Word: guildensterne
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...YEAR AGO this week I was ready to pack my bags, leave this dreary place, and take up permanent residence in the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, New York City. I had just seen a play called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and, once the final curtain came down, I simply could not think of leaving the theatre, never to return...
...surface, Stoppard has devised an astoundingly clever theatrical trick. We see only the few scraps of Hamlet that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern see. Since they see so little, Hamlet, Claudius, Ophelia and the rest become merely bit parts in Stoppard's play. We see a mammoth tragedy from the worst possible vantage point, and what little of Shakespeare remains in the play seems ridiculous and funny in this context...
Underneath this droll gimmick, however, is much more. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are at the center of Stoppard's work, and they become its tragic heroes. Like Didi and Gogo, who bide their time with games of the spirit while waiting for the never-to-appear Godot, Stoppard's heroes devise their own games to endure the waiting for their Godot...
WORST OF ALL, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern find even their own identities in doubt. Not only do Shakespeare's characters find it difficult to distinguish between the two, but the title characters themselves have difficulty determining which of them is which...
ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD. Tom Stoppard's reincarnations of Shakespeare's bit players are part Beckett, part Charlie Brown. In the title roles, Brian Murray and John Wood prove themselves linguistic acrobats...