Rosencrantz &

Guildenstern
are DeaD
by Tom Stoppard
Directed by Irene Lewis
February 1March 9, 2008
The Head Theater
Next Stage kcscurcc Gudc
Rosencrantz &
Guildenstern are DeaD
by Tom Stoppard
Irene Lewis Director
Paul Steinberg Scenic Designer
Candice Donnelly Costume Designer
Rui Rita Lighting Designer
Karen Hansen Composer
David Budries Sound Designer
J. Allen Suddeth Fight Director
Gillian Lane-Plescia Speech Consultant
John Carrafa Choreographer
Catherine Sheehy Production Dramaturg
Eli Dawson Casting Director
Daniel Pruksarnukul Assistant Casting Director
PLEASE tuRn off oR SILEnCE ALL ELECtRonIC DEvICES.
In CASE of EmERGEnCy
(during performances only) 410.986.4080
Box office Phone 410.332.0033
Box office fax 410.727.2522
Administration 410.986.4000
www.centerstage.org
info@centerstage.org
The CenTerSTage Program is published by:
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700 north Calvert Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21202
Editor aaron Heinsman
Contributors: Shannon M. Davis, Charisse nichols,
Catherine Sheehy
Art Direction/Design/Illustration Bill geenen
Design Jason gembicki, Brittany Harper
Advertising Sales adrienne gieszl: 410.986.4013
CenTerSTage operates under
an agreement between LOrT
and actors equity association,
the union of professional actors
and stage managers in the
United States.
The Director and Choreographer are
members of the Society of Stage
Directors and Choreographers, Inc.,
an independent national labor union.
The scenic, costume, lighting, and
sound designers in LOrT theaters
are represented by United Scenic
artists, Local USa-829 of the IaTSe.
CenTerSTage is a constituent of Theatre Communications
group (TCg), the national organization for the nonproft
professional theater, and is a member of the League of
resident Theatres (LOrT), the national collective bargaining
organization of professional regional theaters.
ContEntS
Setting the Stage 3
Cast 4
Caution: Intellect at Play 4
Two Clever by Half Wit 7
Hey, Thats From Hamlet! 10
Yep, all the Worlds a Stage 12
glossary 14
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is presented
by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.
Season Media Sponsor
CenTerSTage is funded by
an operating grant from the
Maryland State arts Council,
an agency dedicated to cultivating
a vibrant cultural community where
the arts thrive.
Sponsored by
the Next Stage Resource Guide
is sponsored by
Setti ng the Stage
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are DeaD
by Shannon M. Davis, new Media Manager
Characters:
ouR HERoES
Rosencrantz, the shy-but-thoughtful one
Guildenstern, the talkative-and-cynical one
tHE PLAyER AnD HIS tRouPE
the Player, a jaded old performer
the tragedians, his worn-out gang of itinerant actors
Alfred, the youngest and most maligned member of the company
StARS In HAmLEt (BIt PLAyERS HERE)
Hamlet, melancholy Prince of Denmark, whos been acting strange lately
Claudius, killed his brother (Hamlets father) to become King; hires Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to fgure
out if Hamlets gone crazy or not
Gertrude, Hamlets mother, Queen of Denmark; married Claudius after a very brief period of mourning
Polonius, Claudius advisor and Ophelias father
ophelia, in love with Hamlet; extremely overwrought by his sudden rejection
Horatio, Hamlets best friend (Spoiler Alert: Only surviving member of the court)
My name is Guildenstern, and this is Rosencrantz, says a character early in Tom
Stoppards frst full-length play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Then a characteristic contradiction
soon follows: Im sorryhis names Guildenstern, and Im Rosencrantz. Such confusion kickstarts this classic
comedy, a play that upends theatrical convention as its protagonistsplayers on the periphery of one of
theaters greatest tragediesare transformed from bit players to stars. Yet as Hamlet himself reminds us, the
plays the thingand when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern take center stage, they fnd themselves navigating
the shark-infested waters of the royal court.
