Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Discussion

I just finished reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead by Tom Stoppard. I found this to be one of the creepiest, funniest, saddest most out of body pieces of literature I've read. Especially the Questions game. What are your thoughts?

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What I love is that there is basically no antagonist. It reminds me of Waiting for Godot at times.

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One of my firends staged a scene from it.

I'm sure it's better when you watch the whole thing.

IT is an interesting concept though.

Haha, everytime I think of this book, I remember back to senior English. We had that girl that's in everyone's english class in high school, the one that thinks she is Shakespeare's reincarnate (sans manhood), and that she can interpret every piece of literature on Earth. She said something to the effect of, "The coin means that money doesn't matter to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern because they just throw it around." I thought that was a pretty crap-tacular analysis seeing as how it had no bearing whatsoever on anything else going on in the book. It's okay though, I later found out she fell out of the "Stupid" tree and hit every branch on the way down.

I suppose I should put some sort of spoiler warning here in case anyone is inspired by the discussion to go read the book.

So here ya go **SPOILER**


Yeah, that is really creepy. I can't remember, is it the same in the book as it is with the movie, where the nooses drop down and their bodies are just kinda hanging there?

Hmm, that's interesting that they may be dead at the beginning. I've never heard that interpretation but I suppose it could be argued. I really need to watch and read that again, as soon as this year is over and summer break is here, I'll catch up on my "Theatre of the Absurd" readings!

We just did Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for the Fall Play at my high school. I was the assistant director and it was a really amazing production. Except that Guildenstern was played by a girl and the player was split into two characters; one played by a girl and one by a boy, but everything worked out fine. It's a really beautiful piece of work but it took forever to read through it because everytime we didn't know what the real meaning of something was(pratically every other line) we had to stop to discuss what it meant and then we had to watch the movie and the 4 hour Hamlet and Waiting for Godot before we could start rehearsing. We cut some stuff out so it wouldn't be ridicoulusly long, but it still ended up at about three hours. We also added in a lot of lines from Shakespeare for characters like Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, and Olphelia could walk through reciting things while a scene would be happening downstage with Ros + Gil. Overall the production was a sucess because it was a wonderful show, but it wasn't a very financial sucess becasue I guess we realized most people don't want to see existentialist absurdism.

PS One night the lights randomly went out and then on again(thanks to the ghosts in our light booth) and then Ros just goes "You know, sometimes that just happens here in Ettinsmoor, must be one of those quickly moving storms."

The Questions game has become a common pasttime for my roommates and me, especially when we're all sitting around avoiding doing any work. It's quite fun, and I feel smart because it's featured in a play! Kill two birds with one stone! Oh, and I love the Player. I'm not entirely sure why, but it's a great character. Also, as a random side note, Guildenstern is my favorite of the two.

Bump! Anyone else read this?

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No baby that's deep! I think they just can't handle being major characters, it makes them uncomfortable so the second they are relieved of that duty, their natural instinct as characters made by Shakespeare and Stoppards hands is to fade away and disappear.

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It's me in my schools musical revue I sang "Betrayed"

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Ah, well, keep up the good work, pip pip, cheerio. Too bad no one else had anything to say about the play, I think I've got all the analysis I could muster.

**EDIT** Yay, someone else said something! w00t!

Updated On: 4/23/06 at 11:16 PM

Love this show!
I did a student production of it in high school. It's hillarious yet very serious and eerie. It can also be done many different ways.

::shows her R+G love!::