Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead - Tom Stoppard

The word "play" is all one needs to review this book. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is obviously a play itself, and therefore the whole of the play is being played, "playing" being an Elizabethan word for acting. This playing is included not only in Stoppard's play but there is also acting in the play within the play, and even in a play within a play within the play. Don't worry...this will all become clearer later on. The play is centred around two main characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who had the role of two minor, undeveloped parts in Shakespeare's Hamlet. All the main characters from Hamlet are therefore sent to ...  Read the complete review

...when things have got about as bad as they can reasonably get. Tom Stoppard’s acclaimed play ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ is a postmodern existentialist drama that re-centres Shakespeare to expore the crisis of identity and the nature of death, but it’s also funny as well. First performed in 1966 at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, Stoppard’s seminal work earned him a place in the literary canon overnight when it was performed by the National Theatre Company the following year. Spawning a 1990 feature film and allowing Stoppard to pursue a career as a co-writer on several prominent semi-comedy films (‘Shakespeare in Love’ and Terry ...  Read the complete review

Rosencrantz: "Who'd have thought that we were so important?" Guildenstern: "Who are we that so much should converge on our little deaths?" Player: "You are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. That's enough." ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ On a recent lazy Sunday afternoon, I decided to re-read an old favourite of mine that had simply been gathering dust for the last couple of years. Opening the first page, I remembered what I liked so much about this play the first time I read it, and why I was drawn back to it now. The play is, of course, 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead'. I was first ...  Read the complete review