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Recommended: Theme of Hamlet
The dramatic presentation of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead adapts the formal revenge tragedy of Hamlet to a more contemporary Absurdist black comedy. Resounding with the original through its intertextual allusion, yet maintaining integrity as a separate text, the play illustrates Stoppard’s Post-modern existentialist context. This recognises that the 20th century absurdist audience no longer hold Elizabethan beliefs. Scenes are extracted from the Shakespearean Hamlet and reproduced for the contemporary context, relevant to the 1960s – described simply as: “we do onstage the things that happen off”. In this alternative world, Hamlet’s tragic hero status is marginalised, “the exterior and inward man fails to resemble”, while his rationality diminishes in Stoppard’s removal of the soliloquy scenes. The Stoppardian response sees Hamlet at the pinnacle of hysteria, “half of what he said meant something else”. In simple comic inversion, an irreverent mood is established, endemic to the 60s satire boom which deflated authority figures – the medium of revenge tragedy is recreated into farce.
Stoppard illustrates the Post-modern existentialist context, setting RAGAD on the periphery of Hamlet. Foregrounding two minion characters signifies individualism in the face of capitalist society, and weakening religion and morality. Stoppard recontexutalises R&G into bewildered innocents, creating meaning for Stoppardian audiences, mirroring man’s subsequent uncertainty and volatility. Stoppard utilises Absurdist theatre, similar to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot that depicts this disillusioned world “lacking visible character”, as R&G “exist” under absurd circumstances that recurringly defies logic. Existence becomes trivial through slapstic...
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...your heads”. The theatrical references of the “play within plays” device; implicitly raises questions over truth as ultimately inexplicable. The conventions of the traditional Shakespearean stage are repeatedly parodied, with the Player’s recognition of his role, “We’re actors. We’ve pledged our identities…that someone would be watching”. In a time of obscurity and political censorship, this urges the Stoppardian audience to question their very own realities. “I could jump over the side. That will put a spoke in their wheel”.
With the persistent references to Shakespeare’s play, RAGAD addresses the new philosophical attitudes towards Hamlet and its society. Indeed, the new interpretation of Hamlet’s themes holds literary significance to the modern audience. In effect, the Stoppardian version presents a 20th century response to Shakespeare’s 16th century Hamlet.
A person is created by the experiences they go through and by the things they learn throughout their life. It is the question of who each individual is and what makes up their identity. Writers, no matter the type, have been addressing the issue of identity for thousands of years. One playwright who stands out in this regard is Shakespeare and his play Hamlet. The play continually questions who the individuals are and what makes up the person they are. Yet another play can be associated with Shakespeare’s masterpiece, as Tom Stoppard takes the minor characters in Hamlet and develop them into something more in his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The twentieth century reinvention of the supporting characters from Hamlet, contains three major messages or themes throughout the play including identity, language, and human motivation. The play has deep meaning hidden behind the comic exterior and upsetting conclusion and each of these three themes add to the ultimate message the play invokes into its audience.
Hamlet makes extensive use of the idea of theatrical performance; from revealing characters to not be what they seem - as they act to be - to Hamlet’s play The Mousetrap and his instruction of acting to the players. The extensive use of the stage in the stage directions, as well as numerous monologues and asides, have Hamlet itself acting as a literary device for the motif of theatrical performance.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet happened to be written in the period of Elizabethan values. One of the most significant values the absolute dedication to divinity. This dedication formed religious beliefs and the notions of destiny and fate and the search for the meaning contrast widely to Stoppard’s outlooks which were determined by Existentialist philosophy.
Manning, John. "Symbola and Emblemata in Hamlet." New Essays on Hamlet. Ed. Mark Thornton Burnett and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1994. 11-18.
Goldman, Michael. "Hamlet and Our Problems." Critical Essays on Shakespeare's Hamlet. Ed. David Scott Kaston. New York City: Prentice Hall International. 1995. 43-55
Stoppard gives Rosencrantz and Guildenstern an existence outside ‘Hamlet’, although it is one of little significance and they idle away their time only having a purpose for their lives when the play rejoins the ‘Hamlet’ plot, after they have been called by the King’s messenger: “There was a messenger.that’s right. We were sent for.” Their lives end tragically due to this connection with ‘Hamlet’, predetermined by the title, but the role provided them with a purpose to their otherwise futile lives, making them bearable. Their deaths evoke sadness and sympathy, leaving the reader grieving for them. In contrast to Stoppard’s play ‘Waiting for Godot’ is much bleaker in the respect that Vladimir and Estragon seem to have no purpose or direction in their lives.
Manning, John. "Symbola and Emblemata in Hamlet." New Essays on Hamlet. Ed. Mark Thornton Burnett and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1994. 11-18.
Bloom, Harold. Introduction. Modern Critical Interpretations: Hamlet. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is arguably one of the best plays known to English literature. It presents the protagonist, Hamlet, and his increasingly complex path through self discovery. His character is of an abnormally complex nature, the likes of which not often found in plays, and many different theses have been put forward about Hamlet's dynamic disposition. One such thesis is that Hamlet is a young man with an identity crisis living in a world of conflicting values.
The play, because of the absurdities contained in it, provide for the comic element and the protagonists engage in senseless pursuits without giving any rational thought to why they have been assigned to the task or what may be the outcome. To these absurd games, where they pose questions and provide answers to it themselves, sometimes as more questions, Stoppard brings a sense of inevitable. This inevitable is the death for which the men are destined.
Up until this point the kingdom of Denmark believed that old Hamlet had died of natural causes. As it was custom, prince Hamlet sought to avenge his father’s death. This leads Hamlet, the main character into a state of internal conflict as he agonises over what action and when to take it as to avenge his father’s death. Shakespeare’s play presents the reader with various forms of conflict which plague his characters. He explores these conflicts through the use of soliloquies, recurring motifs, structure and mirror plotting.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet was written in the sixteenth century Elizabethan historical context, where certainty was questioned and there was a growing importance of individuals and their choice as opposed to fate. Influenced by the Renaissance, Shakespeare wrote in the tradition of the revenge tragedy. Stoppard however, who was living in a time of disillusionment due to the tragedies of two world wars, was influenced by the existential movement. Disregarding the past and future due to a lack of trust, Stoppard wrote in a tradition known as the Theatre of the Absurd incorporating existentialism. He uses various processes to adapt and transform the values and ideas influenced by the sixteenth century Elizabethan context in Hamlet to reflect the twentieth century evasion of reality unless it is in a reflexive and directionless present.
This shows that Guildenstern thinks that reality is only real when there are other people there to see it. Without a witness there is no meaning. This shows the idea that reality has no meaning and can’t exist without anyone to witness and give meaning to it. Stoppard develops the idea that life is meaningless towards the end of the play when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern encounter the Player while on the ship to England.
...relies on this basis, to establish a greater awareness and comprehension of 1960s society. Without this assumed knowledge of Hamlet, one cannot truly appreciate Stoppard’s play, which informs society about their nature and shortcomings.
Tom Stoppard’s play The Real Thing tends to show the same situation different times to see real reactions. This work plays with fiction and reality making use of the recourse of “a play inside another play”, and it deals, among other things, with infidelity, intellectual integrity, music culture and writing and interpreting plays.