When it premiered in 1967after trying out at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a time-honored testing ground
for the rare, quirky, and mischievousRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was a smash hit. Stoppards
breakneck pace and whiplash turns of phrase caught delighted audiences off-guard, and his inventive take on
classic Shakespeare opened the publics eyes to a new way of experiencing theater. Yet instead of butchering
Hamlet on the altar of ingenuity, Stoppard gently fipped it upside-down. Hamlet is a drama of the upper
class, but what about the other side of the coin? Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are commoners like most of
us, surrounded by privilege but not of it, trying to be useful without getting stepped on. For the frst time,
Hamlets machinations take a back seat as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern wonder out loud not only what to
do with him, but why and how. During their copious downtime, Guildenstern voices his frustration: As soon
as we make a move theyll come pouring in from every side, shouting obscure instructions, confusing us with
ridiculous remarks, messing us about from here to breakfast and getting our names wrong. Who can work
under such conditions, especially when the job is spying on a prince? No wonder they fip coins and play word
games to pass the time trying to keep their wits about them.
Join Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in their perplexed isolation as they try to make sense of Hamlet (and really,
who hasnt?), but also to make sense of their lives. Stepping back from a situation, or a work of art, sometimes
helps us see it more clearly, but sometimes it just muddles things. If youve ever stood in front of a great work
of art and thought, I dont get it, come hang with these guys. They dont get it either, but theyll be glad for
the company.

Next Stage: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead [

The CasT
(in alphabetical order)
Joe Brady*
Tragedian
Ralph Cosham*
Polonius/Ambassador
michael Jean Dozier*
Rosencrantz
Karen Hansen
Tragedian/Musician
Daniel Kennedy
Alfred/Horatio
Reese madigan*
Hamlet
Laurence oDwyer*
The Player
Howard W. overshown*
Guildenstern
Andy Paterson*
Tragedian/Musician
Rich Potter
Tragedian
Jake Riggs
Soldier
Kristen Sieh*
Ophelia
Chandler vinton*
Gertrude
mark Elliot Wilson*
Claudius
mike Schleifer*
Stage Manager
Ellen Houseknecht*
Assistant Stage Manager
*Member of Actors Equity Association
There will be two
10-minute intermissions.
The Works and Words, Words, Words
of Tom Stoppard
In the throes of anguished frustration, one of the most notorious heroes of
20
th
-century literature, Nabokovs Humbert Humbert, laments: Oh my Lolita, I
have only words to play with. If only Humbert Humbert had been a man of Tom
Stoppards disposition. Tom Stoppard loves words; he loves them to distraction.
In fact, he often loves them to abstraction. He loves them for themselvestheir
bald or nuanced, obsolescing or evolving, expanding or narrowing meanings. And
he loves them in aggregate, as they congregate, accommodating themselves to
his wit and will.
Probably the most direct declaration of this logophilia comes in his 1982 play, The
Real Thing. Cyrano-like, he pours out his affection through his surrogate, Henry.
...Words dont deserve that kind of malarkey. Theyre innocent, neutral,
precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you
look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos....
I dont think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you
get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or
make a poem which children will speak for you when youre dead.
Stoppards way with words is all the more remarkable when we consider that
he might never have spoken English at all. Sir Tom Stoppard, the quintessentially
British playwright of his generation, was born Toms Strassler in Zln,
Czechoslovakia, on July 3, 1937. His family escaped with other Jewish migrs to
Singapore just a few steps ahead of looming Nazi persecution. When Singapore
became too dangerous, as the Pacifc Theater of World War II erupted, his mother
Caution:
intelleCt
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Dramaturgy written
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Production Dramaturg
Next Stage: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead [
removed the family to India; his father stayed behind to fght and
was captured, dying in a Japanese concentration camp shortly
thereafter. In India his mother met and married a British Army
offcer, Kenneth Stoppard; and in 1946, his stepfather took his
family back with him to England. So though not a bred-in-the-bone
Briton, Tom Stoppardmoving as he did through schools in the
outposts of the Empire before settling fnally in Derbyshire and
Yorkshiredid receive a standard colonial education. He set out at
once to proft from its rigor, forgoing university to launch his career
in wordsmithing.
