Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Another of Hamlet’s childhood friends, Rosencrantz is Guildenstern’s closest companion. Like Guildenstern, he is a minor character in Hamlet but a protagonist in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Taking pleasure in “pragmatism” (52) and playing games, Rosencrantz is more carefree and simplistic than Guildenstern and does not possess the same wit and analytical nature. While Guildenstern is concerned with abstract scientific laws, Rosencrantz finds pleasure in talking about mundane, concrete things such as beards and fingernails, as seen in Act I. However, Rosencrantz does ask existential questions like Guildenstern. For example, he contemplates his mortality by wondering what it is like to be in a coffin.

Although Rosencrantz pays little attention to the implications of the absurd events he encounters, he panics in the face of uncertainty and frets over what he should do. Paradoxically, he is at once hopeful and hopeless. Rosencrantz tells Guildenstern that going to England would be beneficial since it entails freedom, but he also doubts that they will ever reach England. This duality makes him more complex than Guildenstern believes him to be.

Rosencrantz respects Guildenstern, as shown by his deference to him. He relies on his friend to lead and readily admits that he is “only good in support” (96). While Guildenstern is often abusive towards Rosencrantz, Rosencrantz makes several attempts to make Guildenstern happy. If Guildenstern is the “straight man” of the duo, Rosencrantz is the “funny man” or buffoon. He forgets events in his life, questions Guildenstern asks him, and even his own name. Much of the play’s humor relies on Rosencrantz making a fool of himself. 

The Player is an actor and the leader of the Tragedians. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern first meet the Player on the road to Elsinore in Act I, but he reappears throughout the play. He is arguably the play’s most powerful character since he possesses a self-awareness unseen in other characters and an almost godlike omniscience.

The Player appears to know that he is a fictional character in a play, as seen when he asserts that actors—including himself—are “the opposite of people” since they only exist if “somebody [is] watching” (57). Later, when he says that he is familiar with Elsinore, having “been [there] before” (59), he suggests that he has rehearsed or performed the play before and knows everything that happens within it. Given the fact that he arranged for the spy characters in the dumbshow to look like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, it is highly likely that he knows Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are destined to die at the end of the play.

The Player orders the troupe around like a director or stage manager. Furthermore, he sees no issue in exploiting the troupe, which includes a child, by letting audience members pay to engage in sexual acts with them. Guildenstern decries the Player as a “comic pornographer” (22), but the Player is unbothered by such categorizations because he sees his scandalous plays as having “a kind of integrity” (23) that highbrow plays lack.

The Player’s main purpose in the play is to provide commentary on the nature of theater. He can “extract significance from melodrama” (76), and he knows what the audience expects from actors. He also recognizes the ways theater resembles real life.