Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
Department of English and American Studies
English Language and Literature
Mgr. Markéta Vejmělková The Mind and the Heart in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: Mgr. Tomáš Kačer, Ph.D.
2016 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
…………………………………………….. Mgr. Markéta Vejmělková
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my supervisor Mgr. Tomáš Kačer, Ph.D.
for his kind help, friendly attitude and sense of humour, all of which made the process of creating the thesis less terrifying.
I would also like to thank my dear family for their support,
help, love and faith in me throughout my English studies. Table of Contents 1. Introduction ...... 1
2. Starting Points...... 4
2.1. Evolution of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead ...... 4
2.2. Introduction to the Play...... 7
3. Various Interpretations of the Play...... 11
4. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: Characters One Can Identify With...... 15
5. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Not the Same, yet They Function as a Unit
...... 20
5.1. Seemingly Interchangeable...... 20
5.2. Not the Same...... 21
5.3. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are One...... 24
6. Guildenstern's Personality: Rational...... 26
7. Rosencrantz's Personality: Emotional...... 31
8. Interactions...... 36
8.1. Missing Each Other's Meanings ...... 36
8.2. Cooperation...... 38
8.3. Leader and Led...... 40
8.4. Attitudes and Reactions to Death...... 44
9. Conclusion...... 49
Works Cited...... 54 1. Introduction
This thesis deals with a symbolism of the two main characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, of Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
(hereafter RGAD). The thesis begins with broader topics related to the play and continues with an analysis of the two characters with regard to the symbolism of human cognition and emotions.
The broader topics slowly lead the reader to better understanding the core idea of the thesis: the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern together symbolize an ordinary human being. They are a single unit consisting of two different parts,
Rosencrantz embodies human emotions and Guildenstern symbolizes the rational part of a human being.
The thesis develops this idea in seven following chapters. The second and third chapter provide the reader with the necessary base for further dealing with the play.
The second one introduces the play's history and its main themes. The third chapter acquaints the reader with various interpretations of the play's content.
The following chapters deal with the symbolism of the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from various aspects. Chapter four demonstrates the fact that the audience can identify with the two characters and in this way they function as a symbolization of an ordinary person. The fifth chapter deals with the paradox of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern being two distinct characters but at the same time functioning as a unit. Further on in the next two chapters, the text pays attention to the characters one after another, emphasizing their attributes in relation to the presented symbolism. The eighth chapter focuses on the interaction between Rosencrantz and
1 Guildenstern. Firstly their difficulties to cooperate are analysed, then the moments in which they are able to cooperate are discussed. Their unbalanced relationship is compared to a relationship of the leader and the led or of a parent and a child and the chapter is finished by their attitudes towards death and how they influence each other in this aspect. This chapter also shows how all the presented modes of their interaction reflect the interaction between human cognition and emotion.
In the end, all the main points of the thesis are summarized in the conclusion, followed by acknowledging the main benefits and limits of the thesis. The possibilities of further research in this area are mentioned.
There are several principal secondary sources used in this thesis. As for the guide books, the most useful proved to be Anthony Jenkins' The Theatre of Tom
Stoppard and John Fleming's Stoppard's Theatre. Jenkins deals with Stoppard's work in thematically oriented chapters and presents the reader various aspects of Stoppard's theatrical style. He devotes to RGAD's functioning on stage and, as he presents all the plays in a chronological order, he analyses RGAD in its historical context as well. In
Stoppard's Theatre Fleming focuses chapter after chapter on Stoppard's plays. As for
RGAD, he analyses its development and the important themes connected to the play.
Another important secondary source used in this thesis is a book called Critical
Essays on Tom Stoppard edited by Anthony Jenkins. The essays focus on different aspects of Stoppard's work and the play RGAD is mentioned quite frequently in them.
The most useful essays for the purposes of the thesis were the essays written by
Normand Berlin and Anthony Jenkins, both dealing with the theme of death, however, each from a different point of view. Berlin focuses on a philosophical aspect, Jenkins provides a more down to earth analysis concerning the attitudes of the two main
2 characters towards death.
In the thesis there are several references to the film adaptation of the play,
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, created in 1990. The script was written by Tom
Stoppard and it was directed by him as well. The film is not used as a primary source in this thesis because many of the meanings and themes might had shifted due to the time gap and due to the change of the medium. The script had been also considerably shortened in comparison to the original play script and some new scenes had been added. However, it is still Stoppard's work and therefore it is seen as a reliable secondary source. In some cases it helps to understand the play better. Some scenes from the film prove to be helpful in supporting the thesis, therefore the film adaptation is also used as a secondary source.
3 2. Starting Points
2.1. Evolution of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
The original inception of the play RGAD comes from the remark of Stoppard's agent, Kenneth Ewing, concerning “which king of England received Claudius' letter commanding Hamlet's destruction; keeping to the Shakespeare canon, was it Lear or
Cymbeline?” (Jenkins, The Theatre 38). Stoppard, to whom Ewing presented this riddle, found this though worth attention and started to elaborate “the idea of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern at the Court of King Lear” (38). The result took form of a one-act called
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear (RGMKL).
What Stoppard found appealing about this theme was the “dramatic and comic potential of these two guys who in Shakespeare's context don't really know what they're doing” (Hudson, Itzin, and Trussler 57). His colleagues emboldened him to continue elaborating this idea and thus he wrote a second act of RGMKL in 1964 (Jenkins, The
Theatre 38). However, as Stoppard evolved the story he had a tendency to focus more on what happened before meeting king Lear, what it was like in Elsinor. Jenkins describes it in these words: “Stoppard found himself moving steadily backwards into the two courtiers' history in order to explain their arrival in Britain” (The Theatre 38). By
“moving steadily backwards” in the story, Stoppard was actually moving forward to the creation of RGAD.
Kelly calls RGMKL “the prototype” of RGAD (89). This title seems valid for two reasons. Firstly, RGMKL started Stoppard's wave of “eclectic mix of Renaissance drama and contemporary thought, and the wittiness of the whole enterprise“ as Kelly puts it
(158), which RGMKL and RGAD have in common. Secondly, a considerable amount of
4 the passages of the first half of RGMKL found their way to the later play, RGAD
(Fleming 30, 32). Despite these obvious interconnection, Stoppard saw it differently.
For him RGAD meant a new beginning. The idea was preserved, the content modified, as Kelly remarks: “Stoppard … scrapped the early effort and began a different play in
October 1964” (158).
In summer 1965 the Royal Shakespeare Company offered Stopppard a year's option on his play, being one of six plays considered for the autumn production.
Stoppard was requested to write a third act to already existing two acts of RGAD, which he did. However, the play was not chosen in the end. Kenneth Ewing offered the script to the Oxford Playhouse and they handed it over to the Oxford Theatre Group, an amateur group of undergraduates. This group was searching for a piece to play at that time and showed interest in rehearsing RGAD. Ewing hesitantly gave them permission to stage the play and thus RGAD's premiere took place 24th August 1966 at the
Edinburgh Festival Fringe (Fleming 38, 39, 50; Jenkins, The Theatre 37; Kelly 29, 58).
Stoppard recalls that the circumstances of the production were not the best:
The play was done in a church hall on a flat floor so that people couldn't
actually see it. There was no scenery, student actors. The director didn't
show up. Someone else filled in. I turned up for thirty-six hours and tried
to put a few things right. It went on in some kind of state or other.
(Hayman 146)
These imperfections probably caused that the reception of the play was not initially very enthusiastic. Michael Codron explained it as follows: “It was difficult to see beyond the wrinkled tights” (Watts 17). For example the review in the Glasgow
Herald did not have a problem calling it an “off-putting … piece of non-theatre” (Watts
5 17). However, it seemed that someone was able to “see beyond the wrinkled tights”
(Watts 17) and that was Ronald Bryden. The review he wrote for the Observer was the reason RGAD became such a respected and admired work of art in the end. Many times quoted and now already famed words assessing the play as an: “erudite comedy, punning, far-fetched, leaping from depth to dizziness. … It’s the most brilliant debut by a young playwright since John Arden’s” (Bryden, “Wyndy Excitements” 15) launched
Stoppard's career of a respected author.
This review convinced the literary manager of the National Theatre to read
Stoppard's script and to ask for a six month's option. This time luck was on Stoppard's side because a play that should have been presented, Shakespeare's As you Like It, was cancelled and RGAD was free to become the April 1967 production in the Old Vic
Theatre (Fleming 45, Kelly 30).
This time the reviews were enthusiastic. Harold Hobson from The Sunday Times wrote that the production was “the most important event in the British professional theatre of the last nine years” (49). No one forgot to point out that Stoppard was “the youngest playwright to have a play performed by the National Theatre” (Kelly 30). The huge success and more than positive receptions on the boards of the National Theatre led to the transfer of the play to New York. This meant something special because none of the National Theatre plays had ever been transferred to Broadway before (Kelly 30,
Fleming 48). Not only was the play received positively, it also won the Tony Award for the best play of the year on Broadway (Kelly 30), as Keyssar-Franke puts it, it was a production which had “worked” (85). The success did not end there. As Fleming sums up, “in 1967-68 Rosguil was staged in twenty-three countries, and within a decade it had more than 250 professional productions in twenty languages” (48). Nowadays,
6 RGAD is still a recognized play that is produced all over the world.
2.2. Introduction to the Play
The play RGAD is not easy to introduce in few words because of its complex nature. Moreover, there are several ways how to present the play – for example through labels given to it, through the philosophical messages that it holds or through other pieces of art to which it refers.
