The Complexity of Life and Death in "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead"

Because they did not heed to the warning, they subsequently arranged their own downfall.  The incident with the coin flips, in turn cause the reader not to sympathize with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at the conclusion of the narrative.  Other reasons the reader may not sympathize is because of the characters' unfaithfulness to their friend Hamlet.  This is another way the coin flips tie into Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's downfall.   From the principles of probability, one would expect for heads to turn up in so many amount of coin flips fifty percent of the time.   The fact that it did not signifies the event's unfaithfulness to the rules of probability.  This reflects Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's unloyalty to Hamlet.  They were like fools to ignore the event that was as conspicuous as a red light.  Consequently, they died a fool's death.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are foils to Hamlet. The two are introduced as friends to Hamlet. But also they are like messengers for the king. Hamlet learns of their

   Most characters in Hamlet present themselves as something other than themselves or how as we, the audience, or another character thinks they should appear.  Two of the main characters in this play, Hamlet and King Claudius, are constantly acting as something other than their true nature.    Ironically, the characters that invoke changes in Hamlet and King Claudius to reveal their real personalities are the players, merely actors themselves, not showing true emotion: (in this short analysis, I will attempt to display the truth revealed by the players) they agitate King Claudius and allow Hamlet to see their appearance as more accurate to the truth than the appearance of "real life

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sent for by the King and Queen to spy on Hamlet and learn why he "puts on

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are comic reliefs by acting as the fool in the play Hamlet. The duo’s ignorant nature are picked at by Hamlet’s sharp toungue through the play, intensifying it’s ultimate tragic nature. One example is in act two scene two of Hamlet, when Hamlet is questioning Rosencrantz and Guildenstern about the reason they are at the castle. Hamlet offsets Humor in these scenes by his choice of words. Hamlet puts the pressure on the duo and Rosencrantz in an aside to Guildenstern asks what excuse they should make to Hamlet while the whole time Hamlet is aware of their conversation. “(to Guildenstern) What

Characters may possess both the ability to intrigue whilst maintaining a commonplace and dry persona, essentially, Hamlet attains the ability to break from his compulsion to abject based on the inept character(s) of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. In retrospect, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the same person as they are sparsely differentiated and never are they seen apart from one another—thus the question remains as to why Shakespeare created such characters based on the same superficial mould. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern prove to be a clever satire of the capacity for human conformity, and of course the entirety of their characters is summed upon their agreement to spy on Hamlet for King Claudius. Therein is revealed the essential flaw of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, their otherwise ‘pack’-mentality.

In the end, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are naively loyal to Hamlet, and this becomes their downfall. They know that Hamlet has killed Polonius, and yet, they take no precautions as they accompany Hamlet to England. Their trust in both Claudius and Hamlet gets them killed. Hamlet’s reveals his mistrust of his schoolmates in a conversation with his mother, and refers to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as, "...my two-school fellows, whom I will trust as adders fanged..." 

       Hamlet is organized around various pairs of opposing forces. One of these forces is the difference between that what seems and that which actually is, in other words, appearance versus reality. What is, and what merely appears to be? We can discern two principal angles from which this question is approached in Hamlet. First, we have the angle of inward and outward emotions, and the profound distinction that is drawn between them. In other words, the tranquil face that we all show to the world is never the same as the turmoil of our souls. In Hamlet, Shakespeare explores this both explicitly, through the device of the play within the play, and implicitly, through the ways in which he uses

Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, begins with the appearance of a ghost, an apparition, possibly a hallucination. Thus, from the beginning, Shakespeare presents the air of uncertainty, of the unnatural, which drives the action of the play and develops in the protagonist as a struggle to clarify what only seems to be absolute and what is actually reality. Hamlet's mind, therefore, becomes the central force of the play, choosing the direction of the conflict by his decisions regarding his revenge and defining the outcome.

Lastly, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead teaches the message of knowing your identity. What were Rosencrantz and Guildenstern missing, above all else? It’s not remembering the past; they could have just worried about the future. It’s not decision making; they could have gotten along fine just following someone else’s lead. It works for most people. What they were really missing was their identities. Neither Rosencrantz nor Guildenstern had fully developed a sense of self. Neither really did anything that made them distinct from the other. In essence, they were the same, and interchangeable. This was made clear throughout the duration of the play, because of several small details. When the two were greeted by people, they often got their names confused. The

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were two characters in the play who were justly punished. These two were supposed to be friends of Hamlet. They turned on him with one simple request from the King. I feel no remorse for them after Hamlet's little scheme. I find it ironic and reflective of their ending when the Ambassador comes and says, ."..Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Where should we have our thanks?" (5,2,411-12) This is somewhat humorous because

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, written in the 1960s by playwright Tom Stoppard, is a transforation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Stoppard effectively relocates Shakespeare’s play to the 1960s by reassessing and revaluating the themes and characters of Hamlet and considering core values and attitudes of the 1960s- a time significantly different to that of Shakespeare. He relies on the audience’s already established knowledge of Hamlet and transforms a revenge tragedy into an Absurd drama, which shifts the focus from royalty to common man. Within Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Stoppard uses a play within a play to blur the line that defines reality, and in doing so creates confusion both onstage- with his characters, and offstage-

Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and the players have a few subtle interactions in which the idea of fate is addressed strongly. Late in the play Guildenstern gets extremely angry at the players saying, “I 'm talking about death---and you 've never experienced that. And you cannot act it. You die a thousand casual deaths---with none of that intensity which squeezes out life” (123). Here Guildenstern not only implies that to have such knowledge of death he must have already experienced it himself, but he gets outraged over the fact death is not something that is acted, it is something that happens tragically, even accidentally with no way of truly knowing how to act such a thing. He proposes that death, and arguably the life before it must be at the

Hamlet is undoubtedly one of the most well-studied and remembered tragedies in all of history. Renowned for its compelling soliloquies and thought-provoking discussions about life, death, and love, the play takes a very serious look at the topics it presents. Based on this famous work is another tragedy, known as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. In this work, which is interwoven with the original, the namesake characters bumble about in the immense world, over which they have no control. Without a sense of identity or purpose, the two merely drift to and fro at the whim of the larger forces around them; namely Hamlet, who eventually leads them to death. The twin plays follow the same story and end with the same result – nine deaths.

The tragic play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead” by Stoppard were retold from the story of Shakespeare famous play “Hamlet”. The two insignificant characters in “Hamlet” became the protagonists in Stoppard’s play, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead” and Hamlet as a minor character. The author’s different perspective of Shakespeare’s two minor characters made the audience realize that being control like a puppet by Hamlet might have led them to their death. Throughout the play, Hamlet’s presence effected the two protagonists’ life.