The Mind and the Heart in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
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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