RGAD has been given many labels such as “Tom Stoppard’s breakthrough success” (Fleming 46), “theatre of criticism” (Berlin, “Rosencrantz” 269), “the boundary between seductive reality and overt bravura” (Jenkins, The Theatre ix), or
“a mixture of philosophical monologues and stichomythic wordplay exchanges”
(Fleming 37). All of those labels are however very general and make sense only in combination with further explanations concerning the play.
The answer to the question: “What is RGAD about?” is either very simple or extremely difficult to formulate. One possibility is to stick to the simplest version and say: It is a fan fiction of Hamlet in which the audience focuses on two minor characters,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and follows the story from their point of view. Or, as
Keyssar-Franke puts it, “Stoppard turns from the grand hero to two supernumeraries, from the historical setting to a barren no-place, from a specific time to no-time”
(Keyssar-Franke 85). That would be the easiest however overly simplifying way to describe the play. Most of all, it would overlook its philosophical context and ignore deeper themes that the play presents.
Hints of a deeper theme can be found for instance in Fleming's description of
RGAD as a story “of two men searching for answers and dying without receiving
7 a sufficient explanation” (52). Berlin marks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern “the two characters representing modern men” (“Death” 44). From this point of view, the play functions as an excursion into a human's self, the author's or the audience's. According to Kelly, “RGAD contains, in the contrast between its two title characters, a sense of the multiple possibilities of identity” (26). When talking about the two main characters,
Stoppard confesses that “They both add up to me in many ways in the sense that they’re carrying out a dialogue which I carry out with myself,” (Gordo 19) and admits that overall, the play might be “a classic case of self-relevation even though it isn’t about this fellow who wrote his first novel“ (19) by whom he means himself.
So what is the play about? It does not tell a story about the “fellow who wrote his first novel“ (19), however it reflects his thinking about issues current also for other human beings. According to Bennett, the play “works intensively at a small cluster of intimately connected concepts. The central one is the concept of reality, and grouped around it are identity, memory, activity and death” (77). The issues dealt with in RGAD tend to be more general and thanks to the ambiguity of the play, there can be found many others. For example Fleming mentions themes such as “fate, role-playing, … theological doubt, and the idea that life is a gamble” (37), Keyssar-Franke adds “the absurdity of human existence, alienation, the reality and illusion of theatre, the significance of history” (85).
All of “these concerns and their modes of expression” (Keyssar-Franke 85) in the play insert thoughts to the audience about various philosophical schools such as postabsurdist and, considering the intertextual quality of the play, postmodern (Fleming
49).
The fact that RGAD is enriched with fragments of different texts is another
8 aspect that is crucial when introducing RGAD. For the culturally educated audience the play is a mosaic of other significant works. Fleming quotes Brustein who assesses it rather negatively, he calls RGAD a “theatrical parasite” (49). Berlin agrees with him on this point (“Death” 44). Other authors are not so severe, for example Corballis thinks that the play “should be regarded as a play about other plays” (65), Fleming quotes
Whitaker according to whom Stoppard simply “rewrites other texts” (49), and Fleming himself calls this practice “multiplicities of echoing” (49).
Beside the evident borrowing from Shakespeare, the most frequently mentioned sources of inspiration are the works of Beckett and Pirandello. Berlin presents the way how they were used: “Stoppard goes to Shakespeare for his characters, for the background to his play’s action, and for some direct quotations; to Pirandello for the idea of giving extra-dramatic life to established characters; to Beckett for the tone of some scenes, the philosophical thrust, and for some comic routines” (“Death” 44).
According to Jenkins and Berlin, Stoppard was inspired by Beckett's main characters when creating the personalities of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Jenkins points out that
“Ros and Guil share the predicament of the two tramps in Waiting for Godot” (“Death”
53) and Berlin adds: “Like Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon, they carry on vaudeville routines, engage in verbal battles and games, and discourse on the issue of life and death” (“Death” 44).
Various authors name many others who are not so often associated with RGAD.
Fleming lists them as follows:
For intertextual analysis Thomas Whitaker goes the furthest, … his list
includes not only Hamlet and Godot, but also James Saunders’s Next
Time I’ll Sing to You (1963), W. S. Gilbert’s 1874 verse burlesque
9 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as well as Six Characters in Search of an
Author, The Importance of Being Earnest, No Exit, and The Balcony.
Furthermore, Tynan and Faraone see Kafka as an influence, while
Rusinko and Brassell add T. S. Eliot to the list. (Fleming 49)
In conclusion, the play RGAD cannot be fully presented by one simple description sentence. There are rather more ways how to expound it to the audience.
The play has been labelled in various ways – Hamlet from a different point of view, or a play dealing with philosophical themes and sensitive human issues, as well as a play full of references to other significant plays.
10 3. Various Interpretations of the Play
As soon as the audience saw the first production of RGAD, questions like: What is the play about? What message does it hold? What does the message mean? started to emerge. Understanding the play only as a kind of a fan fiction of Hamlet was not enough and it also meant ignoring “the deeper side of R&G” (Park-Finch,
“Hypertextual adaptation” 185).
The “deeper side” was explored by various authors trying to interpret the play.
The more the play was known and admired, the more interpretation efforts there were.
However, interpreting a play like RGAD is everything but easy. Fleming labelled RGAD as the “most open-ended play, one that has spurred numerous, sometimes antithetical, interpretations” (49). Indeed, it is so complex that some authors gave up and claimed that there are so many possibilities of interpretation that it it almost impossible to analyse this play. Abbotson claims that “what [Stoppard] wanted to say has been obfuscated by the 'room for interpretation' in the text” (172) and that “there are too many philosophical loose ends” (172). Fleming adds: “Rosguil is a text that is contradictory and expansive, one that raises as many questions as it offers tentative answers” (50). He ascribes this feature to “Stoppard’s nonintentionality, coupled with the play’s 'literariness' (echoing and referencing of other literary works)” (49). Abbotson agrees with him on the latter point. He uses Stoppard's metaphor of writing a play as a carpet-making process (various influences and resources are compared to threads) and claims that “the threads which converge to create the play, Rosencrantz, are so numerous that the complexity of the final design makes the pattern itself dangerously indistinct” (171).
11 However other authors view the ambiguity positively, as something that makes the play so good. Kelly uses Stoppard's quote “[RGAD] doesn't attempt to break down or analyse or explain; it simply pitches you into its ambiguities” (89) and she attributes it “the main reason for the play's effectiveness” (90). Therefore, from her point of view,
“loose ends” are regarded as a virtue.
In this way, the play can be interpreted truly diversely. Fleming ascribes it to
Stoppard's “presenting a metaphoric situation that offers a range of multiple meanings rather than specific intent” (47) in RGAD. Various interpretative possibilities of the play are grounded by Stoppard's comment on interpreting RGAD. He describes RGAD as
“a play which appears to be about one thing and may be suspected of really being another thing; … a play in which people tend to look for messages” (Kuurman et al. 21).
He states that the play “reverberates in different ways to people who see it” (21).
Stoppard ascribes it to the fact that the play “has the right combination of specificity and vague generality … That’s why … it got subjected to so many different kinds of interpretation, all of them plausible, but none of them calculated” (Hudson, Itzin, and
Trussler 57).
It is surprising to learn that Stoppard had not “calculated” the presence of the themes that are present in the play. Stoppard explains it in these words: “one doesn’t write a play and hide something in it to see if people can find it” (Kuurman et al. 21). It is as if the themes appeared without his conscious knowledge, as if they were a by- product of his creative work. It is no surprise then that Fleming calls the action of
Stoppard's writing a play “crafting” (53). According to Stoppard, various themes which appear in RGAD are “a by-product, but it’s not even a very conscious by-product.
I mean there's an element of one being the beneficiary of one’s subconscious”
12 (Kuurman et al. 22). From this point of view it seems that the audience simply projects the themes important for them in the play. The presence of philosophical themes is probably also caused by the fact that the influences and sources that Stoppard used in
RGAD are themselves pregnant with these themes so it is only natural that they appear in the play.
Despite all the “ambiguities”, “loose ends” and “plausible interpretations” of
RGAD, the play is always tended to be interpreted in a certain way, as Fleming puts it:
“some interpretations may be considered more valid than others” (3). Jenkins claims that the play is a “complex exploration of philosophical ideas that concern us all”
(“Introduction” 9). Readings that come automatically into the audience's mind are those connected to existentialism and absurdism. This is probably because of the numerous allusions to existential and absurdist works of art that can be found in the play.
However, there are authors who try to disprove these believed interpretations.
While Fleming impartially marks that “answers beyond existentialism, such as the hope that there are rational explanations for the world and human experience, are posited as equally possible or plausible” (53), other authors come with decisive argumentation.
Gruber claims for example “that despite the protagonists’ inability to comprehend the world around them, the play as a whole suggests that there is a knowable logic that shapes men’s fortunes and thus is not absurdist” (116). Hunter argues that provided that the play of RGAD is “allegorical of human life, then it is allegory not of existentialism, materialism, or chance, but of a fixed purpose, a logic beyond and outside of us which we cannot visualize” (Tom Stoppard’s Plays 170).
