Inter-Textuality and Double Codification Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead

Inter-Textuality and

Double Codification

Stoppard’s

Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead The Play

From the early Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead (1967) through Travesties (1975), Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth (1979) and The Real Thing (1982), Stoppard’s plays have dramatized such an interpretation of text, re-contextualizing and transforming the words of others.

Stoppard’s is a consciously literary style of playwriting: his scripts are dense with allusions to his artistic predecessors, both by quotation and intertextuality.

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead

Artistic recycling, dramatic allusion, intertextuality, parody, travesty – is not only inevitable, Stoppard is telling us, but necessary; it is only in the interweaving of texts- the “convergences of different threads” as Stoppard called it- that the new text emerges.

Making a play not only a comment on another play but also what Stoppard has called a “commentary on something else in life”.

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are DeadSome critics confused Tom Stopprad’s use of earlier

dramatic tradition with parody, lack of originality, or want of purpose.

However, it might be more fruitful to compare Stoppard’s sense of direction in the modern theatre with John Barth’s approach to contemporary fiction.

In his essay entitled “The Literature of Exhaustion”, Barth examines the current crisis of the arts and explains his reasons for recycling earlier literature and ideas to arrive at that style which deliberately exhausts its possibilities and borders upon its own caricature.

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are DeadThese artists, Barth suggests, achieve their artistic

victories by confronting “an intellectual dead end” and turning it “against itself to accomplish new human work”.

It is not quite accurate to say that Beckett and Borges rebel against literary history; rather, they post themselves in relation to it, knowing that a period is over, finalized, accomplished.

In that end is their beginning.


Much of Stoppard’s work, it seems to me, may be viewed as an assault on the history of theatre.

If in fiction the point of view now dominates the old idea of plot, if in philosophy, linguistic analysis replaces metaphysics, if in painting and music we arrive at empty surfaces and silence respectively, so in the theatre circularity and silence overshadow naturalism, tragedy, and comedy.

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead Stoppard find himself in the predicament of having to

overcome not only classical tradition (Shakespeare), but the newly defined (and therefore defunct) tradition of absurdism, as well (Beckett).

Stoppard: By this time I was not in the least interested

in doing any sort of pastiche, for a start, or in doing a criticism of Hamlet – that was simply one of the by-products.

The chief interest and objective was to exploit a situation which seemed to me to have enormous dramatic and comic potential- of these two guys who in Shakespeare’s context don’t really know what they’re doing.


For Stoppard the drama of the intertext is not an end in itself but a technique which enables the dramatist to frame deeply personal considerations of human action, its motives and limitations and values, and to look back at the present from the past.

Deconstruction of forms and of History, the history of power and its abuses.

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead Ros and Guil, and Hamlet In Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead, Tom

Stoppard presents his audience with Shakespeare’s Hamlet, seen through the eyes of the Prince’s two fellow-students, whose role in the tragedy are so insignificant that producers have sometimes left them out altogether.

Stoppard writes in the gaps of Hamlet that where Shakespeare did not write. Of Shakespeare’s Hamlet Rosencrantz and Guildestern – as well as the spectators – only catch some snatches.

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are DeadWritten within the spaces of Hamlet,

reconstructing those spaces and

creating patterns of interference with Shakespeare’s text,

manifested the culture’s movement away from the linear text,

a new, more complex mode of conceptualizing the text.

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead Rosencrantz and Guildestern get involved in a drama the meaning

and import of which they can hardly grasp:

Guil: “A weaker man might be moved to re-examine his faith, if in nothing else at least in the law of probability”. (12)

Guil: “It must be indicative of something else, besides the redistribution of wealth”. (16)

Guil: “We have not been… picked out… simply to be abandoned… set loose to find our own way… We are entitled to some direction…. I would have thought”. (20)

Ros: “I want to go home”. Guil: “Don’t let them confuse you”. (37) Ros: “I’m out of my step here-”. (38)

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are DeadRos: “Over my step over my head body! – I tell you it’s

all stopping to a death, it’s boding to a depth, stepping to a head, it’s all heading to a dead stop-”. (38)

Guil: “Pragmatism?! –is that all you have to offer? You seem to have no conception of where we stand! You won’t find the answer written down for you in the bowl of a compass. – I can tell you. Besides you can never tell this far north- it’s probably dark out there”. (58-59)

Guil: “Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are… condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one- that is meaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it’ll just be a shambles”. (60)

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are DeadRos: “They’ll have us hanging about till we’re dead”.

