Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: What We Didn't See in Hamlet

The remarkable Irish playwright Oscar Wilde once said: "man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth". Besides being the art of making people laugh, comedy is a mask writers and artists hide behind to show their true face without having to carry the tragical consequences of their works. For the writer, comedy is the safe place to resort to when wanting to criticise a crucial issue; for the plain reader, comedy is an escape from a heavy reality, the reader runs to it to find humour, and to laugh. However, the mentioned reader may not know the massive difference between Humour, comedy, and laughter, and one may think the three concepts mean the same thing, but they are different.

Humour is simply "the quality of being funny. It refers to an ability to perceive and express a sense of the clever or amusing thing" (Singh 1). It is also defined as spontaneously making people laugh without a strategy. Humour is a concept that emerged way before comedy did, it was born with the birth of languages, maybe even before languages. The definition of humour developed with time and it became a part of a bigger umbrella named "comedy". To make it simple, if someone has a good sense of humour, it does not mean this person can write comedy but if someone can write comedy, they possibly have a good sense of humour. When it comes to humour, philosophers divided it into three main theories which are: the theory of superiority, the theory of relief, and the

theory of incongruity.

In his book The Philosophy of Humour and Laughter, J Morreall explains it simply as: “Our laughter expresses feelings of superiority over other people or over a former state of ourselves” (29). The application of this theory can be witnessed in works like George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984. The superiority theory was the most dominant one till the 18th century then, it became weaker due to the awakening of the theory of relief which is “an hydraulic explanation in which laughter does in the nervous system what a pressure-relief valve does in a steam boiler” (40). Along with the rise of the relief theory, came the rise of the incongruity theory which defines humour as “the perception of something

incongruous—something that violates our mental patterns and expectations”

(68). This approach was taken by James Beattie, Immanuel Kant, Arthur

Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, and many later philosophers and

psychologists. It is now the dominant theory of humor in philosophy and

psychology.

Moving to Comedy, it is "the premeditated act designed to cause an audience to laugh," it is also "grounded in reality no matter how farcical the situation is" (Sarantinos 1). Moreover, according to Aristotle, comedy is one of the two main forms of drama. Throughout time, comedy became of great importance in literature in order to bring light to serious subjects or to criticize certain matters behind the mask of humour. The importance of comedy lies in its ability to sharply mock and satirize certain figures or situations without getting its writer in political troubles. Through comedy, Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Orwell, and many other writers managed to get away with their harsh criticism to the society without getting in trouble.

Critics divided comedy into two types: high comedy and low comedy. Starting with high comedy, it is the type that provides satire or critique of serious issues. Many writers over the ages used this type of comedy to sting the society they lived in; some of these writers are R.B Sheridan in The Rivals and The School for Scandal, Oscar Wilde in works like The Importance of Being Earnest, and George Bernard Shaw in Man and Superman. Tragicomedy is also considered a high comedy which makes Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

are Dead by Tom Stoppard examples of high comedy. Regarding low comedy, it is the comedy that does not imply any social critique and it is also called "farce". Examples of low comedy would also include many modern movies like the movies of El- Sobky.

When it comes to laughter, it is a "vocal activity requiring the coordinated action of 15 different facial muscles and associated clonic contractions of the thoracic cage and the abdominal wall" (Encyclopedia of the Human Brain). To arouse laughter in high comedy, many devices are used including satire and parody. Satire is an irregular literary term because it can be used to name both a literary device and a specific type of comedy that is dedicated to satire. It is "the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticise something or someone" (Adam). Satire is mostly used with other comedic devices such as irony, malapropism, puns, paradox understatement, exaggeration, and symbolism. Regarding parody, it is a humorous imitation to a famous work like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead which is a

parody for Shakespeare's Hamlet. Parody and satire are two of the main techniques used in the theater of the absurd which witnessed its peak from

1950 to 1960. After the age of absurdity was gone, Tom Stoppard carried

out a revival process in 1966 by writing his famous play Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern are Dead. In this play, the writer uses one of the theories of

humour which is incongruous juxtaposition that states: "humour arises when

things that do not normally go together replace logic and familiarity"

(incongruity theory).

Similar to the theory used in it, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’s significance lies in destroying constants and detaching the audience from the real world to send them into a reflection of this world that shows its ugly and flawed face. Writers who used this theory are countless, but the most important ones would be Samuel Beckett, Tennessee Williams, and Tom Stoppard. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is where Stoppard flips the world of Hamlet upside down; the main characters become minor ones while the minor ones are the focus of the play. The title of the play itself is a quote from Hamlet to announce the fate of these two characters in Shakespeare’s tragedy. All the characters in Hamlet get the chance to unfold themselves and speak their minds except for these two servants. Hence, Stoppard “frees them from Shakespeare’s restrictive script

and gives them a narrative identity” (King 5). In fact, the first draft of this

play was called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern meet King Lear which shows

to what extent Stoppard is interested in Shakespeare’s characters. The easy

shift from King Lear to Hamlet is unusual because the writer changes what

was once a main character and leaves the minor characters.