It is clear that the interpretation possibilities are vast and Stoppard himself supports audience's creativity by saying: “I personally think that anybody’s set of ideas
13 which grows out of the play has its own validity” (Hudson, Itzin, and Trussler 58). That is probably the reason why there are so many readings of RGAD. According to Fleming, when interpreting a play “critics often find what they bring to it; their own values are reflected back” (50). Therefore, there is no surprise that there is a list of different readings of the play. Besides having existential and absurdist qualities, RGAD is considered “a serious critique of Shakespeare's Hamlet” (Jenkins, The Theatre 37), others point out the themes of “absurdity of human existence, alienation, the reality and illusion of theatre, the significance of history” (85). Fleming lists the themes appearing in RGAD as follows: “(1) the nature of truth, (2) role-playing versus identity, (3) human mortality, and (4) whether life and the universe are random or deterministic— does chance or logic rule the world?” (53). Berlin mentions the same themes only in different words calling the play “conspicuously intellectual” and reminds the readers that RGAD shares these themes with both Hamlet and Waiting for Godot (“Death” 44). For postmodern and poststructuralist critics, “Stoppard’s plays accent the unknowability of the world, the elusiveness of true knowledge, the fallibility of human memory, and the relativity of almost all aspects of life” (Fleming 3).
In conclusion, it is impossible to set an unequivocal list of themes appearing in
RGAD as it is unattainable to analyse the play satisfyingly. The most used interpretations are existential and absurdist ones, however there are many others, all of them more or less concerning human existence in a chaotic world. Stoppard concedes freedom to come up with new interpretations.
14 4. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: Characters One Can
Identify With
The characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from the play RGAD function together as a symbol of an ordinary human being. Unlike Shakespeare's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the two characters in Stoppard's play are more alike actual human beings. King states that Stoppard made “the characters feel more real, more human”
(18-19). Originally, Stoppard aimed for one goal: “The chief thing that added one line to another line was that the combination of the two should retain an audience's interest in some way” (Hudson, Itzin, and Trussler 57). However, the possibilities how to gain attention of the audience are scarce. Stoppard chose one of the most efficient ones – putting his soul into the play. Kelly quotes Stoppard describing the process of writing
RGAD as follows: “in my innocence I just wrote along, a bit of Shakespeare, off they went, a bit of me, a bit more of that, off with me, on with some Shakespeare” (156).
There is no surprise then that the result is so human and intimate, Fleming describes the play as a story of a “very human struggle for comprehension” (65) which is something the audience immediately feels. Another strategy of making the play interesting to the audience was to make the central theme appealing. So, he wrote a play about people watching it.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are leading roles who represent everybody in the audience, every human being. For Stoppard, the two characters were something like a reflection of his various identities: “They both add up to me in many ways in the sense that they’re carrying out a dialogue which I carry out with myself” (Gordo 19).
However these characters resonate with more people. “The play awakens in the
15 audience a recognition of man’s condition” (Berlin, “Death” 50) since characters of
Rosencrantz and Guilenstern “represent modern men” (44) and function as “emblems of common humanity” (Cave 63). This seems as something characteristic for the play for other authors share this reading as well. From Corballis' point of view “Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are portrayed as an extension of the audience and therefore as 'real' people” (36). Park-Finch declares that “they are common people” (Hypertextuality 61) and that “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern portray typical human beings” (“Hypertextual adaptation” 193). Abbotson considers them “no different to most of us” (181) and King labels them as “representations of everyman and everywoman” (46). This is truly an important feature of the play and according to Jenkins, recognizing “both of them as fellow human beings” (The Theatre 41) is “crucial to the meaning of the play” (41).
The fates of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, no matter how absurd they are, remind the audience of their own lives. The play can be called “a metaphor of life”
(Zeifman 176) or being “allegorical of human life” (Hunter, Tom Stoppard’s Plays 170).
Fleming sees Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as “emblematic of 'ordinary' people who play many roles in life” (54). “Roles in life” (54) and dealing with life in general is an area in which the two characters are akin to ordinary people. Even though RGAD is an absurd play and most of the situations happening in it are extraordinary and are not likely to occur in reality, the general theme of dealing with being alive resonates with those sitting in the audience, as Delaney comments: “At the heart of the extraordinary
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern we find a celebration of the merely ordinary” (148).
Fleming agrees on this point by saying that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are
“fundamentally seen as characters whose experiences have some relevancy to those of the viewers” (53). The audience is likely to find something in the attitudes, behaviour or
16 personalities of Rosencrantz or Guildenstern that is close to him/her. Be it the fear of death or a sense of being lost in life.
The feeling of not understanding what is going around them is another major issue that the audience might share with the two main characters. According to King,
“the audience can see aspects of their own lives in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” (46) because “the audience also faces uncertainty every day of their lives” (46). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern “strive to create for themselves a responsible mode of living in a world which offers little assistance in such quest” (Abbotson 173-174) and “must learn to recognize and accept what is happening around them in a responsible fashion”
(173-174).
Similarly to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who find themselves in a play they do not know or understand but are expected to play well, ordinary people are put into a play of their lives they do not quite understand but still have to live them through.
People feel insecure and frightened in life just like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the play, and just like them people sometimes feel trapped in a story they do not understand.
The “perpetual struggle to comprehend the complex maneuverings” (Brassell 38-39) of the reality is common for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as well as for the audience.
“Like them, we cannot see the “design” behind our own lives” (54). Hooti and
Shooshtarian describe the actions of Rosencrantz and Guldenstern as “trying to make sense of their confusing situation they experience in their nonsense world to give order to their confusing situation” (148) and that is exactly like people feel from time to time when life gets complicated and chaotic.
The process of identifying with the two characters of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern is also supported by another thing: Stoppard endowed them with features
17 that make them likeable. King compares the two characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet to the ones from Stoppard's RGAD: “The plot in Hamlet shows Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern as two flat characters, while Stoppard creates more complex characters”
(8), “more human” (17). According to him, “the audience becomes more attached to them because more of their personalities are exposed” (17). Unlike the impression the audience gets from Hamlet, that they are two fawning attendant lords, Stoppard presents a different pair of characters – human, ordinary, lost, funny in a bitter-sweet way, strangely familiar, and likeable. Authors such as Brassell or Berlin point the last characteristic out and call them “likeable” (Brassell 38-39) and “often rather likeable chaps” (Berlin, “Death” 44). Almost no one mourned over Rosencrantz's and
Guildenstern's deaths in Hamlet. On the contrary, the audience of RGAD does care about the two characters at the end. Jenkins describes the view of spectators: “We laugh at their confusion, from our omniscient vantage point, but we also acknowledge ourselves in them, and what starts out as an amusing evening at the expense of two friends ends with a sense of personal loss” (The Theatre 41). King agrees with the emotional involvement of the audience by saying that the play “evokes empathy from the audience” (24) and he even declares that the audience is “haunted by the death of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” (24).
There is an interesting relation between resembling a character and liking a character. King observes that “a similarity with real people allows the audience to empathize more easily with these two characters” (19) and “[helps] to portray them as endearing” (46). However, it functions the other way round as well: the audience usually has a tendency to identify with a likeable main character. Therefore, the audience likes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern because they are similar to him/her and at
18 the same time he/she identifies with them because they are likeable.
So in the end, not only did Stoppard “retain an audience's interest in some way”
(Hudson, Itzin, and Trussler 57), but he also created two main characters who represent people in general. Thanks to the fact that they are likeable and that they deal with broad human issues, the audience easily identifies with them.
19 5. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Not the Same, yet They
Function as a Unit
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are presented as characters that are confused together in RGAD even though they possess different qualities and can be distinguished.
At the same time, they are so closely interrelated that they function as two parts of one unit similarly to two parts of one person, reason and emotions.
Stoppard introduced an interesting theme in RGAD. Throughout the play the theme of loosing identity (or rather seemingly not having one) and searching for the identity is present. This “uncertain identity” (Park-Finch, “Hypertextual adaptation”
185) functions as a comedy instrument however the audience can also find a deeper quality in it, in particular the theme of duality.
5.1. Seemingly Interchangeable
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem interchangeable and the other characters of
RGAD cannot distinguish them. There are several scenes in which characters around
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern confuse them together. For example, Claudius welcomes
Guildenstern by saying “dear Rosencrantz” (Stoppard 26) and Hamlet addresses
Rosencrantz “mark you, Guildenstern” (46). Moreover, they themselves are not really sure “which is which” (113). Rosencrantz presents himself and his friend to the Player in this manner: “My name is Guildenstern, and this is Rosencrantz. I’m sorry – his name’s Guildenstern, and I’m Rosencrantz” (13) and later on he sorrowfully recalls how he “used to remember [his] own name” (30). According to King, this “mimics the
20 indistinguishable quality that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern possess in Shakespeare’s play” (15).
In Hamlet it seems as if they could be one character as they do not have any distinguishable qualities, somebody like Guildencrantz or Rosenstern. Authors analysing Hamlet agree on this point, Levin states that “their roles are interchangeable”
(51) and calls them “twin characters” (51) and Abbotson describes them as an
“unindividualized pair” (178) .
5.2. Not the Same
In RGAD however, these characters are put into the spotlight and all of a sudden, they gain personalities and can be distinguished. “Showing them as real people, active and structured” (Bennett 78) enables the audience to view them “distinct from one another” (78). King also points out that: “When the two friends are interacting with each other only, the audience sees the differences between the two because they are acting differently” (22). He then argues that thanks to the fact that the audience witnesses them communicating with each other (which does not happen in Hamlet), they can be seen as different personalities (22).
Stoppard discriminates them also by different reactions to various situations.