(93)

Guil: “I like to know where I am. Even if I don’t know where I am, I like to know that. If we go there’s no knowing”.

Ros: “No knowing what?”.Guil: If we’ll ever come back”. (95)

Ros: “But we’ve got nothing to go on, we’re out on our own”. (104)

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are DeadGuil: “We’ve traveled too far, and our momentum has

taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation”. (121)

Guil: Our names shouted in a certain dawn… a message… a summons… There must have been a moment, at the beginning where we could have said –no. But how we missed it”. (125)

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are DeadThey take actions whose implications and

consequences they do not know.

Stoppard’s design is clear: from the point of view of Rosencrantz and Guildestern this complex tragedy is absurd.

They are not even conscious of their own roles in it.

Hamlet may seek illumination; Rosencrantz and Guildestern are forever in the dark.

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are DeadStoppard: The little they are told is mainly lies, and

there’s no reason to suppose they ever find out why they are killed.

And, probably more in the early 1960’s than at any other time, that would strike a young playwright as being a pretty good thing to explore.

The question here is power, and the arbitrariness of abusive power.

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are DeadYet Hamlet is not the play on stage.

That stage belongs to Stoppard’s anti-heroes, Rosencrantz and Guildestern , who remain (like Vladimir and Estragon) bewildered, manipulated, hampered, and ridiculous.

Already from the opening of the play they appear as objects caught in the cogs of an inscrutable mechanism.

Almost throughout the play, they are trying to kill time by playing word games and spinning coins.

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are DeadHowever long they keep flipping coins, the result is

always “heads”. (p. 11-16, etc.)

Since they cannot understand what is happening around them, they are almost permanently in a mood of disturbance.

They are surrounded by the unknown.

And this, leads time and again, Rosencrantz and Guildestern, to confuse each other’s names.

At times they also voice a feeling of being threatened (p. 37-38).

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead Adrift in this same world, Stoppard’s central characters

by degrees sense its providential plan moving around and through them.

And since, we the audience, already know the plot of Hamlet, we are aware that their worst fears are thoroughly justified.

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead (Here) Shakespeare’s script is their destiny: they are

trapped in a mode of art, trapped in a mode of life.

The script that will culminate in the apotheosis of Hamlet has foreordained them to manipulated lives and obscure deaths.

It clearly appears that these minor characters live “on the fringe” of the great tragedy which is taking place.

Total disregard for their lives, the lives of many people who live on the fringes of society, and whose lives depend on power structures out of their reach.

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are DeadThis precisely is their tragedy and the one Stoppard is

concerned with.

Consequently the play within the play which enables Hamlet to unmask Claudius (77) is performed for Rosencrantz and Guildestern.

The player’s not only show (stage) the murder of Hamlet’s father, but also the two courtiers’ mission to England, where they are to be put to death ((p. 81-83).

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are DeadIn the representation of this episode, the actors wear

coats of exactly the same colour as those of Rosencrantz and Guildestern, who nevertheless fail to recognize themselves and their situation. (G and R: 82)

Thus, we have two plays within the play: the re-enactment of Hamlet’s father murder, and the staging of Guil’s and Ros’ death, which they do not recognized. (pp. 77; 81-84)

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are DeadSo their death are twice predicted, first by

Shakespeare’s and then by the players.

Hamlet, a play already heavily invested in the theatre, serves a renewed use as Stoppard explores audience’s role in the complex staging of two plays occupying one space: Hamlet, Guil and Ros and a third one, Waiting for Godot.

Rosencrantz and Guildestern anticipate the postmodern/deconstructive questioning and dismantling of the individual authorial self by offering multiple perspectives as well as multiple drafts of Shakespeare’s classic drama of introspection

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are DeadTo the extent that their lives are end-stopped, their

destiny predetermined within the narrow bounds of fixed terms, and lead an existence that is not only absurd but one whose decisions have been largely taken out of their own hands.

The inability of Rosencrantz and Guildestern to come to grips with their own roles in the play dooms them to an eternal round of repetition, of forgetfulness and vague recall (ei., their names).