Sir Tom Stoppard is highly influenced by Samuel Beckett since Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are very similar to Waiting for Godot’s Vladimir and Estragon. Even the openings of the two plays are almost identical: two characters in the middle of nowhere asking questions and unable to find appropriate answers. Like Vladimir and Estragon, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are also waiting for something, but it is not Godot—it is a sign to tell them whether they are alive or dead and what they are doing. The Oscar-winning director, scenarist, and playwright turned his play into a movie with the same name, which won the Golden Lion award and was described as a witty and outstanding work of art. Parodical satire is an essential genre of literature because it can deliver harsh criticism through a familiar work, making it entertaining and witty at the same time.

In his most celebrated play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard applies the incongruity theory of humour to shed light on the themes of death, the futility of life, and child abuse by employing irony, entanglement of narratives, and symbolism to create a satirical parody. One could say Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead represents what happens behind the scenes of Hamlet. In her work Shakespeare and Modern Culture, Marjorie Garber points out the repetition of what is called "unscenes" in Shakespeare's works. These are events that happen to minor characters and are neither performed on stage nor written. On the death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Garber writes: "[t]he whole of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is an unscene seen, the backstory only" (221). Tom Stoppard does not change Ros and Guil's tragic end—they die in his work too. What stands out is Stoppard's striking application of the incongruity theory in his play from the very beginning to the very end. Stoppard manages to create humour even though there is a blunt foreshadowing of the characters' deaths starting from the title.

The incongruity juxtaposition theory is mainly associated with irony, which is heavily implied in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead to show how uncertain and doubtful the characters are, even of themselves. For instance, Rosencrantz is always doubtful of everything, including his own identity and existence, as seen when he introduces himself as Guildenstern during their first encounter with the Player. Moreover, Rosencrantz often uses words to express doubt, even in the smallest matters, such as saying, "I woke up, I suppose" (Stoppard 9). Dramatic irony also plays a significant role when Rosencrantz fails to realize that his fate is being enacted before his very eyes. He senses a familiarity with the situation and suspects that he might know the spy in the play—who is actually himself. However, Rosencrantz dismisses this possibility by saying, "you must have mistaken me for someone else" (82). This creates humor because it makes Rosencrantz appear foolish to the audience, while he remains too naive to grasp what is happening. The essence of dramatic irony in this play lies in highlighting the incomprehensibility and randomness of the world.

In addition to Rosencrantz and his trust issues, the way Guildenstern feels while on the boat is highly ironic. He experiences a sense of freedom and relief, expressing his wish to "spend most of his life on boats, one is free on a boat" (101). This is ironic because the audience knows the boat is taking them to their final destination, where they will be executed. While Guildenstern believes he is free on the boat, it is actually leading him toward death. The long journey of gullible Rosencrantz and naive Guildenstern, only for them to face death in the end, marks the peak of irony in the play. The situational irony underscores the meaninglessness and unfairness of life, a theme heavily emphasized in Rosencrantz's heart-wrenching final speech:

"What was it all about? When did it begin? (Pause, no answer.) Couldn't we just stay put? I mean, no one is going to come on and drag us off... They'll just have to wait. We're still young... Fit... We've got years... (Pause, no answer.) (A cry) We've done nothing wrong! We didn't harm anyone, did we?" (Stoppard 117).

This heartbreaking speech also reveals the character’s development just before his death. Rosencrantz, initially portrayed as weak and dimwitted, makes a single protest against something immune to pleas or protests: death.

Sir Tom Stoppard does not merely borrow characters from Shakespeare; he also creates his own to add a new satirical dimension. The Tragedians, for example, are not your typical theatre troupe; they specialize in and take delight in performing death scenes. This troupe serves as a mockery of all tragic plays ever written, portrayed as materialistic performers who will do anything for money. Stoppard uses the Tragedians to satirize writers and actors who lack a solid identity and morals, willing to do whatever it takes to please their audience. If the paying audience desires tragedy, these "artists" will weep and lament; if the audience wants to laugh, they will turn themselves into buffoons. Through the Tragedians, Stoppard employs the concept of "mise en abyme," presenting The Murder of Gonzago, the play within a play from Hamlet. The French term "mise en abyme" refers to a narrative technique where a story is told within another story, creating layers of meaning. This technique was first popularized in The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd in 1587 (Shana).