At 17 he became a journalist, working frst for the Western Daily
Press and later for the Bristol Evening World. In the early 1960s he
evenand improbably, given his professed view of the species
worked as a theater critic for a season at Scene magazine in London.
In this capacity, he saw more than 130 plays. For a young artist as
aesthetically impressionable as Stoppard seems to have been, this
was invaluable saturation and maceration time. After that, although
he turned out the occasional short story and one novel, he devoted
himself almost exclusively to dramatic writing. The next season he
wrote an unproduced one-act called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Meet King Lear. Tom Stoppard was halfway to a career-changing work.
Though he had some early success writing radio plays, a genre
of entertainment for which the British have an insatiable appetite,
his big break came at the 1966 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It was
there that his idea to write a piece centered on the two hapless
functionaries in Hamlet burst upon the scene. The next season
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead was produced at the National
in London and in New York on Broadway, where it garnered its
young author a Tony Award.
The metatheatrical bravura of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern was
followed by the fat-out fun of The Real Inspector Hound, a one-
act spoof of murder mysteries that, like its predecessor, draws
two unwitting characters into a theatrical intrigue with very real
consequences. Then came the linguistic and literal gymnastics of
Jumpers, which features an aging professor of moral philosophy, his
mentally and morally wandering wife, a moonscape, and a troupe of
acrobats. The play is complex and dense. It demands an audiences
strict attention and rewards that attention with respect and
entertainmenteven if that entertainment means riding a gaudily
painted pony on a macabre merry-go-round.
Take for example one of Jumpers typical jokes based on
that laugh riot, the classical conundrum known as Zenos
Paradox. To illustrate the effete uselessness of academic
exercise (or is it to show off his dexterity in such an
enterprise?), Stoppard has his hero assert that, because
every distance can be measured as a length which can be
halved, an arrow fying along will continually make up half
the distance to its target, even as those halves become
infnitesimally small. Therefore, because it can keep cutting
the distance in half, it will never reach its target. The
result, our hero says, was, as I will now demonstrate, that
though an arrow is always approaching its target, it never
quite gets there, and Saint Sebastian died of fright.
Regardless of how rarifed his references become, Stoppard has
always asserted that he writes, as Henry Fielding once said, To
please the town and bring full houses. Academics and critics often
gleefully nitpick away at his plays, pulling this loose narrative thread,
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Dramaturgy written
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Production Dramaturg
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pouncing on that dangling fact. But Stoppard remains
staunch in his indifference. Let him be tasked with being
too cerebral, with being too facile, with being apolitical,
with being too conservative. He does not mind in the least,
and makes no apologies for his fascinations. When an idea
grips his imagination, he must write about it.
In his next major play, Travesties, Stoppard seized upon
historical coincidence as his inspiration. He read that an
unlikely trioJames Joyce, the Dada poet Tristan Tzara,
and Vladimir Leninhad all been in Zurich at the same
timeor very nearly at the same time. This made him think,
as he told New York Times critic Mel Gussow in 1972, it
might be nice to do a two-act thing, with one act a Dadaist
play on communist ideology, and the other an ideological
functional drama about Dadaists. The result was a tour
de farce, a literal travesty about the nature of art and
performance, which opened in 1975 at the Royal Court and
on Broadway and landed Stoppard another Tony Award.
Travesties shared with its older siblings an exuberant
and unapologetic reliance upon theatrical pyrotechnics.