During the scene of flipping coins (Stoppard 1-4) and the impossible “run of 'heads'”
(1), Rosencrantz “betrays no surprise” (1) about the fact that “the run of 'heads' is impossible” (1) and “he is nice enough to feel a little embarrassed at taking so much money off his friend” (1), that is Guildenstern. However, Guildenstern, who “is well alive to the oddity” of the situation, is absolutely “not worried about the money, … he is worried by the implications; aware but not going to panic about it” (1). According to
21 King, director's notes evidence that Stoppard “wants these two characters to be differentiated” and he claims that “varying attributes continue throughout the play” (22).
There are also other scenes which illustrate their different personalities very well. For example, they differ in their taste in art. When the Player asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern what they want, their answers show their different expectations about a good play or art in general. Rosencrantz wants “a good story, with a beginning, middle and end” (73), while Guildenstern prefers “art to mirror life” (73). Rosencrantz wants a story that leads somewhere, that has a twist, an elaborated story that stirs emotions, whereas Guildenstern seeks for a plausible plot that he expects to follow the rules of logical thinking.
Another example is the distinctive way they deal with the result of their meeting and conversation with Hamlet when they are supposed to “glean what afflicts him” (38).
Guildenstern tends to mask and gloss over the fact that they do not have any results. His statements such as “I think we can say we made some headway” (47), “We played it close to the chest of course” (47) and “He caught us on the wrong foot once or twice, perhaps, but I thought we gained some ground” (47) are a way to keep his integrity of a person who is able to deal with every problem by using logic and clever sounding phrases. It is a metaphor of human's rational part. In one's head, everything is possible, it is possible to create theories about almost everything and gloss over almost any problem without admitting that he/she does not know the answer or that he/she is lost.
Rosencrantz, on the other hand, describes the reality in a more dramatic way than it really happened: “He murdered us” (47), alongside with “I think we can say he made us look ridiculous” (47) and “He was scoring us all down the line” (47). He does not have an objective approach to the situation, his view is rather emotional
22 and pessimistic. This reflects how human emotions can shift one's understanding of neutral situations.
Another example takes place in the same scene later on when they determine that in order to understand Hamlet's curious condition they have to “establish the direction of the wind” (50). They differ significantly in how each of them deals with this task. Guildenstern searches for the answer by leading a very complicated and confusing monologue comprising of theorizing about the position of the sun, the cardinal points and the time of the day.
Rosencrantz would deal with the problem in a much simpler and practical way:
“Why don't you go and have a look?” (50), because “the position of the sun, if it is out, would give you a rough idea of the time; alternatively the clock, if it is going, would give you a rough idea of the position of the sun” (50). Through this situation the audience gets another idea about the differences between these two characters.
Guildenstern needs to work with theories to find the answers for questions and reach solutions solely by logic, similarly to the rational part of human beings, while
Rosencrantz simply observes reality and naturally reacts to it, comparably to how human emotions work – as a natural reaction to situations.
In this way Stoppard played around with the interchangeability of the characters which functions through the whole play. It is based on the fact that even though the characters in the play make the audience think that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are interchangeable, after a closer look the audience realizes that those two cannot be more different and it is surprising in fact that they are such a double act. Stoppard endowed them with totally different personalities, Zeifman concludes it: “the two characters are not, in terms of their personalities, interchangeable (177).
23 The changeover is regarded variously. On one hand, Park-Finch sees the change from anonymous “Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern” to two personalities so striking that he claims that “in Stoppard's new context, Rosencrantz is the reverse of Guildenstern and vice versa” (Hypertextuality 59), that they are “apparent opposites“ (59). Kelly, on the other hand, is more restrained about their divergence. He unintentionally slightly alters the Levin's comparison “twin characters” (51) to “unidentical twins” (26). The use of the word “twins” indicates that even though Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are different, they are still interrelated. That is exactly what Stoppard maintained from
Hamlet – the sense that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are somehow connected.
5.3. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are One
Stoppard took the idea of those two being one, “two sides of one temperament”
(Gussow 35), as he put it, and elaborated it. Park-Finch sees the paradox of the two characters being very close to each other and at the same time quite different as “the key image which Stoppard uses to enhance the polyphony of dualities” (Hypertextuality 59).
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are one of those dualities.
The nature of their relationship can be better understood by using a metaphor of two sides of the same coin. Park-Finch explains it as follows: “Despite being apparent opposites, 'heads' and 'tails' are in fact two parts of one unit, closely interrelated and meaningful in their interdependence. A coin has two sides, which co-exist and together create a complete whole” (Hypertextuality 59). It is surprising how much these words correspond to the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and their relationship.
Tim Roth, the actor playing Guildenstern in the film adaptation of RGAD, thinks the same about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: “Who are they to each other? I suppose two
24 sides of the same coin. Yeah, heads and tails” (Interview).
Bryden describes the relationship of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as having
“a touching sense of … mutual dependence” (“Out of their world” 24). As far as they remember, they were together, which follows from Guildenstern's words: “we have been spinning coins together since I don't know when” (Stoppard 11). In fact, they never leave each other, in every scene they find the other one by their side. There is a scene in which they consider separating and it even looks like they are going to do it (80). In the end, however, they are not able to do so. After protracted decisions which way each one will go, Rosencrantz says for the second time in the same scene “I've just thought. We ought to stick together; he might be violent” (80) – and they do.
In this particular scene it is as if they actually could not part – they resemble two poles of a magnet unable to separate. One would not be himself without another and on their own they would be incomplete. Together they create a complete human being who, if compared to a coin, would have two sides. In this case, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern represent emotional and rational parts of a human being (in the respective order) and they “co-exist and together create a complete whole” (Park-Finch, Hypertextuality 59).
Park-Finch notices this theme in Stoppard's works and calls it “exploration of emotion versus reason and contrast versus interrelatedness” (“Hypertextual adaptation” 185).
In conclusion, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not interchangeable, however, at the same time they are interrelated and together they symbolize a complete human being – Rosencrantz represents the emotional part and Guildenstern the rational part.
25 6. Guildenstern's Personality: Rational
In the play RGAD the two characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not interchangeable, as it has been already settled. When the audience pays attention to this fact, it is possible to distinguish the two characters according to their behaviour and expressed attitudes. This chapter will focus on the character of Guildenstern, on his general characteristics, his inclination to logic and his need of knowing. All of these aspects correspond to areas of differentiation from Rosencrantz and support the reading of Guildenstern's character being a symbol of the rational part of a human being.
The first distinguishable feature that is ascribed to the character of Guildenstern is from Stoppard's note: “He is not worried about the money, but he is worried by the implications; aware but not going to panic about it – his character note” (Stoppard 1).
Apart from the official director's notes, the audience is capable of identifying several other characteristic features concerning Guildenstern throughout the play. The most distinctive one is that he needs to put logic in everything. He is the one who needs to explain everything in words and actually depends on them: “Words, words. They're all we have to go on” (32). He creates theories and make plans in every situation, even in such situations that would be better solved by intuition or let be. Guildenstern “searches somewhat despairingly for a logical pattern” (Jenkins, The Theatre 39), he has a need to
“stick relentlessly to facts and miss the meaning” (Cave 64) and ignore that some
“explanations lie beyond logic” (64).
This is probably the reason why he is seen as the “intelligent one” (especially in comparison to simpler Rosencrantz). Most of the authors describe Guildenstern only relative to Rosencrantz: “the intellectual of the two” (Egan 61), “the stronger of these
26 two individuals” (Abbotson 179), “the more discerning of the two” (Corballis 70), “the more intellectual and inquisitive member of the pair” (Fleming 54). Gary Oldman, who plays Rosencrantz in the film adaptation of RGAD, says that Guildenstern is “more incisive and sees himself as someone more intellectual” (Interview). It is possible then that the character of Guildenstern is not actually so intelligent. He may simply take advantage of the fact that Rosencrantz is “a little bit slower” (Interview) and in combination with his clever sounding speeches he creates an image of himself as being smart. This is possibly a more important feature of his than actually being intelligent: wanting to be seen as intelligent. He delivers clever sounding monologues and tries to apply logic at all costs, because that is his strategy of functioning in the world. He simply tries to “seek the comfort of rational explanation” (Cave 64). This functions as a representation of the need of human beings to explain everything rationally: Why is something like this? Why does something work like that? How could something be explained?
Corballis describes Guildenstern as a character for whom “there are basically two ways of arriving at knowledge: by deductive logic and by inductive logic” (69). The situations in which he theorizes about how to explain eighty-five heads in a row
(Stoppard 6) or when he tries to deduce the direction of the wind (49) are perfect examples. For Guildenstern, logic is his faith and not believing in it means being weak, as he says: “a weaker man might be moved to re-examine his faith, if in nothing else at least in the law of probability” (10). When Rosencrantz offers him the easiest way to gain an information: “go and have a look” (50), Guildenstern is offended:
“Pragmatism?! – is that all you have to offer?” (50). He feels offended, because it is an attack on his all-explaining theories and deductions which, according to him, are
27 sufficient to explain every problem. That is also why he never changes his bet, even though he gradually looses more and more money – because, logically, there is “an even chance” (4).
