Word: shakespeareans
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Stoppard's themes are expressed in a Shakespearean motif: the constant juxtaposition of acting and living. Actors, directed by dramatists, whose actions are made meaningful by the approval of audiences, enjoy advantages that people in an indeterminate world do not share. While love and providence provide meaning for the characters of Shakespeare, Stoppard's people have no external frame of reference. Unable to see that they themselves create the significance of their actions, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are caught in a world where their identities and their living and dying are equally arbitrary...
...people believe that "violence is man re-creating himself," and that savagery is a kind of purifying force bearing, as Historian Richard Hofstadter puts it, "the promise of redemption." Murder has always been a central theme in the arts. There were killings (off stage) in the Greek theater. The Shakespearean stage was often littered with bodies by the fifth act. As early as the 19th century, American writers like Melville and Poe were beginning to show what Historian David Davis had called "un disguised sympathy for sublime murders and amoral supermen moved by demonic urges." That sympathy seems to have...
...tutor, actually. But you have to understand the English tutorial system at the universities to realize that I didn't spend much time in the classroom. I spent absolutely all my time acting." He belonged to the Oxford University Drama Society, the university's theater company that produces Shakespearean and classical drama. But he didn't confine himself to tradition, and joined the Experimental Theatre Company at Oxford as well. "Theater was my hole life at Oxford, and Oxford is a very drama-oriented place. It's funny. Sean Connery was the big actor around town at that time...
...life in England. This manifests itself also in a great increase in regional theaters throughout England. "I wouldn't mind going back to the stage myself." Bristol's Old Vic has established a theater called the Young Vic. "It's packed every night. It's a kind of Shakespearean theater-in-the-round, where everyone can come. And they do. In America it's different. An evening at the theater is a major investment. It's so expensive here. First you have to get a babysitter, usually you take a car into the city from the suburb, or a taxi...
...cinema of cruelty is completely at home. The murder of Banquo and the appearance of his bloodied ghost at the supper table, the discovery of the slaughtered Duncan, the madness of of Lady Macbeth, and Macbeth's final battle with Macduff--in all these scenes Polanski approaches a Shakespearean enjoyment in the sheer physical stuff of tragedy...