It offered its director, actors, and designers plenty of
opportunities to prove their virtuosic skill and gave its
audiences as much to watch as to think about. But whether
sustaining these fights of fancy became too exhausting or
too easy, or whether he was simply interested in doing
a different kind of play altogether, Stoppards career
took a turn at that point. He began to explore
a more conservative structure, with more
conventionally developed and presented
characters, and critics and scholars found
outlets and opportunities to speak of
the differences they perceived in the
new plays from those of the
early Stoppard.
In this next phase of his work came some
brilliant and very accessible adaptations, from
Arthur Schnitzlers brooding Undiscovered Country
(1979) to the sheer delight of 1981s On the Razzle, taken
from the same Johann Nestroy play that had provided
Thornton Wilder with the inspiration for The Matchmaker.
Later in 1984 he completely reimagined the Ferenc Molnr
classic The Plays the Thing, set it on a ship, and called it
Rough Crossing. Writing as an adaptor, in service of the
straightforward dramaturgy of these older plays, seems to
have infuenced the original work Stoppard explored in this
period, particularly Night and Day (1978) and The Real Thing
(1982). This last was his biggest commercial success to
datehaving had a successful production in Londons West
End with Roger Rees and Felicity Kendal and an even greater
smash in New York in a Mike Nichols production with a cast
led by Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, and Christine Baranski. In
The Real Thing, Stoppard fnally found a way to yank on the
bit of his gaudy wit and write with human scale about that
most human of emotions: love.
Something of both the impossibly lithe intellectual yoga of
the early work and the sounded depths of these last plays
comes together in the work the playwright has been doing
since the 1990s. Stoppard has created a kind of theater
completely
his own in
plays as different as
Arcadia (1993), which
juxtaposes theories of
thermal dynamics and the
combustibility of the human
heart; The Invention of Love
(1997), which through the
aching longing of poet A.E.
Housman considers the unstable
element of the title; and his 2002
epic, The Coast of Utopia, a three-part masterwork on
revolution, idealism, and, yes, love. And this doesnt even
count perhaps his most popular work as co-writer of the
Academy Award-winning screenplay for Shakespeare
in Love.
This prolifc body of recognizable work
has earned its author adjectival status. But
Stoppardian more clearly describes an
audiences experience of one of his
plays than any thematic obsession
on the writers part. He and his plays
continue to resist most efforts to type
him categorically or to associate them with
a single genre. In fact, he makes no claim to
belonging to any particular school. Tom Stoppard
is a writer who, like fellow word-lover George Bernard
Shaw, is fascinated by all facets of an argument. Shaw
once asserted that he could make an audience believe that
whoever spoke last was right. Similarly, in a 1974 interview
in Theatre Quarterly, Stoppard said:
I must make clear that, insofar as its possible for
me to look at my own work objectively at all, the
element which I fnd most valuable is the one that
other people are put off bythat is, that there is very
often no single, clear statement in my plays. What
there is, is a series of conficting statements made
by conficting characters, and they tend to play a
sort of infnite leap-frog. You know, an argument, a
refutation, then a rebuttal of the refutation, then a
counter-rebuttal, so that there is never any point in
this intellectual leap-frog at which I feel that is the
speech to stop it on, that is the last word.
Tom Stoppard doesnt believe in the last word, because he
knows there will always be another wordor bunches of
wordsto come along after it.
the element
which I fnd most
valuable is the one
that other people
are put off by
Tom Stoppard
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T
he straight man and his comic
foil have been a staple of popular
entertainment all the way back
to the 5
th
Century BCE, when
Aristophanes created hapless but
lippy servants who bore the brunt
of their masters frustrations. The
Italian commedia dellarte further refned
the interplay, giving us that literal weapon of mirth,
the slapstick. But in English the art of the comic
duet reached its zenith in vaudeville and the British
music halls from the mid-19
th
to the early-20
th

Centuries. The great double acts like Gallagher and
Shean or Weber and Fields turned words into their
cudgels of choicethough they were never above
offering a genuine cuff into the bargain.
