Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead

Tom Stoppard the author of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is a British play-writer born in Czech. Stoppard wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in 1964. The exposition of the play begins with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern flipping coins that favors Rosencrantz request for heads 100 to 0. The play then continues with Guildenstern questioning if they have entered a new dimension in which the laws of chance and time are absent. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are then faced with the question of why they are traveling. The rising action continues with the encounter of the player, the leader of a group called the tragedians. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are given a mission to probe Hamlets distraught mind, during the journey Rosencrantz and Guildenstern demonstrate the inability to make their own decisions that inevitably lead to their deaths. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s inability to make their own choices leading them to death demonstrates the theme of death and freewill in the play.

The title itself foreshadows the characters death. The exposition of the play begins with a questionable coin toss with unrealistic odds of a 100-long streak of heads. At first these odds seem impossible but as the rising action builds towards the climax, the odds become obvious. The odds act as a representation of the fate of death. Death beats human life every time. Shakespeare’s Hamlet has already devised Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s death; therefore, the audience of Stoppard’s play already know the inevitability of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s death. These two characters amplify the fate and inevitability of death. In Act III the player, who is the leader of the tragedians says to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern “Life is a gamble, at terrible odds – if it was a bet you wouldn’t take it.” This comment summarizes the fate of death. No matter what you do, good or bad, death will