Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead

The irony of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is that, in commenting on life through ‘absurdism’, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern actually address some of the most pressing existential issues in literature, and in life. Throughout many digressions and mindless (albeit entertaining) squabbles, an ominous, overarching question persists: How can we know what is truly important in life? One might not find the answer to such a question in an entire lifetime, let alone a play, however long the play’s directors may claim it is. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern does not, therefore, do so. The play does make an attempt at the question, and leaves it at that. By presenting life as merely an extended play and discussing the subsequent implications

After he meets up with R&G for a second time, he laments, “You don’t understand the humiliation of it -- to be tricked out of the single assumption which makes our existence viable -- that somebody is watching…” (Stoppard 63). The actors’ jobs are to put on a show, but their professional perspectives bleed into those of their lives as well. To them, life and death do not matter unless the audience says so; the legitimate death of a convict in the middle of a play is worth nothing compared to the falsified deaths the actors have perfected for this very reason. According to the Player, the convict died, yes, but nothing about the way he died resonated with the audience’s preconceived notions of what death should look like. People do not consume literature to be taught; rather, they crave reassurance that they are not alone in life, that they have attained an understanding of the world that is shared amongst humanity. In much the same way, the actors hold themselves to the standard of being watched: no more, and no less. There is, to them, no value in a life that cannot be relayed as a story. The meaning of life is to perform and be