He also tends to create plans and strategies in order to get an answer to a problem. He initiates a role-playing to find out why Hamlet behaves so strange:
“Question and answer. Old ways are the best ways. … I'm him, you see” (38). When
Rosencrantz suggests: “We could play at questions” (33), Guildenstern answers :”What good would that do?” (33) even though he knows what good it could do. It gives him the opportunity to ask the questions that burden him: “What in God's name is going on?” (34), “What's your name?” (35), “What's your name when you're at home?” (35) and “(with emphasis): What's your name?!” (35). It seems as if Guildenstern forgot they were playing a game. Keyssar-Franke explains it in this way: “Guildenstern is not absorbed by the game for more than a moment because he is repeatedly thrown into meditation or distress by the content of a question” (93). He seeks for the answers and he needs to know the true state of affairs.
The need to know things is another identifying feature of his. The urge to have knowledge is well illustrated by his statement: “I like to know where I am. Even if
I don't know where I am, I like to know that” (Stoppard 70). He interviews Rosencrantz as if he was a subject of investigation in order to gain new information: “What's the first thing you remember?” (6), “Are you happy?” (7), “What are you going to do now?” (7).
And when it comes up to their names, he rejects Rosencrantz's offer to choose which one of the two he wants to be (30), because that could lead to a fallacy.
King sees Guildenstern as the one with “astute insights from the world in which he lives” (23). However, as the play evolves, Guildenstern's logical explanations are not
28 enough. This is metaphorically demonstrated through the situation when Guildenstern
“gets up but has nowhere to go” (Stoppard 10). Guildenstern knows he is losing ground, he insecurely adds “if my calculations are correct” (4) to something he used to believed was one hundred percent true. As Cave remarks “the universe of Shakespeare’s Hamlet brings nothing but panic to the logically minded” (66). Indeed, Guildenstern's logic simply does not fit into this world. Even though all the things he believes in are crumbling, he still looks for “predictable factors”: “I'm relieved. At least we can still count on self-interest as a predicable factor...I suppose it's last to go” (Stoppard 11).
Since logic is the only way for him to function he “searches somewhat despairingly for a logical pattern” (Jenkins, The Theatre 39) that would explain what is happening around him and Rosencrantz. Fleming comments this feature of his as well:
“Guildenstern, ever the believer that events happen for a reason, wants an explanation”
(54). Progressively, the audience finds out that his feature is not so much about the strict logic (because it does not work in the reality of the play) but about the need to explain, by any means, the situations, to feel he has at least some control over his life.
Guildenstern needs “to prove they have control over events” (Jenkins, The
Theatre 40) no matter how: be it explanations, syllogisms, role-playing or abstract word-games. He truly starts grasping at straws, he uses everything – “human willpower, divine intervention, and mathematical principles” (Fleming 54) as predictors. The need to find logical explanations leads him to hold onto things that do not really follow the rules of logic, yet he still tries to scram them into seemingly logic patterns and theories.
This can be illustrated by the situation in which Guildenstern suggests that an improbable situation is caused by a “divine intervention, that is to say, a good turn from above concerning him, cf. children of Israel, or retribution from above concerning me,
29 cf. Lot's wife” (Stoppard 6) or because he is “the essence of a man spinning double- headed coins, and betting against himself in private atonement for an unremembered past” (6).
He tirelessly and at all costs needs to fit a situation in a theory. No matter how unreliable it sounds, he is so desperate that the important thing is that it is some kind of a theory. This need to explain things, to know how everything works, to apply logic in all situations he comes across symbolises the reason of a human being.
To conclude, the character of Guildenstern is logical at all costs even though his theories cannot be applied in the reality he finds himself in. Nevertheless, he continues to plan and create strategies in order to fulfil his need of knowledge and to have the feeling of having things under control. This accent on logical approach to reality at any rate symbolizes the rational part of a human being.
30 7. Rosencrantz's Personality: Emotional
The character of Rosencrantz is introduced in this chapter in relation to being a symbol of the emotional side of human beings. Rosencrantz seems less intelligent than
Guildenstern but at the same time he hides many qualities with which he contributes. He is able to be sympathetic and he takes the world as it is. His seeming foolishness and chaotic functioning is discussed as well as his playfulness and spontaneousness. These features reflect people's behaviour strongly affected by emotions.
Similarly to Guildenstern, the starting point for describing Rosencrantz is the
Stoppard’s note: “the run of ´heads´ is impossible, yet Ros betrays no surprise at all – he feels none. However, he is nice enough to feel a little embarrassed at taking so much money off his friend. Let that be his character note” (Stoppard 1). Stoppard does not provide a precise list of Rosencrantz’s characteristics or a detailed description of his personality in the stage directions. At the beginning of the play, there are only hints that develop throughout the play in a complex characteristic of Rosencrantz. The audience has to deduce what his personalty is like through his attitudes and actions.
Rosencrantz might be seen in comparison to always theorizing Guildenstern a bit simple. Oldman compares him to “a savant” (Interview) and describes him as “a little bit slower” (Interview), however denies that he would be stupid. On the contrary, he sees in him certain hidden qualities, for example “he has these moments of sort of deep philosophical understanding” (Interview). Abbotson agrees with him on this point by declaring: “On every occasion Ros seems to reach enlightenment” (181). It might take him some time, typically in the situation of having a dialogue with Guildenstern pretending to be Hamlet (39), but then he usually surprises the audience by his insight,
31 for example during his phenomenal speech on death (Stoppard 62-63).
Abbotson points out another merit of Rosencrantz: “Ros has potential, he is capable of initiating action in a way Guil is not. It is Ros who picks up the coin” (181).
Truly, Rosencrantz has an inconspicuous gift of reacting to the world in a sensitive way.
This feature enables him to see the needs of others. Stoppard describes him as “nice”
(1), Oldman says that “there is … something very sympathetic and charming about
Rosencrantz“ (Interview) and Kelly quotes Stoppard saying that Rosencrantz is “thicker, nicer in a curious way, more sympathetic” (26) than Guildenstern. Rosencrantz simply functions on an emotional level.
The audience perceives that throughout the whole play. Rosencrantz is “nice enough to feel a little embarrassed at taking so much money off his friend” (Stoppard 1).
He also shows his emotional understanding by reacting to their plan to let Hamlet get killed: “He's done nothing to us” (102) and “It's awful” (102). Moreover, he sees himself as “good at support” (95). To what extant he truly supports others is questionable however in this context the important thing is that he has inclination to helping others.
He tries to solace Guildenstern when he is constantly losing in the game of tossing coins: “I'm afraid it isn't your day” (6). He attempts to make him happy by using
Guildenstern's modes of conversation and tries to “discuss”. This is apparent when
Rosencrantz starts his out of the blue discourse: “Another curious scientific phenomenon is the fact that the fingernails grow after death, as does the beard” (8). He also tries to uplift Guildenstern's spirits by letting him repeatedly win in a coin-guessing game (94) or trying to distract him by making conversation paraphrasing Guildenstern's own words: “I - I bet you all the money I've got the year of my birth doubled is an odd
32 number” (112). Finally, when he looks back at why they ended up like they did, his first thought concerns other people: “We've done nothing wrong. We didn't harm anyone, did we?” (117).
There is another distinct feature of Rosencrantz's character. At the beginning, the audience is informed that he is not surprised by something obviously impossible.
Further on it is clear that Rosencrantz does not care about laws of reality but about reality itself. The fact that Rosencrantz is not put out of countenance when the coin keeps falling on “heads” follows from his attitude to the reality – he does not question it, he simply lives it. If something works, he keeps doing it. If it does not, he stops doing it and tries something different. In both occasions, there is no reason for him to examine it closer. Keyssar-Franke calls this practice “describe and respond” (93). That is exactly why Rosencrantz keeps betting on heads – because it works. Keyssar-Franke comments it as “whimsy and blunt acceptance” (88) of things occurring around him. According to her, Rosencrantz “questions and finds given answers momentarily sufficent” (88) because “meaning beyond the doing is a menacing source of concern” (89). This is one view on his mode of coping with the world.
Another one is that Rosencrantz might not be aware of any “beyond” or simply does not care about it. This mode of functioning might be simply more advantageous for him, it might be a way of adaptation, a mode that allows him to sail through the world he finds himself in. This mode leads to a tendency to solve problems the easiest way possible, be it his suggestion concerning the disentanglement of their names: “I don't care one way or another, so why don't you make up your mind” (Stoppard 30) or proposing Guildenstern a solution to his questions: “Why don't you go and have a look?” (50).
33 By being so responsive to what is happening around him, he ends up being rather chaotic given that the reality is chaotic itself. This is another distinctive feature of the character of Rosencrantz – he seems quite disorganized. Abbsotson describes it as follows: “he is full of uncertainty from the start” and he “is prone to mistakes due to such moments of inattention” (181). In the film adaptation of the play RGAD, there are several scenes in which Rosencrantz heads a different way than Guildenstern and has to change his direction at the last moment (Rosencrantz & Guildenstern). In the play he declares: “Why! – something is happening. It had quite escaped my attention!”
(Stoppard 104) and he puts, for incomprehensible reasons, his hand under the Player's foot (66). As the character of Rosencrantz symbolizes human emotions, the described feature refers to the fact that strong emotions negatively influence people's attention and they are more chaotic and more likely to make mistakes.
Finally, Rosencrantz's nature allows him to be spontaneous and playful. It is apparent especially in contrast to Guildenstern for whom tossing coins and playing a question game signify something deeper than for Rosencrantz. Rosencrantz “enjoys it as a space filler” (Keyssar-Franke 93), he is “becoming engrossed in tossing coins”
(Kelly 97) and to the irritation of Guildenstern, he has a tendency to start playing a question game every time he hears more questions in a row (Stoppard 39). He also counts the number of “heads” not for being astonished by the improbability of it but because: “Eighty-five in a row – beaten the record!” (4). His spontaneousness symbolises the situations in which people get carried away by emotions. Without much rational control, emotions truly authentically respond to the situation people encounter.