As the two are left to their own devices toward the end of the play, their dissociate fragmentation becomes disturbingly more apparent. (end)

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead Ros and Guil, and Waiting for Godot

In Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead one of the uses of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is that of the frame for characters mired in Beckettian universe.

One might say that in this sense the play telescopes dramatic history, contrasting tragedy with the theater of the absurd.

In both tragedy and the absurd one suffers, yet there is a difference.

Hamlet may act; Rosencrantz and Guildestern are pawns of other’s choosing.


Here some examples:

Guil: “There was a messenger… that’s right. We were sent for”. (17)

Guil: Then a messenger arrived we have been sent for”. (18)

Ros: It was urgent a matter of extreme urgency, a royal summons, his very words: official business and no questions asked..”. (19)


Whatever play the artist envisioned would be enacted amid the collapse of formal structures of meaning.

Stoppard has filled the Beckettian void in part by placing his own Vladimir and Stragon recognizable surroundings, in the Renaissance context of Hamlet.

Stoppard’s use of Hamlet permits him to go deal with

another ‘disunity’ of absurdist drama: plotlesness.


However, whatever the affinities to earlier modern drama may be, Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead is not, essentially, a recasting of Waiting for Godot in Shakespearean terms.

And certainly, at several points Rosencrantz and Guildestern recall Beckett’s two tramps, but their world is not that of Waiting for Godot.


Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead does not present us with figures in a Beckettian vacuum, at liberty to wait for Godot who does not arrive.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead applies Waiting for Godot to Hamlet and makes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the central figures of a literary entertainment which imitates Beckett’s tragicomedy.

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead This absurdity is also reflected in the dialogue.

Where there is no certainty, there can be no definite meaning (11-17; 41-51; 62-63; 65-70; 86-88; 97-112)

In a world that has lost its ultimate objectives, dialogue, like action, becomes a mere game to pass the time.

Rosencrantz and Guildestern ‘dialogue’ often turns chaotic nonsense.

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead Spectator and Audience Since the play is based on Hamlet, Rosencrantz and

Guildestern’s roles are fixed. They have no liberty to act because everything has been planned in advance.

One could be tempted to interpret this as signifying that an unknown superhuman force dominates and controls life completely.

Yet this is not very likely since Guildestern recognizes the possibility of making a personal choice. (125)


Because the discrepancy between the heroes’ and the audience’s positions, the play’s philosophy does not emerge organically from the dramatic situations.

What seems to be absurd to Rosencrantz and Guildestern is fairly understandable to the audience.

In Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, neither the tramps nor the spectators have any idea who or what Godot might be.

Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead We do know Hamlet however, and upon this

knowledge the whole conception of Stoppard’s play is built.

This paradox accounts for the rather too explicit and manifold phrases expounding the philosophy of the absurd.

Inter-TextualityShakespeare’s Hamlet

Contains Five Acts (Act I, 5 scenes), (Act II, 2 scenes), (Act III, 5 scenes), (Act IV, 7 scenes), (Act V, 2 scenes).

Stoppard’s draws mainly from Act II and III, and IV as follows:

Shakespeare Stoppard

II.ii King, Queen, ask R&G to find pp. 35-37

about Hamlet’s transformation

original text



II.ii Polonius, Hamlet and R&G pp. 52-53

original text

II.ii Hamlet, R&G and Polonius pp. 55-56

the players

original text

II.ii Hamlet, Player, Ros & Guil pp. 61-62

original text



III.i R & G, Queen, King pp. 72-73

original text

III.ii Players,. Guil & Ros pp. 77-78

Mime

III.iv Players, Guil & Ros p. 81

Re-enactment of Polonius’ death

Inter-TextualityIV.ii Ros & Guil, Hamlet, King pp.90-91

original text

Search for Polonius

IV.iv Hamlet, Soldier p. 93

original text

V.ii Ambassador, Horatio p. 126

original text



III.iii King asks commission to England p. 70

III.iv Polonius’s Death p. 73

III.ii Polonius’s Dead Body pp. 82-85

Original texts

III.iii King dispatches Hamlet to England

IV-V Summary of Acts IV and V

with original texts on p. 117

Documents

Inter-Textuality and Double Codification Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildestern Are Dead