universe was beyond its reach; in that sense, the world must ultimately be seen as absurd” (Crabb). • Absurdism • Existentialism

6. Theoretical Probability • Probability is a likelihood that an event will happen P(event) = # of favorable outcomes total # of possible outcomes • Act I – Coin toss • Characters are part of a controlled environment – natural laws do not apply