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Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a play which, as it were, takes place in the wings of Hamlet, and finds both humour and poignancy in the situation of the ill-fated attendant lords. The National Theatre production in April 1967 made Tom Stoppard's reputation virtually overnight. Its wit, stagecraft and verbal verve remain as exhilarating as they were then and the play has become a contemporary classic.
'One of the most original and engaging of post-war plays.' Daily Telegraph
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Actually, of course, it IS about the horror of life, and of modern life at that, many of the greatest comedies have a tragic undercurrent, think of Sir Toby's "Chimes at midnight" speech giving texture and shadow to the sunny japes of "Twelfth Night", or of Woody Allen's best films, hovering over the line of comedy and neurotic bathos ("The Purple Rose of Cairo"..."Radio Days".)
Here, the early speech about a man who sees a unicorn sets a tone of lonely wistfulness that the blatant failures of the protagonists to match up to the epic events unfolding around them, obvious even to the duo themselves, continues throughout the play.
An odd effect of seeing only snippets of "Hamlet" is to make that work seem a real action packed epic. In reality, perhaps, "Hamlet" itself is very similar to "Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead", the heroes of both prove in the end, despite endless talking and dithering, indecisive and inadequate.
Stoppard's work is an updating of Shakespeare's, and a comment on the modern world, in that his heroes are not given the redeeming power of poetry. For them, the unicorn is always a deer...with an arrow in its head....
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