Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: Theater of Criticism

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: Theater of Criticism NORMAND BERLIN • TOM STOPPARD'S ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD entered the theater world of 1966-67 with much fanfare, and in the ensuing years it has .acquired a surprisingly high reputation as a modern classic. It is an important play, but its importance is of a very special kind up to now not acknowledged. The play has fed the modern critics' and audiences' hunger for "philosophical" significances, and as absurdist drama it has been compared favorably and often misleadingly with Beckett's Waiting for Godot. However, its peculiar value as theater of criticism has received no attention. To help recognize this value I offer the following discussion. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a derivative play, correctly characterized by Robert Brustein as a "theatrical parasite."} It feeds on Hamlet, on Six Characters in Search ofan Author, and on Waiting for Godot. Stoppard goes to Shakespeare for his characters, for the background to his play's action, and for some direct quotations, to Pirandello for the idea of giving extra-dramatic life to established characters, to Beckett for the tone, the philosophical thrust, and for some comic routines. The play takes Shakespeare's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern - time-servers, who appear rather cool and calculating in Shakespeare, and whose names indicate the courtly decadence they may represent - and transforms them into garrulous, sometimes simple, often rather likable chaps. Baffled, imprisoned in a play they did not write, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern must act out their pre-arranged dramatic destinies. Like Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon, they carryon vaudeville routines, engage in verbal battles and games, and discourse on the issues of life and death. However, whereas Beckett's play, like Shakespeare's, defies easy categories and explanations, and remains elusive in the best sense of the word, suggesting the mystery of life, Stoppard's play 269 270 NORMAND BERLIN welcomes categories, prods for a clarity of explanation, and seems more interested in substance than shadow. Stoppard's play is conspicuously intellectual; it "thinks" a great deal, and consequently it lacks the "feeling" or union of thought and emotion that we associate with Waiting for Godot and Hamlet. This must be considered a shortcoming in Stoppard's art, but a shortcoming that Stoppard shares with other dramatists and one that could be explained away if only his intellectual insights were less derivative, seemed less canned. To be sure, plays breed plays, and it would be unfair to find fault with Stoppard for going to other plays for inspiration and specific trappings. In fact, at times he uses Shakespeare and Beckett ingeniously and must be applauded for his execution. But when the ideas of an essentially intellectual play seem too easy, then the playwright must be criticized. Whenever Stoppard - his presence always felt although his characters do the talking - meditates on large philosophical issues, his play seems thin, shallow. His idiom is not rich enough to sustain a direct intellectual confrontation with Life and Death. Consider, for example, Guildenstern's question: "The only beginning is birth and the only end is death - if you can't count on that, what can you count on?,,2 Put in this pedestrian way, the idea behind the question loses its force. Or take Guildenstern's remarks on Death: "Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over ... Death is not anything ... death is not ... It's the absence of presence, nothing more ... the endless time of never coming back ... a gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound...." (p. 124). Examples of this kind of direct philosophical probing can be found throughout the play. We hear a man talking but do not feel the pressure of death behind the words. The passage seems false because the language does not possess the elusiveness and the economy that are essential if a writer wishes to confront large issues directly. But there are indirect ways to deal with life and death, and here Stoppard is highly successful. And here we arrive at the heart of the discussion of Stoppard's art. According to Stoppard himself, his play was...