In 1953, when Samuel Beckett created his two
tramps cooling their heels on a desolate road
in Waiting for Godot, he raised the stakes of the
banter, but kept its popular rhythm. Beckett
knew his vaudeville: Didi and Gogo dress like
Chaplin, tussle like Laurel and Hardy, and talk
past and around one another like Abbott and
Costello. Becketts genius was to import existential
consequences to his characters hopeless
non sequiturs, desperate puns, and tragicomic
misunderstandings.
When Tom Stoppard framed a whole play
around Hamlets two nearly interchangeable plot
devices with the funny names, he often seemed
to be channeling Beckettwho was echoing
vaudevillians and music hall veterans going back
a century before, in order to make his theater
relevant to a disturbing present. These echoes
and homages are now part of Stoppards Mbius
strip of a universe, where there is no such thing
as progress, only the inexorable journey forward
to the beginning again. Its funny when you think
about ituntil it breaks your heart. >>>
Two Clever by Half Wit:
Wisdom in the Word Play of the top Banana and Second fiddle
The Granddaddy
of slapstick:
Aristophanes
Abbott & Costello
Next Stage: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead [ ,
Abbott: Whos on frst, Whats on
second, I Dont Know is on third...
Costello: Thats what I want to fnd
out.
Abbott: I say Whos on frst, Whats
on second, I Dont Knows on
third.
Costello: Are you the manager?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: You gonna be the coach too?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: And you dont know the
fellows names?
Abbott: Well I should.
Costello: Well then whos on frst?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: I mean the fellows name.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The guy on frst.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The frst baseman.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The guy playing...
Abbott: Who is on frst!
Costello: Im asking YOU whos
on frst.
Abbott: Thats the mans name.
Costello: Thats whos name?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: Well go ahead and tell me.
Abbott: Thats it.
Costello: Thats who?
Abbott: Yes.
Pause
Costello: Look, you gotta
frst baseman?
Abbott: Certainly.
Costello: Whos playing frst?
Abbott: Thats right.
Costello: When you pay off the
frst baseman every month,
who gets the money?
Abbott: Every dollar of it.
Costello: All Im trying to fnd out is
the fellows name on frst base.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The guy that gets...
Abbott: Thats it.
Costello: Who gets the money...
Abbott: He does, every dollar.
Sometimes his wife comes
down and collects it.
Costello: Whose wife?
Abbott: Yes.
Pause
Abbott: Whats wrong with that?
Costello: Look, all I wanna know
is when you sign up the frst
baseman, how does he sign
his name?
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The guy.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: How does he sign...
Abbott: Thats how he signs it.
Costello: Who?
Abbott: Yes.
vladimir: When you seek you hear.
Estragon: You do.
vladimir: That prevents you from
fnding.
Estragon: It does.
vladimir: That prevents you from
thinking.
Estragon: You think all the same.
vladimir: No, no, impossible.
Estragon: Thats the idea, lets
contradict each other.
vladimir: Impossible.
Estragon: You think so?
vladimir: Were in no danger of ever
thinking any more.
Estragon: Then what are we
complaining about?
vladimir: Thinking is not the worst.
Estragon: Perhaps not. But at least
theres that.
vladimir: That what?
Estragon: Thats the idea, lets ask
each other questions.
vladimir: What do you mean, at least
theres that?
Estragon: That much less misery.
vladimir: True.
Estragon: Well? If we gave thanks for
our mercies?
vladimir: What is terrible is to have
thought.
Estragon: But did that ever happen
to us?

vladimir: Oh its not the worst, I know.
Estragon: What?
vladimir: To have thought.
Estragon: Obviously.
vladimir: But we could have done
without it.
Estragon: Que voulez-vous?
vladimir: I beg your pardon.
Estragon: Que voulez-vous?
vladimir: Ah! Que voulez-vous. Exactly.
Silence
Estragon: That wasnt such a bad
little canter.
vladimir: Yes, but now well have to
fnd something else.
