Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead actively
engages with Shakespeare’s Hamlet through quotation
and visual cues. Stoppard includes many of Hamlet’s
most notable scenes in a way that casts them in a new light. For
instance, the most famous portion of Hamlet is
the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, Hamlet’s monologue about mortality
and whether he should kill himself. Stoppard includes this scene,
but it occurs in the background, while Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,
in the foreground, wonder whether to approach Hamlet. As Hamlet
mulls over his death, they decide that the time is perfect for a
casual chat. This belief is deeply at odds with Hamlet’s actual state
of mind, which the audience knows but the characters do not. Such
dramatic irony is funny, but it serves a larger purpose. Hamlet is
regarded as one the greatest works of world literature, but Stoppard’s
comic treatment of it shows the importance of viewing Hamlet on
its own terms rather than as the apex of literary tradition. By presenting Hamlet not
as a great artifact but as a play that depicts real feelings and
complex characters, Stoppard reminds his audience of the power of
Shakespeare’s play to speak to us on an individual, human level.
The Lord’s Prayer
Throughout the play, Guildenstern performs punning riffs
on a segment of the Lord’s Prayer, uttered by Jesus in the Gospels
of Matthew and Luke and known to many people as the “Our Father” prayer.
Guildenstern usually replaces the final word of the phrase give
us this day our daily bread with a word that both rhymes
with Rosencrantz’s most recent remark and forms a pun on their situation.
For instance, after Claudius and Gertrude greet Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, mix up their identities, and ask them to probe Hamlet’s
mind, the two become so confused that they can hardly speak straight.
Rosencrantz cries out, “Consistency is all I ask!” to which Guildenstern
responds, “Give us this day our daily mask.” Guildenstern’s substitution
of the word mask for bread is
deeply ironic. In the prayer, Jesus asks God to provide something
people need on a daily basis—bread—while Guildenstern asks for something
that the two men have too much of—masks, or shields, that prevent
their identity from being known. Since even they cannot keep themselves
straight, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern would have little need for
masks, and thus Guildenstern’s remark is a bleak, almost resigned
response to their situation.
This ironic reuse of a sacred text parallels Stoppard’s
irreverent use of another hallowed literary work, Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Stoppard wants to emphasize the lure of literary works—be they prayers or
plays—but he also wants to show the danger of relying on them exclusively
to help us solve our problems. People often look to literature in
times of need, but Stoppard reminds us that although such works
as the Lord’s Prayer or Hamlet may seem universally
appealing, they are grounded in specific circumstances and are about
specific people, and thus they cannot be applied to any situation indiscriminately.
Guildenstern calls on the Lord’s Prayer when placed in trying situations,
but it does him no good, and his punning substitutions point out
that there is no piece of literature that can help them through
their particular situation. Thus Stoppard reminds his audience that
great literature—be it religious or secular—is not a blueprint for
how to lead our lives. Rather, literature itself struggles to make
sense of the complex business of living in a confusing, often frustrating
world.
Gambling
Scenes of gambling occur repeatedly in Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead and underscore the central role
that chance plays in the lives of the characters. The play opens
with Guildenstern losing bet after bet to Rosencrantz as the flipped
coins keep coming up heads. Later, Guildenstern tricks the Player
into accepting a bet that the year of the Player’s birth doubled
is an even number, and Rosencrantz tries to cheer up Guildenstern
on the ship to England by giving his friend a chance to win the
same bet. All this gambling, this reliance on chance rather than
individual actions, highlights how much chance drives the lives
of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and how little they do to counteract
it. Although they are frustrated that chance puts them in unmanageable
situations, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern take no action to help
themselves and instead surrender to chance by relying on gambling.
Confronted with the troubling randomness of reality, Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern do not try to resist it. Instead, they embrace
the very thing that is tormenting them, finding it easier to give
in to chance than take the difficult step of actively deciding how
best to lead their lives.