In conclusion, even though the character of Rosencrantz seems to be simple, he surprises by qualities which show up during the play, he is emphatic and supportive. He
34 does not question the reality, he simply responds to it. This feature helps him to cope with the world around him, be spontaneous and enjoy the games they are playing, but also causes that he is sometimes rather chaotic. All of these characteristics reflect the emotional side of human beings.
35 8. Interactions
In this chapter the interaction between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will be discussed. It also reflects the interaction between emotion and cognition. Most of the times it seems as if Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were missing each other's meanings.
Given that they function at different levels, this is quite understandable. However, there are also situations in which they are able to synchronize. The moments they complement each other in the way that Guildenstern is the leader and Rosencrantz is the lead are presented afterwards. Finally, the focus is put on how they influence each other in their attitudes to death.
8.1. Missing Each Other's Meanings
As analysed before, Rosencrantz responds to the reality without questioning it,
Guildenstern needs explanations and theories for everything. Throughout the whole play, it seems almost unbelievable that those two characters bare to stay in each other's company. Either they have a completely different attitude to what is happening around them or they are not capable of making a common arrangement. The former can be illustrated by Rosencrantz's commenting on the result of their coin tossing game:
“Getting a bit of a bore, isn't it?” (Stoppard 3) to which Guildenstern reacts: “What about the suspense?” (3). Guildenstern also cannot understand Rosencrantz's calmness:
“No questions? Not even a pause?” (4), “Not a flicker of doubt?” (4), “Is that it? No fear?” (5). However, Rosencrantz does not get Guildenstern's view either: “What suspense?” (3), “Fear?” (5). When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern evaluate their conversation with Hamlet, their opinions on how it went noticeably differ. While
Guildenstern says: “I think we can say we made some headway” (47), Rosencrantz is
36 clear about the disastrous result: “I think we can say he made us look ridiculous” (47) and “He murdered us” (48). There is no surprise then that a frequently asked question in the play is: “What's the matter with you?” (7, 9, 34, 36, 50).
Their inability to make an arrangement is usually connected with a play on words. Zeifman notices this as well: “Rosencrantz means by 'game' one thing,
Guildenstern another” (177). The dialogues based on a play on words are primarily used as a comedic element however they also emphasize the chaotic interaction between the two main characters. A typical example of this is their confusion about the seemingly lost letter in the scene on a boat starting off with Guildenstern's approval to what
Rosencrantz said: “You've got it. (ROS takes that literally. He starts to pat his pockets, etc.)” (Stoppard 97) or a following confused exchange:
Guil: Ah. (To Ros) Why?
Ros: Exactly.
Guil: Exactly what?
Ros: Exactly why.
Guil: Exactly why what?
Ros: What?
Guil: Why?
Ros: Why what, exactly?
Guil: Why is he mad?!
Ros: I don't know! (60)
Another typical situation illustrating a chaotic interaction between Rosencrantz
37 and Guildenstern is the one when Guildenstern plans to gain some knowledge by simulating a dialogue with Hamlet. However, it is initially very confusing for
Rosencrantz:
Guil: I'm him, you see.
Beat.
Ros: Who am I then?
Guil: You're yourself.
Ros: And he's you?
Guil: Not a bit of it. (38)
8.2. Cooperation
The fact that they tend to miss each other's meanings does not mean that they are not able to cooperate at all. It seems that it takes some time for Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern to synchronize and get on the same level, however it does happens from time to time. Sometimes they complement each other, either by division of tasks:
“Guil sits. Ros stands (he does the moving, retrieving coins). Guil spins. Ros studies coin” (Stoppard 1) or in their duologues. Their cooperation usually manifests itself in brisk dialogues.
For example in case of the famous game of questions, even after a bumpy start, they are capable to synchronize and create a flowing dialogue (33-35). Similarly developing conversation – from certain difficulties at the beginning to a symphony of questions, answers and comments in the end, is the one in which they simulate the
38 questioning of Hamlet (40-42).
Even though they think on different levels, a device thanks to which they are always able to synchronize themselves are several short and ad hoc created slogans, which incidentally appear throughout the play:
Ros: Consistency is all I ask!
Guil: Give us this day our daily mask. (30)
…
Ros: Immortality is all I seek...
Guil: Give us this day our daily week... (37)
These rhymes containing paraphrases to a part of the Lord's Prayer indicate that despite the differences between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern they are somehow interrelated. They create those “prayers” together quite absent-mindedly as if to calm themselves down and assure themselves that they still have each other. This symbolises the fact that even though emotion and cognition are very different systems and sometimes they contradict each other, they are most efficient when they cooperate with each other. For an ordinary human being the moments of cooperation predominate over the chaotic ones. The numerous moments of the confusion in the play might serve as a means to emphasize the difference between the two systems.
In conclusion, most of the times Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not understand each other due to their personality differences. However, similarly to emotion and cognition, they are capable of cooperating as one which is symbolized by their quick and fluent verbal exchanges.
39 8.3. Leader and Led
When analysing the relationship between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, one of the stepping stones is the Stoppard’s statement: “There’s a leader and the led” (Gordo
19). This is a motif that echoes from Wating for Godot. The audience might be reminded of the two characters Pozzo and Lucky: “POZZO drives LUCKY by means of a rope passed round his neck” (Beckett 23).
Distinguishing which one is the leader and which one is the led in case of RGAD is not difficult when taking into account that Guildenstern is “fairly intellectual, fairly incisive“ (Kelly 26) and Rosencrantz “is thicker, nicer in a curious way” (26).
Throughout the play, it is made clear that Guildenstern is pictured as “the stronger one of these two individuals. It is he who is leading the way and deciding their path”
(Abbotson 179). Oldman explains this division of functions as follows: “Guildenstern
… sees himself as someone more intellectual and Rosencrantz is just a little bit slower”
(Interview). The fact that Guildenstern perceives himself superior to Rosencrantz and the fact that Rosencrantz by his nature allows it, truly makes Guildenstern “the leader” and Rosencrantz “the led”.
The character of Guildenstern metaphorically shows how logic has the main word in today's world. There is a perfect example in the film RGAD: the scene in which
Rosencrantz thoughtlessly goes one way but at the last moment changes direction because that is where Guildenstern (who leads the way) heads (Rosencrantz
& Guildenstern). This symbolizes that even though emotions could decide direction of events, the rational part is out of habit in the front and is expected to decide for the whole human being which way to go in life.
Another example of Guildenstern's superiority is when he decides not to
40 interfere in Hamlet's planned execution. Rosencrantz objects: “He's done nothing to us.
… It's awful” (Stoppard 102), however, Guildenstern dismisses all these objections.
According to Abbotson, Rosencrantz “typically allows himself to be distracted from this truth and persuaded otherwise by Guildenstern” (182).
In the situation depicted above, Rosencranz is disgusted by the reprehensible deed that they are willing to do. It is the voice of conscience that the character of
Rosencratnz represents. However, the often uncomfortable voice of conscience can be silenced by rational explanations, symbolized by the words of the character of
Guildenstern: “Well, he is a man, he is mortal, death comes to us all, etcetera … it would be presumptuous of us to interfere with the design of fate or even kings”
(Stoppard 101-102). This represents the fact that in our world, logic, even the one leading to distorted conclusions, usually wins.
There is another aspect of inequality between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Even though the audience feels that they are not equal in their relationship, they are undeniably close to each other. This combination can remind the audience of a parent- child relationship. Truly, in some scenes the behaviour of the two characters seems to prove such reading.
Sometimes, Guildenstern seems to rear Rosencrantz, he tries to keep him in his place. This can be seen in particular in the film adaptation. When Rosencrantz starts to invent something or starts being creative, “leave things alone” (Rosencrantz
& Guildenstern) is according to Abbotson “the usual response” (181) of Guildenstern.
There is also a scene in which Rosencrantz entertains himself by imitating sounds of animals. Guildenstern comes to him and nonverbally orders him to stop. This scene might be associated with the common situation in which a person is trying to
41 concentrate on something however the emotions are distracting him/her. It takes all the rational strength to try to silence the feelings and concentrate one's attention on the issue he/she needs to.
Another situation in which the parent-child relationship is identifiable is when
Guildenstern tries to be patient and stay calm, even though Rosencrantz does not understand what he is explaining to him. Similarly to most parents, Guildenstern also tends to loose his temper. Guildenstern reacts from: “(patient but edged): You don't get my meaning” (Stoppard 7) and “(great control): I don't think you quite understand” (39) to “(down Ros's throat): What in God's name is the matter with you?” (50).
Guildenstern also takes care of Rosencrantz and comforts him when needed.
When Rosencrantz is anxious and is “almost in tears” (95) whining: “Oh, what's going to become of us!” (95), Guildenstern reacts by comforting him: “Don't cry... it's all right
… there … there, I'll see we're all right” (95).
Rosencrantz respects Guildenstern in this parent-like role and when Guildenstern reproaches him: “Why don't you say something original! …. You don't take me up on anything – you just repeat it in a different order” (95), Rosencrantz defends himself by saying: “I can't think of anything original. I'm only good in support” (95). Thus,
Rosencrantz portrays himself as a minor person and explains it by: “It must be your
[Guildenstern's] dominant personality” (95).