Estragon: Let me see.

vladimir: What was I saying, we could
go on from there.
Estragon: What were you saying
when?
vladimir: At the very beginning.
Estragon: The very beginning
of WHAT?
vladimir: This eveningI was saying
I was saying
Estragon: Im not a historian!
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Two Clever by Half Witcontinued
Barry McGovern and Johnny Murphy in Waiting
for Godot at the Gate Theatre in Dublin (2003).
Next Stage: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead [ 8
Guildenstern: Whats the frst thing you remember?
Rosencrantz: Oh, lets see. The frst thing that comes into
my head, you mean?
Guildenstern: Nothe frst thing you remember.
Rosencrantz: Ah. (Pause.) No, its no good, its gone.
It was a long time ago.
Guildenstern: You dont get my meaning. What is the frst
thing after all the things youve forgotten?
Rosencrantz: Oh I see. (Pause.) Ive forgotten the question.
Guildenstern: Are you happy?
Rosencrantz: What?
Guildenstern: Content? At ease?
Rosencrantz: I suppose so.
Guildenstern: What are you going to do now?
Rosencrantz: I dont know. What do you want to do?
Guildenstern: I have no desires. None. There was a
messengerthats right. We were sent for.

Rosencrantz: Another curious scientifc phenomenon
is the fact that the fngernails grow after death,
as does the beard.
Guildenstern: What?
Rosencrantz: Beard!
Guildenstern: But youre not dead.
Rosencrantz: I didnt say they started to grow after death!
The fngernails also grow before birth, though not
the beard.
Guildenstern: What?
Rosencrantz: Beard! Whats the matter with you?
The toenails, on the other hand, never grow at all.
Guildenstern: The toenails on the other hand never
grow at all?
Rosencrantz: Do they? Its a funny thingI cut my
fngernails all the time, and every time I think to cut
them, they need cutting. Now, for instance. And yet,
I never, to the best of my knowledge, cut my toenails.
They ought to be curled under my feet by now, but
it doesnt happen. I never think about them. Perhaps
I cut them absentmindedly, when Im thinking of
something else.
Guildenstern: Do you remember the frst thing that
happened today?
Rosencrantz: I woke up, I suppose. OhIve got it now
that man, a foreigner, he woke us up
Guildenstern: A messenger.
Rosencrantz: Thats itpale sky before dawn, a man
standing on his saddle to bang on the shutters
shoutsWhats all the row about?! Clear off!
But then he called our names. You remember that
this man woke us up.
Guildenstern: Yes.
Rosencrantz: We were sent for.
Guildenstern: Yes.
Rosencrantz: Thats why were here. (He looks round,
seems doubtful, then the explanation.) Traveling.
Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern
Are Dead
Tim Roth and Gary Oldman in Tom Stoppards flm of
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990).
Next Stage: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead [
Can you speak that obscure English
dialect, Elizabethan Danish? You
may be doing it already and
not even know it. If youve ever
spoken of the primrose path, or
sagely and sadly remarked that
something is rotten in the state of
Denmark, or suspected there was
method in [someones] madness,
or scrawled sweets to the sweet
on a card while sending chocolates,
or philosophically mused that
every dog will have his day, or
smugly noted that your social rival
was hoist with his own petard
(extra points if you used with
instead of on), or got out of an
awkward request by demurring,
neither a borrower nor a lender be,
or hesitated between unpleasant
alternatives by acknowledging
theres the rub, or accepted praise
for a perfect souff by chirruping,
the readiness is all, youre fuent
in Hamlet.
Tom Stoppard took his baldly
prosaic and intentionally
ending-spoiling title for
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are
Dead from the very last scene
of Shakespeares tragedy. But
others have rummaged for more
poetic offerings from among
the plays nearly 4,000 lines. Did
you realize that all of these plays,
songs, books, and flms took their
titles from lines in Shakespeares
masterpiece? That is the
question.
