Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Research Paper

Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead presents the audience with Shakespeare’s Hamlet, as seen through the eyes of two characters whose actual tragic roles are so minimal; they can hardly be considered important parts of the original play. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are involved in a drama the meaning and import of which they can hardly grasp. Indeed, they cannot even manage to secure their own identities in the work. Stoppard specifically creates these characters in this manner so as to utilize them to present illogical ideas. Specifically, these characters act as tools to define the indefinable. Death has no definition, and yet, Stoppard manages to utilize Ros and Guil to give a clear explanation of death. For Stoppard, death is simply a state of mind. It does not exist beyond humanity’s perception of it, because death is non-existence. This argument can be divulged from this work in numerous ways.

Stoppard’s direct dialogue between his two main characters is an important explanation of death’s nonexistence.