Stoppard

with the difficult to understand play. Tom Stoppard set up the play in the

Tom Stoppard employs many themes in his play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. They largely have to do with life, agency, and identity, so it is important to not take the actions or dialogue of the play literally. Most of them have deeper meanings that are applicable to any person that questions the above-stated themes. Tom Stoppard uses absurdist devices to explore the theses of humanity’s incapability to comprehend or understand death, fate and free will’s prevalence in life, and personal

heads in the slightest until Guildenstern asks, “And if you lost? If they’d come down against you, eighty-five times, one after another, just like that?” (Stoppard, I. 56-58). This series of rhetorical questions causes Rosencrantz to questions the integrity of Guildenstern, but not the realisticness of the consistent result of heads (Stoppard, I. 61-62). When he accepts the realities of life, he attempts to develop a rationale to support it. When discussing humanity’s fated death, Rosencrantz suggests

Are Dead, Tom Stoppard depicts that perception is reality by showing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s confusion from the coin breaking the laws of probability, their sense of direction, and the players thought on death. Ninety-two heads in a row, defying the laws of probability. The strange phenomenon is enough to make Guildenstern lose his mind. He makes up syllogisms to understand this absurd situation. He questions if they are “within Un—, Sub—, or Supernatural forces” (Stoppard 1.17). Guildenstern’s

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, written by Tom Stoppard in 1967, is a play which epitomizes the "Theatre of the absurd." Stoppard develops the significant theme of the Incomprehensibility of the World through the main characters of the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern spend the majority, if not, the entirety of the play in utter confusion as to what is happening around them and lack knowledge of even the most basic of things, such as who they are. "My name

they become more and more exposed to the world. In Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams reality is explored more about discovering the big question of what is the meaning of life. Although in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard, it focuses primarily on what is death. Yet together both these novels conclude to a riveting theme of reality is an illusion and vice versa. Both authors use satire to combine humor and intelligence to convey the message accordingly. In both stories

are living in complete uncertainty without direction or answers. From the title of the play, the reader/audience is aware of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s fate though it is clear through the acts of confusion, the characters themselves are not. Stoppard skillfully sets up the idea of uncertainty within this play with the opening scene. The tossing of coins should represent a fifty-fifty probability of it landing on either head or tails; however, in this instance the coins prove the opposite. The

Rock ’N’ Roll by Tom Stoppard and This Was Our Music by Mike Rothschild are plays that both revolve around big events in the main characters’ lives. Jan in Rock ’N’ Roll is a man living through the battle between Socialism and Communism and gets caught up in the political scene and has to stay true to what he believes in, music. Alan in This Was Our Music has to cope with the news that his jazz radio channel is changing to fit what will get the station more listeners but refuses to give in. Jan and

The Real Inspector Hound is a satirical play written by author Tom Stoppard. This play is a play within a play which means two plays are being performed at the same time within the same performance however, the two separate performances later become intertwined to make one play. The main focuses of the play are two theater critics (Moon and BirdBoot) as they critic, watch, and even act in the performance of a mysterious “who dunnit” thriller play. In this play the protagonist has a goal/objective

the 14th or 15th century, it follows Prince Hamlet on his quest for revenge, concluding with multiple deaths. In the play, Prince Hamlet explores the nature of human existence and the world around us. ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’ by Tom Stoppard is an absurdist play based on Shakespeare’s play ‘Hamlet’. Utilising the same characters, plot, and setting, ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’ adds discourse between two minor characters in Hamlet – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – and presents