In other situations Rosencrantz turns into “a baby”. For example, twice in a scene he declares that he wants to “go home” (29, 31) and when Guildenstern is being harsh at him, he is “almost in tears” (95). He is emotionally dependent on Guildenstern and derives “strength from their relationship” (Abbotson 180). In a moment of confusion and anxiety he “grabs Guildenstern” (Stoppard 68) and begs him: “Don't
42 leave me!” (68), and in the situation in which there is a possibility that they would part he tries to reverse it: “I think we should stick together” (79).
From time to time, despite all the expectations of the rational world, there are moments when emotions get so strong that they cannot simply obey the reason. This situation is represented by the scenes in which being in the background and quietly observing what is happening around is not enough for Rosencrantz. Something accumulates in him and it needs to get out, similarly to emotions that overflow when people are under stress or have an emotional breakdown.
The best example of this is the Rosencrantz's monologue about death (62). For a moment Rosencrantz becomes the dominant one of the two characters, he is the one the audience is fully focused on. Guildenstern is quiet apart from several short comments (62-63), in the film adaptation he even leaves before the end of the speech
(Rosencrantz & Guildenstern). The audience has a feeling as if Guildenstern disappeared and made place for Rosencrantz in this scene. When thinking at the symbolic level, it is similar to situations in which the whole human being is possessed by emotions, situations in which the reason should not take part.
In conclusion, the relationship of the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can be characterized as one of a leader and a led or the one of a parent and a child. Their interaction symbolize functioning of an ordinary person in the world. Most of the times he/she behaves rationally, it is expected from him/her to behave according to rational patterns. Emotions however sometimes take the lead which is symbolised in the play by situations in which Rosencrantz needs to express himself openly.
43 8.4. Attitudes and Reactions to Death
The theme of death is ubiquitous in the play, and the more the play gets to its end, the more it is pronounced. The two characters influence each other in attitudes towards death and their behaviour completes the symbolism presented in this thesis. The title of the play reveals its end and the audience familiar with Hamlet knows the fate of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern right from the beginning. The two characters are “victims of a literary determinism” (Berlin, “Death” 44) and they “carry death with them” (45).
They themselves are somehow aware of their determinism: “the action of Hamlet never allows them to forget death for long” (Hunter, Guide 21) and as Guildenstern states:
“Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are... condemned” (Stoppard 51).
Berlin argues that unlike in Hamlet, during which the audience experiences the anguish of the main character when struggling with the theme of death, in Stoppard's
RGAD “death is concept, the object of cool speculation” (“Death” 47). According to him, the audience does “not feel the pressure of death behind the words” (46) of the characters in RGAD. Jenkins, however, does not agree with Berlin. His reaction is: “In contrast, I believe the play does move its audience to feel about death” (“Introduction”
9). This thesis inclines towards Jenkin's view. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern stir emotions of the audience thanks to their attitudes and reactions to death. The two characters assume an attitude to death in a way that “they become mirrors of our own fears at the thought and experience of death” (9). Their attitudes are familiar to the audience as Hunter explains: “They are also modern in their fear of death as extinction”
(Guide 20). In addition, even though Rosencrantz's and Guildenstern's reactions to theme of death are different, in combination they cover broad range of reactions to
44 death that ordinary people recognize in themselves.
The character of Rosencrantz shows reactions to death driven by inner feelings.
When death concerns somebody else, it is compassion. He takes into consideration the other person and cares for him/her. When Guildenstern wants to sent Hamlet to certain death, Rosencrantz reacts: “It's awful” (Stoppard 102) and after thinking that the Player is dying he is in great tension and has to relieve “his own tension with loud nervy laughter“ (115). When Rosencrantz starts thinking about his own death, it is a very intimate moment. He is partly embarrassed by what he is saying: “It's silly to be depressed by it” (62), nevertheless he needs to get it out of his chest. Actually, he is the first of the two main characters who starts pondering death.
It seems that he desperately tries to hold onto the things connected to life. When he thinks about death, he primarily reflects on how he would feel if he was “lying in a box with a lid on it” (62). He cannot think about death without the context of life: “It would be just like being asleep in a box” (62), as Jenkins puts it: “when [he does] think of death [he] can only do so in terms of the living” (“Death” 55). The contradiction between being “alive or dead” (Stoppard 62) is so emotionally disturbing for him that he starts to lighten it with awkwardly inserted religious jokes. This outburst of anxiety connected to death then transforms into anger at them: “They don't care. … They're taking us for granted” (63-64). Not only does he want to take the focus off the fear of death with jokes, he also starts talking about something totally different. Emotionally, this theme is too difficult to bare. These reactions reflect how people tend to digress from the theme of death. According to Jenkins “Stoppard does not pretend to teach us anything. He plays with ideas we usually put away from us” (“Death” 55).
The theme of death is put away however it does not disappear entirely. The
45 feeling connected to it stays silently in people, being digested. This period is metaphorically expressed by Rosencrantz being quite taciturn about death up until the end of the play. At the very end, he asks questions that somehow need to be asked but at the same time no one expects to get answers to them: “What was it all about? When did it begin?” (Stoppard 116) followed by a desperate cry calling attention to injustice of death “We've done nothing wrong! We didn't harm anyone. Did we?” (117). Then the end comes and Rosencrantz tiredly gives in: “All right, then. I don't care. I've had enough. To tell you the truth, I'm relieved“ (117).
Even though the theme of death is present in the play from its beginning,
Rosencrantz's monologue somehow breaks the taboo of it. In fact, he opens a Pandora's box whose content cannot be stopped. From that moment on, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern “share a neurotic and self-pitying obsession with death” (Cave 65).
Rosencrantz wonders: “Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? … It must have been shattering” (Stoppard 63). The moment he started to express his thoughts about death so openly can be compared to that shattering moment he talks about because it has similar impact – it triggers something in Guildenstern, something that was previously hidden.
It is similar to a situation when a person has an intensive feeling about something, which can be triggered by an image, a dream, a glimpse. It is just a feeling but it is so intense that it gets stuck in his/her mind and makes the person think about it over and over. Rosencrantz's manners symbolize the intensive feeling which trigger
Guildenstern's repetitive thoughts about death. In reaction to Rosencrantz's words,
Guildenstern “stirs restlessly, pulling his cloak round him” (62) and “jumps up savagely” (62). Death is a theme which stirs him in a way he does not like. He wishes
46 Rosencrantz stopped talking about it: “You don't have to flog it to death!” (63) but then it is him who mentions this theme the most.
Guildenstern ponders death in his typical rational way which progressively inevitably leads to clash considering that death cannot be comprehended logically. First, it is not that bad, because death is just a concept for him, which he can label with a definition: “It's just a man failing to reappear, that's all - now you see him, now you don't” (76), “Death is... not. Death isn't. … Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being”
(99). When death concerns another person, his rational strategy works, because he is capable of disassociating from sympathizing with the other person:
Well, he is a man, he is mortal, death comes to us all, etcetera, and
consequently he would have died anyway … And then again, what is so
terrible about death? As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don't
know what death is, it is illogical to fear it. It might be... very nice. (101)
However, when death gets closer to him, his logic gets twisted: “If we have a destiny, then so had he – and if this is ours, then that was his – and if there are no explanations for us, then let there be none for him” (115). The thing is that death “rarely makes sense” (Jenkins, “Death” 55) and as Cave points out, “the universe of
Shakespeare’s Hamlet brings nothing but panic to the logically minded” (66). As soon as death starts concerning Guildenstern, it is more difficult for him to stay rational and progressively he starts being more and more stressed and frightened: “After having read the letter which condemns him to death, Guil experiences the pain of his own abrupt and final exit” (Jenkins, “Death” 59). He views death as “an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on” (Stoppard 77). This reflects that from the rational point of view people know what death is, they are able to
47 define it, however to be truly aware that one day they will die is beyond rational comprehension.
In conclusion, death is an important theme in the play RGAD. The attitudes to death of the two main characters reflect the reactions to this theme which the audience can recognize in themselves. Rosencrantz's compassion and desperate grip on life symbolize the emotional side of people. Guildenstern, on the other side, completes the range of human reactions with cool rationalization of the fact that another person will die and with horror of his own death unable to comprehend it rationally.
48 9. Conclusion
Stoppard's play RGAD is a patchwork of various works and ideas of other authors but at the same time a unique play which transforms two minor characters from
Hamlet into complex personalities and which is full of themes resonating with the audience. This thesis focuses on a theme connected with the play's main characters.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are presented as representations of two parts of a human being – Rosencrantz as a symbol of human emotions and Guildenstern as a symbol of human cognition. At the same time their interrelatedness indicates that these two parts are parts of one unit. Their interactions reflect the interaction between human heart and mind.
The thesis starts off with an evolution of the play beginning with the first thought of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern detached from the original play Hamlet through the less elaborated predecessor RGMKL, the actual writing of RGAD, the refusal of the play by The Royal Shakespeare Company and the amateur production, to the overnight fame followed by the offer of the National Theatre and the later transfer to
Broadway and to the whole world. The following chapter describes the play from various aspects. It introduces the play through labels usually given to it and as a rework of Shakespeare's Hamlet, both descriptions are however seen as simplifying. The
“deeper” philosophical themes which are associated with the play are listed, such as fate, human life, death. The play can also be introduced through its intertextuality.
