Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and the play it was based on, Shakespeare's Hamlet, acting is a major theme and motif. Especially in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, acting signifies the falsity, absurdity, and superficiality of life. Therefore, acting and the staging of plays is a metaphor for living. However, acting also causes the audience to perceive the play in an entirely new way, especially in

The two characters are subject to fate and to the impossibility of choice. They cannot decide for their own on the course of their life. The continuous flipping of the coin is relevant in this sense, as the two, while waiting for the decision on their future endeavors, flip the coin with the same result. It can be interpreted as fate, that independent of the actions they take, the

Instead, we find two highly actionable and yet passionless men. In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Stoppard has fleshed out two men inevitably bound to their fates by the passions and wills of those around them, creating a compelling discussion on the balance between fate and free will. Stoppard develops twin personas through whom the passive complacency of man is examined, with basic impulses of self-preservation, concession to authority and a

Yet despite the fact that the play's title is nothing but his name, Othello is arguably not really the central figure of the story. Iago is far more instrumental in moving the plot forward; it is his (not fully explained) hatred of Othello that the play is concerned with, and though Othello is obviously necessary as the object of Iago's hatred and jealousy, he takes a largely passive role in

That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds, or to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; until -- "My God," says a second man, "I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn." At which point, a dimension is added that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third witness,