Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Place on List:
III. Period: 1960 - 2009
4. Primary
Texts: Drama
Tom
Stoppard. Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern are Dead.
(1967)
Supporting References:
- Birch, Dinah. "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." The Oxford Companion to English Literature. : Oxford University Press, 2009. Oxford Reference. 2009. Date Accessed 2 Sep. 2013
“Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead. A comedy by Tom
*Stoppard, performed and published 1966, which
places the peripheral ‘attendant lords’ from Hamlet
at the centre of a drama in which they appear as bewildered witnesses
and predestined victims. This device is used to serious as well as to
comic effect, for underlying the verbal wit and Shakespearian parody
there is a pervasive sense of man's solitude and lack of mastery over
his own life reminiscent of Samuel
*Beckett, whom Stoppard greatly admires.
Stoppard's two protagonists consciously echo Vladimir and Estragon,
from Beckett's Waiting
for Godot, in their existentialist angst
and their attempts to pass the time while they wait for something to
happen.”
- "Stoppard, Tom." The Oxford Companion to Theatre and Performance. : Oxford University Press, 2010. Oxford Reference. 2010. Date Accessed 16 Aug. 2013
The following references the writer
and not the text specifically.
“Stoppard, Tom (1937– ) Playwright. Born in Czechoslovakia,
Stoppard grew up in Singapore before moving to England in 1946. His
first major play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
(1966–7), retold Hamlet through the eyes of its two
unfortunate courtiers, reconceived as a *Beckettian
double act. It established several characteristics of Stoppard's
dramaturgy:
his word-playing intellectuality, audacious, paradoxical, and
self-conscious theatricality, and preference for reworking
pre-existing narratives. In Jumpers (1972) a professor of
moral philosophy is placed alongside radical gymnasts in a
murder-mystery thriller. Travesties (1974), based on the
fact that Lenin, Joyce, and Tristan Tzara were all in Zurich during
the First World War, exploits the dazzling possibilities of their
incongruous encounter in a *Wildean
context.
Stoppard's plays have been sometimes
dismissed as pieces of clever showmanship, lacking in substance,
social commitment, or emotional weight. His theatrical surfaces
serve to conceal rather than reveal their author's views, and his
fondness for towers of paradox spirals away from social comment.
This is seen most clearly in his comedies
The Real Inspector Hound (1968) and After Magritte
(1970), which create their humour through highly formal devices of
reframing and juxtaposition. Stoppard has eloquently defended his
refusal of commitment with increasing sophistication in his epic
trilogy about nineteenth- century Russian revolutionaries and
radicals, The Coast of Utopia (2002), and in Rock ‘n’
Roll (2006), but his plays about censorship,
human rights, and state repression—notably Every Good Boy
Deserves Favour, ‘a play for actors and orchestra’ (1977),
and two television works, Professional Foul (1977) and
Squaring the Circle (1984)—are unmistakably engaged
politically.
Many of Stoppard's later works bring
a profound emotional depth to his characteristic intellectual
sparkle. The Real Thing (1982) uses a metatheatrical
structure to consider the pain of an adulterous relationship, and in
Arcadia (1993) a dual time scheme produces a real and
surprising pathos lurking within its investigation of chaos theory,
historiography, and landscape gardening. The Invention of Love
(1997) has a similar effect with an exploration of love and passion.
Other works include Night and Day (1978), Undiscovered
Country (1979, adapted from *Schnitzler),
On the Razzle (1981, from *Nestroy),
and Hapgood (1988). Radio plays, some subsequently adapted
for the stage, include If You're Glad I'll Be Frank (1966),
Albert's Bridge (1967), and Artist Descending a
Staircase (1972). Stoppard has been a mainstay of the National
Theatre and is one of the most internationally
performed dramatists of his generation.”
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