The themes and messages are the core of the play. The third chapter is devoted to the topic of interpretations. Interpreting RGAD is difficult due to its numerous themes and allusions. The list of the themes the play is dealing with is listed, however it is not
49 definitive. Stoppard himself did not intend the play to have any particular reading and believed that every person's interpretation is valid.
The reading of this thesis is further demonstrated in various ways in the following chapters. In the fourth chapter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are presented as likeable characters who deal with broad human issues and thus the audience can identify with them. This leads to a conclusion that the two characters can function together as a symbol of an ordinary human being. The fifth chapter introduces the paradox of the two characters being quite different but at the same time being closely interrelated. They might seem interchangeable however they have distinct characteristics. At the same time, they are very close and it looks like they cannot leave each other. The metaphor of two sides of one coin is presented: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are distinguishable and different however simultaneously they create one unit, similarly to two parts
(emotion and cognition) of one person. Each of them is then closely examined through his characteristics, attitudes to reality and behaviour in relation to the side he symbolizes.
Chapter six is devoted to Guildenstern, the “rational” one. His characteristics are presented through the extract from the play. He is described as a character who needs to apply logic in every situation, wants to be seen as the more intelligent one, creates plans and strategies to get answers, has a need to gain knowledge at any costs. However, in the reality he finds himself in logic fails to give him the explanations he yearns for.
Even though this failure in what he believes frustrates him and makes him more and more desperate, he carries on and unnaturally squeezes the situations he finds himself in into his theories. This uncompromising faith in logic and explanations functions as a representation of the human cognition.
50 The following chapter pays attention to the characteristics of Rosencrantz. They are supported by his quotes from the play or by director's notes. In comparison to
Guildenstern, he is often seen as a bit simple, but throughout the play it shows up that that he contributes with many qualities, primarily with his emotional understanding and sympathy. He also does not question the reality, he accepts it and is responsive to whatever occurs around him. His chaotic functioning and spontaneousness are discussed and introduced as features that reflect people's behaviour when they are strongly influenced by emotions. Rosencrantz's character is in general presented as a symbol of the emotional side of a human being.
After dealing with the characters apart, they are discussed together in terms of their interaction in the eighth chapter. Firstly, their difficulties with understanding each other's meanings are discussed. This reflects that the human systems of emotion and cognition function very differently. Secondly, the moments of mutual synchronization, which happen from time to time, are mentioned. Those situations are expressed through division of tasks, brisk dialogues or synchronizing codas. The moments of cooperation and coordination reflect that even though the emotional and rational side of a human being function differently, they are capable of functioning in harmony.
Thirdly, the theme of the leader and the lead is presented. The relationship is also compared to the one of a parent and a child. Guildenstern calms down Rosencrantz when he is stressed and wants to go home, he also admonishes him when Rosencrantz does not pay attention. This unbalanced relationship reflects that logic has the main word in today's world. However, there are moments in which the emotional side of a human being has the upper hand. These situations are metaphorically pictured when
Rosencrantz captures the attention of the audience with, for him unusually long,
51 speeches, for example about being dead. Rosencrantz often distracts the Guildenstern in various ways which symbolizes the situations in which a human being's attention and thoughts are diverted by strong emotions.
Finally, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern stir emotions of the audience by talking very openly about their fear of death. The attitudes towards death of the both characters are analysed as well as their influence on each other's attention to this particular theme.
The character of Rosencrantz expresses compassion when death concerns other people and desperate desire no to die when thinks about his own death. He then seemingly forgets about the topic, but more probably he only needs some time to reconcile with it on his own. At the very end the process of reconciliation is finished and he is relieved that everything is over.
Rosencrantz starts pondering death as the first one and triggers something strong in Guildenstern who later becomes the character who is most obsessed with this theme.
This reflects the situations when a strong feeling suddenly sets off an avalanche of thoughts that cannot be stopped. Guildenstern repeatedly has a need to talk about death and he does so in his own manner. When he talks about death of another person, he is very unemotional and uses logical explanations. However in the case of his own mortality cool rationalization does not work and this fills him with panic. The chapter is concluded with the thought that his reaction reflects that rationally, human beings cannot truly comprehend their mortality.
The thesis may be beneficial thanks to its fresh approach towards symbolism of the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. It can help to widen the understanding of these two characters, enrich the understanding of the messages hidden in the play and inspire the reader to search for new interpretations of the play. From a practical point of
52 view, after reading the thesis, it should be easier for the reader to distinguish the two characters and identify which is which.
The limits of this thesis lie in its simplification of psychology of a human being.
People were presented as beings consisting of two halves, emotion and cognition. The thesis overlooked the complexity of human personality. Another limit is the lack of theoretical foundation for the theme of cognition and emotion. It was done deliberately not to get tangled in a different topic and to keep focus and emphasis on the literary analysis.
A more complex analysis of the symbolism of the two characters could be done in a further research, using more scenes from the play. The research could also try to interpret situations that are not so straight forward in relation to the presented symbolism. Further research could focus more on the interaction between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as a symbol of the interaction between human emotion and cognition and support the findings with psychological research in this area.
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57 Summary
This thesis deals with a symbolism of the two main characters, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, of Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The two characters are seen as symbols of the human emotion and cognition (in the respective order). The thesis consists of nine chapters including the introduction and the conclusion.
The second chapter summarizes how the play evolved from the first thought to the whole play staged all over the world. It also introduces the play's main points and reflects on the messages which the play delivers to the audience. The third chapter continues with the most frequent interpretations of the play. At the same time it reminds the readers that there is no definite interpretation and that Stoppard implied that anyone can find new readings of the play. In compliance with this remark the thesis is presented: the characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern represent human emotions and cognition. This idea is demonstrated in the following chapters.
The fourth chapter pursues the surprising similarity between the characters and the audience. The fact they share human struggles and at the same time the audience finds them likeable, makes it easy to identify with them and indicates they are a representation of ordinary person. The duality of the two being one (a symbol of a complete human being) and, at the same time, being two distinct characters
(Rosencrantz symbolizing human emotions and Guildenstern symbolizing human cognition) is analysed in chapter five.
This symbolism is further elaborated in the sixth chapter, which focuses on the character of Guildenstern, and seventh chapter, which deals with the character of
58 Rosencrantz. The symbolism is illustrated by using the characters' distinctive behaviour and attitudes. The eighth chapter presents several types of interaction between
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that reflect the interaction between human emotions and cognition. The presented interactions include their mutual incomprehension, the moments when they are able to cooperate, the moments they complement each other in the way that Guildenstern is the leader and Rosencrantz is the lead. Finally, the attitude to death of both of them is presented and put into the context of the thesis.
The thesis concludes with a summary of its main points and their implications.
The contribution and limits of the work are mentioned, a deeper analysis of the symbolism of the two characters is encouraged.
59 Resumé
Tato bakalářská práce se zabývá symbolikou dvou titulních postav hry Toma
Stopparda Rosencrantz a Guildenstern jsou mrtvi. Rosencrantz a Guildenstern jsou v této hře chápáni jako metafory lidských emocí a rozumu (v uvedeném pořadí). Práce sestává z devíti kapitol včetně kapitoly úvodní a závěrečné.
Druhá kapitola se zabývá vznikem hry od prvotní myšlenky až k její konečné podobě uváděné po celém světě. Následující kapitola představuje hlavní myšlenky tohoto dramatu a zamýšlí se nad poselstvím, které divákům přináší. Třetí kapitola shrnuje nejčastější výklady hry a zároveň připomíná, že neexistuje žádná definitivní interpretace – dle Stopparda může totiž kdokoliv přicházet s novými výklady této hry.
V souladu s uvedenou myšlenkou je představena základní idea této bakalářské práce, a to, že Rosencrantz figuruje ve hře jako symbol lidských emocí a Guildenstern jako symbol lidského rozumu. Věrohodnost této teze je dokazována v dalších kapitolách práce.
Čtvrtá kapitola se zabývá překvapující podobností diváků a dvou hlavních postav rozebíraného dramatu. Díky tomu, že všichni dohromady sdílejí lidské starosti a Rosencrantz a Guildenstern jsou navíc vcelku sympatické postavy, je snadné se s nimi identifikovat. Tento fakt podporuje výklad, že oba jsou zpodobněním typického člověka.
Pátá kapitola pojednává o následujícím: Rosencrantz a Guildenstern jsou neoddělitelnou dvojici, dohromady tvoří jeden celek, a tak fungují jako symbol celé lidské bytosti.
Zároveň se však jedná o dvě odlišné postavy a každá symbolizuje jinou část člověka:
Rosencrantz symbolizuje lidské emoce a Guildenstern lidský rozum.
Této symbolice se detailněji věnuje šestá kapitola pojednávající o postavě
60 Guildensterna a sedmá kapitola, která rozebírá postavu Rosencrantze. Symbolika je ilustrována na charakteristických projevech a postojích těchto postav. Osmá kapitola představuje několik typů interakcí mezi Rosencrantzem a Guildensternem, které odrážejí vzájemné působení emocí a rozumu: vzájemně míjení se a neporozumění, schopnost spolupráce a vyladění se na sebe, rozdělení rolí ve smyslu vůdce a vedeného a vzájemné ovlivňování se v postojích k tématu smrti.
Bakalářská práce je zakončena shrnutím hlavních bodů a jejich implikacemi, jsou také zmíněny její přínosy a limity. Nakonec jsou navrženy oblasti dalšího možného bádání týkající se analyzovaného tématu.
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