Commentary on Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead??

Question:any questions or observations from the book that jumps out of you?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: any questions or observations from the book that jumps out of you?

Tom Stoppard, the playwright, is brilliant...he also co-wrote the screenplay for Shakespeare In Love (which I brazenly stole for a screenname.;-)) This is truly an existentialist play...kind of like "Waiting for Godot", but a lot funnier...that raises tons of big questions.

Like R + G, we're all characters in this play of life without knowing exactly why "we were sent for". The reflections on death are random, darkly comic, and a bit morbid: "Ever thought of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it?" Of course (as the Player King shows them) death itself could also be a grand illusion.

Oh, and the "Questions" game (now used as an improv game on "Whose Line?") is brilliant.

BTW, I have to respectfully disagree with the first answer about R + G being the "only" Shakespeare characters to be unjustly killed...In Macbeth, King Duncan, Banquo (and anyone else who gets in Macbeth's way) are killed, and Titus Andronicus is filled with unjustified (and ghastly) murders...Ophelia isn't exactly murdered, but she's an innocent pawn who's betrayed, loses her father, and goes insane, leading to her drowning...the list goes on.

I think Rosencrants and Guildenstern are the *only* characters in any shakespeare play that are killed in an "unjust" way.

They only helped Claudius because they were Hamlet's friends and wanted the best for him. They had no knowledge of the contents of the letters they carried to the king. So, Hamlet essentially murdered them because he felt betrayed. But, really, they didn't do anything wrong.

Consider the deaths of ... everyone else in the play (since almost everyone dies...) Everyone else pretty much deserved to die for various wrong doings.