Tom Stoppard's Play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are

¶ … 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 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

In Stoppard's play, the audience never truly suspends disbelief because even the main characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, refer to the audience directly and because the play has no outstanding plot. Both plays use acting to portray the futility and tragedy of life, but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead does so in an almost slapstick way. Stoppard's play is a comedy that grossly exaggerates two minor characters in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

While Shakespeare shows how acting and drama can evoke deep emotional responses in people, as with Claudius' reaction to Hamlet's play in Act II, scene ii, Stoppard proves that plays can be purely meaningless. Shakespeare's tragedy morphs into a comedy with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. The audience is asked to reexamine the role that acting has, as both a symbolic activity signifying life, and as an actual art that encompasses the medium of the play.

The presence of the Players in both Hamlet and in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead points to the play-within-a-play motif, which is central to both pieces of literature. The Players, or Tragedians in Shakespeare's Hamlet first appear in Act II, scene ii. Hamlet speaks to the troop of performers about staging a drama for the King so that Hamlet can entrap him. The general association of plays and emotionality is conveyed in this scene.

Hamlet's main objective in staging "The Murder of Gonzago" is to show Claudius that he is aware of his murderous act. Hamlet hopes to evoke in Claudius an incriminating response and to inspire fear in him. The players and Hamlet speak of the efficacy of the Classical Greek tragedies. This conversation emphasizes how significant great works of drama are in providing archetypes and universal metaphors. Even the characters within a play, in this case within Shakespeare's play Hamlet notice the importance of play-acting.

Hamlet, however, is caught up in the melodrama. In his soliloquy at the end of Act II, scene ii, he wonders how actors can feign emotion so well. "Is it not monstrous that this player here, / But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, / Could force his soul so to his own conceit / That from her working all his visage wan'd; / Tears in his eyes...and all for nothing!" (II, ii, 534-540).

This idea that the play, and life as an extension of the play, is "all for nothing" is a theme common to both Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor, interchangeable, and enigmatic. Stoppard elevates them to center stage with his play, but in doing so reiterates their relative insignificance to the world at large, and even to the action in the play. In fact, there is very little action in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

In Act 1, Scene ii, the Players or Tragedians make their first appearance in the play. The Players speak of their profession, which in Stoppard's play includes pimping. Guildenstern, who is more thoughtful than his companion Rosencrantz, finds the various sexual acts and favors to signify nothing truly meaningful. Throughout Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Guildenstern endeavors to find meaning in various insignificant and mundane things like coin tosses, but fails to do so.

The Players further disappoint him and fail to provide for Guildenstern a clear sign imparting some kind of existential meaning to his life. The Players in Shakespeare's Hamlet mirror the murder of his father by Claudius, whereas in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, the Players mirror only the confusion and senselessness felt by its main characters. The play represents farce. For Hamlet, the play has the potential of making life more real and more certain.

By staging "The Murder of Gonzago" for Claudius, Hamlet solidifies the homicide; he makes it real to both himself and to his uncle. The play essentially eliminates denial. "The play's the thing / Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King," (II, ii, 589-590). In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, however, the play has the.