Summary: R&G are walking along flipping coins and debating over the philosophical, mathematical, and existential consequences of a ridiculously long streak of heads. At the same time, they are attempting to recall what they are doing and why they are there, and conclude that they were sent for by a messenger on urgent business.
They soon encounter a roving group of players known as the Tragedians who boast their questionable but extensive repertoire, but get involved in a bet over the result of a coin flip that mysteriously ends with R&G noticing that it landed tails.
The next scene is in the castle. R&G spend the rest of their time in Denmark participating in the roles written out for them in the script of Hamlet but also interacting with the players and passing time with lengthy discussions, including a game of "questions."
When it comes time for them to take Hamlet to England, they simply appear on a boat. At this point in the play, R&G rehearse how they are going to address the king, and accidentally read a note intended for the king with instructions to kill Hamlet. Hamlet, overhearing the conversation, swaps this note for a replica calling for the immediate death of R&G. They only discover this when they act out their meeting with the English King with the Player and read the mandate themselves. Meanwhile, the Tragedians appear on the ship. Soon after, "pirates" invade, and "take" Hamlet, although this all happens very quickly and Hamlet seems to act much on his own accord, disappearing into a barrel. In their final encounter with the Tragedians, Guildenstern claims that the head player cannot and has not created a convincing death scene. Guildenstern stabs the Player with his own dagger and he appears fatally wounded, but then gets up and shows R&G that the dagger is a stage prop. The play ends with the announcement in the end of Hamlet Act V when the ambassador announces that "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead."
Analysis: The play involves a great deal of dramatic irony and humorous devices, but also reaches deeply into absurdism and existentialism. The play also contains motifs of meta-reality, duality, and paradox. While many individual scenes have ironic elements, such as when R&G are not aware of the letter swap but the audience is, the entire play can be seen as a piece of dramatic irony, given that any informed viewer knows the main characters are doomed from the onset.
The meta nature of the play really becomes obvious when R&G witness their own deaths as part of a marionette production within a version of Hamlet staged as part of a production of the "Murther of Gonzago," which is really a production of Hamlet within the main plot of Hamlet. However, each version of Hamlet portrayed is ultimately a version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. In the film version, this meta-narrative extends even further, as the last scene suggests that all of the actions since the encounter with the players have been a production they in fact staged. Outside of that is the actual written play serving as the final layer. If we're counting, that's around five nested plays, but really they all interact to form a more cyclical pattern. The evidence for this would be when, during the Tragedians' rehearsal, the real Hamlet and Ophelia burst through doing (or acting out, depending on the desired degree of meta-reality) the Nunnery Scene.
As for duality, the coin flipping establishes itself as a metaphor for R&G's fate. It seems that with the reversal of a coin flip result, they are whisked away into the narrative of Hamlet. In a similar way, it almost seems up to chance whether the letter for the English King calls for Hamlet's death or their's. One could even say that the whole "To be or not to be" soliloquy, or Guildenstern's paraphrasing of it, is really the message driving this entire motif. The difference between life and death is just a single coin toss. However, this version contains an existential twist: Life and death are not two choices in the hands of the bearer. They are at the hands of the players, or rather the playwrights-- The ones who manufacture comedy, tragedy, and most importantly death itself. In this way, Shakespeare is the puppet master. When he leaves a gap of interpretive ambiguity, the characters are subject to it, and since novel interpretation has a degree of chance about it, so does the very existence of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Whether they live or do not, the choice is already written down for them somewhere, making this whole idea of chance rather paradoxical in the first place.
Quotes: "Where we went wrong was getting on a boat. We can move, of course, change direction, rattle about, but our movement is contained within a larger one that carries us along as inexorably as the wind and current." - Guildenstern
Guildenstern is distressed because the sequence of probabilities or dual realities that seemed completely in their hands have now converged on a point of no return. Until R&G got on a boat, they could have walked away from Denmark as free men. However, it seems from their perspective, as they are merely characters and thus incapable of perceiving the inevitability of their death, that they made this choice willingly. We, as an audience, would disagree. They appear on the boat the same way they appear in Elsinore and even at the beginning of the book. Maybe those were all choices, but for our two poor heroes, it is the only narrative that exists on paper.
"Player: You are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. That's enough.
Guildenstern: No-- it is not enough. To be told so little-- to such and end-- and still, finally, to be denied an explanation. "
This represents the confusion R&G must have over their own poorly defined existence. Because their characters in Hamlet are so flat and interchangeable, this becomes a character trait in the play. The cruel or tragic aspect is that Guildenstern has the emotion of a fully formed character but not sufficient definition as to grant him means of expressing or understanding what it is to be alive. No matter how hard he tries, he is met with confusion and contradiction. Perhaps he is not so flat after all. How much more human could this get?
"The only beginning is birth and the only end is death--if you can't count on that, what can you count on?"- Guildenstern
This quote also deals with existentialism. It is interesting because it gives the reader the suggestion that death comes as a relief-- the ultimate closure. Without the certainty that they woke up, or were born, they cannot be sure of their own reality. That is why Guildenstern's question, "what is the first thing you remember?" is so difficult to answer. Rosencrantz has faith that an answer to that question would involve confirmation of his birth, but R&G have no defined origin. Thus, he has forgotten.
Theme Statement: Life and past lives are patterns, repeated cycles, that make death and the process of dying a recurring and theatrical motif, within which we, the players who do not know our roles, are governed by the whim of the playwrights, who do.
Thomas, very nicely done. =)
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