About the work
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a tragicomedy by Tom Stoppard, premiered in 1966 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The play views Shakespeare's Hamlet from the perspective of two minor characters and is regarded as a modern masterpiece of the theatre of the absurd, which made Stoppard famous overnight.
Plot
The two insignificant courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, summoned to the court of Elsinore, never quite understand what is happening around them. While the great tragedy of Hamlet plays out in the background and they only occasionally stray to its edge, they pass the time with wordplay, coin tosses, and musings on chance, death, and meaning. Driven by forces they cannot comprehend, they move inexorably toward the end already announced in the title, never gaining control over their fate.
Cultural significance
Stoppard's play combines the existential tragicomedy of Beckett's Waiting for Godot with virtuoso verbal wit and meta-theatrical reflection. By making extras into protagonists, it asks about free will, chance, and the role of the individual in a predetermined plot. The work won numerous awards, was filmed by Stoppard himself, and is among the most frequently performed and most discussed dramas of the twentieth century.