Although the Tragedians are essential to the play, it is their leader, referred to only as "The Player," who stands out. Ironically, despite being the third main character after Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, The Player remains nameless. Critics view The Player as a more intelligent and twisted version of The Fool in King Lear. Like Lear's fool, The Player is witty and playful, but unlike the typical fool, he is also ruthless. The Player appears to be in control of events, or at least able to foresee them. He blurs the boundary between art and life, treating life itself as a grand performance. His perspective is so warped that he even attempts to turn a man’s death into public entertainment, showing no remorse and instead criticizing the performance: "[t]he whole thing was a disaster! He did nothing but cry all the time – right out of the character!" (Stoppard 76). The Player plays his role as an actor so well that he is perpetually in need of an audience. When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern leave him in the first act, he feels humiliated and panics, creating a humorous moment on stage since The Player otherwise appears heartless throughout the play.

In addition to his distorted personality, The Player lacks any sense of morality. He hires a young boy named Alfred for his troupe and abuses him repeatedly. Through Alfred, Stoppard critiques two aspects of child abuse: child labor and sexual exploitation. In a materialistic and capitalist world, The Player would do anything for money, including forcing the boy to dress in a skirt and give inappropriate performances for paying audiences. Stripped of his masculinity, Alfred is coerced into playing female roles. Subjected to extensive physical and emotional abuse, Alfred is ultimately broken, shedding light on the cruelty of child labor and exposing the shameful realities of modern society.

This is evident in the following dialogue:

Guil: Come here, Alfred. Do you lose often?

Alfred: Yes, sir.

Guil: Then what could you have to lose?

Alfred: Nothing, sir. (Stoppard 23)

As these lines demonstrate, Alfred is so oppressed that he barely speaks in complete sentences, having less than ten lines in the entire play. Ironically, despite being the youngest and weakest member of the Tragedians, he is the only one with a name. Some critics, like Michael Scott, suggest that Alfred represents a young version of Alfred Prufrock from T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Scott argues that "Eliot seems to exert a special hold on Stoppard's imagination, and the greatest influence derives from Prufrock, the character and the poem" (Scott 13). Like Prufrock, Alfred is a passive character with low self-esteem, allowing others to dictate his actions and identity.

In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, satire plays a central role in highlighting societal flaws, more so than individual weaknesses. According to Raj Kishor Singh, satire involves “the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.” (Singh 1). Stoppard uses satire to critique the societal indifference toward issues like child labor, demonstrating how society tolerates exploitation as long as it saves money. Stoppard's satire isn’t merely a tool for humor; it’s a sharp critique of modern society’s apathy and moral blindness.

The play also serves as a time machine, revealing not only the backstory of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern but also alluding to the history of Alfred Prufrock, the protagonist of T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Prufrock famously declares:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two (Eliot).

This passage draws a clear parallel between Stoppard’s Alfred and Eliot’s Prufrock, emphasizing the traumatic experiences that shaped Prufrock into a man plagued by mental disorder, insecurity, and hopelessness in modern life (Mangukiya 1).

Though Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is heavily influenced by metatheatre and quotes from Shakespeare, the two protagonists also serve as an allusion to Beckett’s Estragon and Vladimir from Waiting for Godot. Satire intertwines with absurdity, crystallizing existential themes in these pairs of characters. Like Estragon and Vladimir, “Rosencrantz is practical, prosaic, and rather stupid, whereas Guildenstern is more emotional, poetic, and intelligent” (Sales 15). Both plays begin similarly: with two characters in an ambiguous setting, engaging in absurd activities while pondering existential questions. Readers familiar with the theatre of the absurd can easily grasp how incongruity theory explains the humor found in such scenarios (Straus 10).

In both Beckett’s and Stoppard’s plays, the protagonists share “an unbreakable yet also inexplicable bond – they have clearly been friends forever, but it is not clear what exactly their relationship is” (Behm 30). These characters are static, embodying another hallmark of absurd theatre. Although a line from Waiting for Godot states, “they all change, only we cannot,” it echoes sentiments that Rosencrantz or Guildenstern might express.

The opening scene in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead highlights the absurdity of human existence through a combination of abstract philosophical musings and trivial interruptions. For example, Guildenstern might discuss profound aspects of probability theory only to be interrupted with: “Another curious scientific phenomenon is the fact that fingernails grow after death, as does the beard” (Stoppard 8). This kind of irregular dialogue and unexpected humor is a recurring feature in the play, showcasing Stoppard’s use of incongruity juxtaposition theory to generate laughter. The interplay between profound ideas and absurdly trivial remarks captures the essence of both satire and absurdity in the play, making it a hallmark of contemporary theatre.

