Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
by Tom Stoppard
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tom StoppardEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1994-01-21
ISBN: 0802132758
Number of pages: 128
Publisher: Grove Press
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780802132758
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Book Review: "Uncertainty is the normal state"
Summary: 4 Stars
Sometimes a book we read a long time ago becomes newly relevant in unexpected ways.
Forty years ago, the plight of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern resonated with a generation scarred by the Vietnam War. These two bit players are mired in uncertainty. They "were sent for, in a matter of extreme urgency" - "there was a message, a summons", but they have no idea what is expected of them. They feebly protest: "we are entitled to some direction.. I would have thought".
Their bewilderment yields to submission when they meet Claudius and Gertrude, who entreat them to divert Hamlet and uncover the cause of his melancholy. R&G are "kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened". They are swept into a whirlpool of events over which they have no control. "Uncertainty is the normal state" concludes Guildenstern (or is it Rosencrantz? Their names and roles become increasingly confused as the play progresses).
"We only know what we are told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true".
When they think they have grasped what their mission is, the mission changes: instead of humoring Hamlet, they are supposed to deliver him to his death.
While they are still grappling with this revelation, the situation changes again: now it's R&G who are to be killed.
"Who'd have thought that we were so important?" muses Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern tries to retrace the sequence of events:"There must have been a moment, at the beginning, when we could have said - no. But somehow we missed it".
Their death is pointless, gratuitous. As the corpses pile up on stage, the play ends with Horatio's epilogue:
"..so shall you hear
of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts,
of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
and in this upshot, purposes mistook
fall'n on th' inventors' heads: all this can I
truly deliver".
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