Dramaturgy Program
Department of Theater- UMass Amherst

Cast

Production Team

Costume Design

Program Note

Dramaturg's Program Note

In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard re-imagines Hamlet through the eyes of two minor characters. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, university chums of Hamlet, are summoned by Claudius to spy on Hamlet, to "draw him onto pleasures" and "glean what afflicts him." Stoppard includes many of the scenes from Hamlet in which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern take part, but the excitement of his adaptation lies in the "offstage" antics he creates for this existentialist odd couple. In Hamlet, Rosencrantz mentions that he and Guildenstern met a troupe of players on the road to Elsinore; Stoppard shows us this meeting. Hamlet tells Horatio that the ship carrying him to England was attacked by pirates and that he sent Rosencrantz and Guildenstern off to England to be executed; Stoppard shows us the ship, the attack of the pirates, and how Hamlet seals the fate of his two former friends.

Like Beckett's vaudevillian tramps waiting for Godot, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern wait for someone to tell them what to do next, for their next entrance into the plot of Hamlet. They are linked together despite their different attitudes toward their situation. Caught in a vortex where coins come up heads nearly one hundred times in a row, Guildenstern examines the implications of this failure of the law of probability, while Rosencrantz makes jokes and contentedly pockets the coins. They take snippets of dialogue and attempt to reconstruct the pas and to figure out what they are supposed to be doing in the present.

Stoppard uses the plight of this deconstructive duo to examine some very weighty questions. Are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern innocent victims of the revenge tragedy genre, or do they merit death because of their mercenary actions toward Hamlet? Who are they? "Which is which?" What are they doing there? What is the meaning of their lives?

Ultimately, we can never know whether or not Rosencrantz and Guildenstern find meaning. But their fate is certain: death. Our heroes have no choice in the matter; as the Player says, "It is written!" Rosencrantz and Guildenstern should really take up their case with Shakespeare. Or Stoppard.

--Dan Smith

This is the official Web site for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, produced by the Dramaturgy Program of the Department of Theater at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Produced and maintained by Dan Smith, dansmith_251@yahoo.com.