In addition to irony and satire, absurd theatre is also associated with the intensified use of symbolism. Symbolism is mainly used in absurd theatre as a satirical device to emblematise futile labour, useless effort, and pointless existence.

"For Camus, the legendary figure of Sisyphus was the prototype of an absurd hero, condemned by the gods forever to roll a rock to the top of a mountain, only to have it roll back down again by its own weight." (Styan 112)

This is pretty much the case in Rosencrantz's and Guildenstern's world; they try, they are good people, but then, they are instructed by cryptic orders that lead to their deaths.

"They remain uncertain whether they are the victims of chance or fate, mystified by events that are within the boundaries of their awareness but outside the circumstances of their understanding." (Mambrol)

The boat, for example, is a symbol of the futility of life. The characters are free to do whatever they please while they are on it, but the destination does not change, it is death. From the beginning of the play, there is a sense of confinement and inescapability, represented perfectly by the boat and the circumstances that control it, including the wind, which is another symbol in the play. The wind has two meanings in the play; the first of them is the force that controls the boat and leads the characters to their destined death. The second one is that it means the whole events of the play. The first main appearance of the wind is when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern foolishly attempt to determine the direction of the wind using the sun's position. At this very moment, the Player enters and informs them that he knows "which way the wind is blowing" (Stoppard 57). This quote is a pun, and it has an under-the-surface meaning: The Player knows how the events are going to turn out, he knows that they will die, and everything to him is like a play that he knows its end. The second major appearance of the wind is when it takes the boat to the death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Similar to Sisyphus's futile attempts to resist his fate, the knife near the end of the play symbolizes human's useless resistance and fury towards death. When Guildenstern realises he will die without a single reason and with many questions that have no answers, he stabs the Player out of frustration, and as a sign that he can have control over the events in the last minutes. The scene is an example of situational irony because Guil is sure to kill the Player, but it turns out the knife is nothing but a prop knife, nothing happens to the Player, Guildenstern cannot do anything to have the slightest influence on events. As mentioned before, the setting, inspired by Beckett's Waiting for Godot, plays a crucial role in reflecting the theme of imprisonment and the inevitability of fate. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern never leave the stage for a second, it is like a box they are trapped in. Even despite their obliviousness, Rosencrantz notices they are imprisoned:

"Do you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it? You'd be helpless, wouldn't you? Naturally, you'd prefer to be alive, you could be like there thinking –well, at least I'm not dead! In a minute, someone is going to bang on the lid and tell me to come out." (Stoppard 70-71)

Hence, Tom Stoppard creates a symbol of the stage itself, a closed space that the characters are not allowed to step out of. Their story begins there, and it ends there, and it ends in blood and tears.

Works Cited

Behm, Megan. The “Opposite of People.” Zaltbommel-Netherlands, Van Haren Publishing, 2012.

Cash, Justin. “Theatre of the Absurd Conventions.” The Drama Teacher, 11 May 2021, thedramateacher.com/theatre-of-the-absurd-conventions.

“Encyclopedia of the Human Brain.” Encyclopedia of the Human Brain, Academic Press, 2002, www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals/academic-press.

“Ironic Devices.” Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, 25 Apr. 2012, randgaredead.wordpress.com/stylistic-analysis/ironic-devices.

Jonsson, AEvar. “Characters in Search of a Purpose: Meaning in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” Belmont, www.belmont.edu.

King, Kelly. “An Analysis of Narrative Identity in Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” University of Kentucky UKnowledge, vol. 4, 2013.

Kishor Singh, Raj. “Humour, Irony, and Satire in Literature.” International Journal of English and Literature (IJEL), vol. 3, no. 4, 2012, www.tjprc.org/journals/international-journal-of-english-and-literature.

Kulka, Tomáš. “The Incongruity of Incongruity Theories of Humor.” PhilPapers, 2007, philpapers.org/rec/KULTIO-4.

McDonald, Paul. The Philosophy of Humour (Philosophy Insights). Null, Humanities-Ebooks, 2013.

Morreall, J. “Philosophy of Humor (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 20 Aug. 2020, plato.stanford.edu/entries/humor/#RelThe.

Shana. “Our Friend, The Play Within a Play.” The Armory, 2013, www.pcs.org/archive/blog/item/play-within-a-play.

Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Perfection Learning, 2021.

Waleed Ibraheem, Ibraheem. “The Theme of Violence and Death in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.” ÇANKAYA UNIVERSITY, 2015, 9lib.net/document/7qvjlm1q-violence-stoppard-rosencrantz-guildenstern-samuel-beckett-waiting-godot.html.