The Incomprehensibility of the World
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead highlights
the fundamental mystery of the world. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
spend the entirety of the play in total confusion, lacking such
basic information as their own identities. From the play’s opening,
which depicts them as unable to remember where they are headed and
how they began their journey, to their very last moments, in which
they are bewildered by their imminent deaths, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
cannot understand the world around them. Their confusion stems from
both the sheer randomness of the universe, illustrated by the bizarre
coin-tossing episode, and the ambiguous and unclear motives of the
other characters, who pop onstage and deliver brief, perplexing
speeches before quickly exiting. While Stoppard frequently uses
their confusion for comic effect, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern occasionally
become so frustrated by the world’s incomprehensibility that they
fall into despair. The play ultimately suggests that the prominent
role of chance in our lives, coupled with the difficulty of discerning
the true intentions and desires of other people, leads to almost
paralyzing confusion. Although this experience may sometimes be
amusing or seem funny when it happens to others, in the end it is
one of the most dreadful aspects of existence.
The Difficulty of Making Meaningful Choices
The constant confusion in which they find themselves leaves
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern feeling unable to make any significant choices
in their lives. They are pushed along toward their deaths by what
appear to be random forces, and they fail to respond to their circumstances
with anything but total passivity. Their lack of agency is underscored
by Stoppard’s decision to transport them from scene to scene without
any choice on their part. One minute Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
are in the woods with the Tragedians, and the next they are in Elsinore
being asked to probe Hamlet’s distressed mind, a request they accept
without even understanding what they have been asked to do. Even
at the end of Act II, when they ask each other if they should go
to England, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not make a choice but
instead merely continue on the path that has been laid out for them.
Since they have already come this far, Rosencrantz says, they may
as well keep going. Their passive approach to their lives reflects
how difficult it is to make decisions in a world that we do not
fully understand, in which any choice can seem meaningless and therefore
not worth making.
Stoppard demonstrates the danger of this passivity by
giving Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the opportunity to make a very meaningful
choice, which they fail to do. This moment occurs when they discover
that they have a letter ordering Hamlet’s death upon their arrival
in England: if they destroy it, Hamlet lives, but if they do nothing,
he dies. While Rosencrantz hesitates about what to do, Guildenstern
argues that they should not take any action, since they might not
understand what is at stake. Although this decision may seem like
an unfeeling rationalization for moral laziness, it is in fact simply
an extension of the passivity that has marked Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
throughout the play. By failing to make a significant choice when
they have the opportunity to do so, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
incur terrible consequences, as Hamlet discovers the letter and
switches it with one ordering their deaths rather than his own.
Even though deciding which actions we should take in life is at
times so difficult that we might be tempted to succumb to total passivity,
failing to act is itself a decision, one that the play presents as
not merely immoral but self-destructive.
The Relationship Between Life and the Stage
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead emphasizes
the close connection between real life and the world of theatrical
performance. Numerous features of the play work to underscore this
connection, not least of which is the fact that the play asks its
audience to assume that the characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet are
real and deserve to have their story told from another perspective.
Within the play, the connection between life and the stage is revealed
to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by the presence of the Tragedians,
who perform a play that depicts parallel events to those in which
the two men find themselves. This play shows that the characters
most similar to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are ultimately killed,
which is precisely the fate that befalls Stoppard’s main characters.
As they watch the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern see that the
two actors playing the roles parallel their own are dressed exactly
as they are. This confuses Rosencrantz so much that he wonders why
he recognizes the actor dressed as himself but then tells the actor
that he is not who the actor believed he was. In other words, theater
reflects life so well that Rosencrantz cannot tell which is which.
Guildenstern criticizes the Player for assuming that theatrical performance
can depict real feelings, especially the terror of death. The Player’s
response is twofold—he claims that theatrical death is the only
kind people believe in because it is what they expect, and then
he demonstrates that point to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by convincingly
performing his own death when Guildenstern stabs him with a stage
knife. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are completely persuaded by
the Player’s performance, which lends credence to his claim that
people really do believe in the things that theater has led them
to expect. Indeed, the characters only believe in death when it
looks theatrical, as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern cannot quite bring
themselves to believe in their own impending deaths, for which they
are unable to form any expectations. The audience cannot believe
in their deaths either, at least according to the logic of the play
and the Player, since the audience’s expectation that Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern will die is never fulfilled. By refusing to depict
their deaths and refusing to give the audience what it knows is
coming, Stoppard keeps Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from dying and
instead turns them into living literary characters.
