Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a three-act play by the English playwright Tom Stoppard. It is an existentialist, absurdist satire featuring characters and events from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. First performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1966, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead enjoyed critical success, winning The New York Drama Critics’ Circle’s Award for Best Play and four Tony Awards in 1968. Since then, the play has been adapted into several radio plays and a 1990 film starring Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, and Richard Dreyfuss. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead emerged from the Theater of the Absurd movement popular in Europe in the decades following World War II. Theater of the Absurd plays deal with existentialist themes such as the meaninglessness or absurdity of existence, a theme which runs throughout Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Critics tend to draw parallels between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, another Theater of the Absurd classic.

This summary refers to the 2017 50th Anniversary Grove Press edition.

Plot Summary

In Act I, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two of Prince Hamlet’s childhood friends, journey to Elsinore to meet with King Claudius of Denmark.