An Impressive yet Incomplete List
Leave Her To Heaven (1945)
This Gene Tierney vehicle was based
on a Ben Ames Williams novel about a
beautiful but insanely jealous woman
and the murderous havoc she wreaks.
The flms tagline? Hers was the
deadliest of the seven sins! Leave Her
to Heaven comes from Act I, scene v, as
the Ghost tells an enraged Hamlet not
to harm Gertrude.
What Dreams May
Come (1998)A Robin Williams
extravaganza roundly hooted by
critics. The flm tells the story of an
heroic, if dead, pediatrician braving
the Netherworld to rescue his wife, a
failed artist but recently successful
suicide. Fans praised it as gorgeous eye
candy; naysayers dismissed it as too
treacly. Its title is taken from a lesser-
known line in Act III, scene i, the most
famous soliloquy ever written.
Undiscovered Country
(1979)Tom Stoppards adaptation of
Arthur Schnitzlers 1911 play Das Weite
Land is an ironic and witty snapshot of
the Freudian entanglements among
a group of intimates in turn-of-the-
century Vienna. And yes, you guessed
it, its from the soliloquy in Act III,
scene i.
To Be or Not to Be (1942)
This Ernst Lubitsch classic is one of
the fnest romantic comedies ever
made. It tells the story of Josef and
Maria Tura and their troupe of Warsaw
actors, under German occupation. Jack
Benny is the vain Shakespearean actor
whose Hamlet becomes apoplectic
when a young aviator walks out on
his soliloquy every night, but who
selfessly puts his life on the line for
Poland. Carole Lombard, in her fnal
performance (she was killed in a plane
crash returning from a war bonds
tour before the flms release), is
the luminous diva dallying with the
handsome fyboy and trying to stop
the treacherous Professor Siletsky
from betraying the Resistance. The
Nazis are no match for them. Mel
Brooks turned out a passable
remake in 1983. The title, of course,
comes from the soliloquy-to-end-all-
soliloquies, as Hamlet considers his
options in Act III, scene i.
thats from Hamlet!
Next Stage: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead [ :o
Slings and Arrows (2003
2006)This television series tells of
thewellslings and arrows Geoffrey
Tennant endures when he takes the
helm of the New Burbage Theatre
Festival. Not only is he struggling with
temperamental artists and bean-
counting managers to get the curtain
up on productions of Hamlet, Macbeth,
and King Lear, but hes dealing with the
ghost of the previous artistic director.
The apt title comes just after the
ultimate Shakespearean question in
Hamlets Act III, scene i, soliloquy.
The Plays the Thing (1927)
P.G. Wodehouse translates and adapts
Ferenc Molnrs comedy of desperate
thespians in a chteau. More than
half a century later, Tom Stoppard will
create his own adaptation, plunking
the hapless artists on an ocean
liner and calling it Rough Crossing.
Wodehouse took the title from
Hamlets clever Act II, scene ii, plot
to trap the conscience of the king.
Murder Most Foul (1964)
Margaret Rutherford is Agatha
Christies indefatigable Miss Marple
in this rollicking adaptation of the
classic murder mystery, Mrs. McGintys
Dead. The title is taken from the
Ghosts pardonable editorializing in
Act I, scene v, about being poisoned
by his own brother.
Cue for Passion (1958)Elmer
Rices play is a super-Freudian retelling
of the Hamlet-Gertrude-Claudius
triangle set in California amid mid-
20
th
-century chic. Tony makes a
conspicuous brooding churl of himself
over his mothers remarriage. No
one knows why hes come back from
photographing Bali, but his stepfather
knows it bodes no good. The title
comes from Hamlets self-fagellating
lament in Act II, scene ii, that even the
Player can move himself to tears over
a tragedy that is entirely counterfeit,
without Hamlets very real motive
and cue for passion.
Infnite Jest (1996)David Foster
Wallaces 1,100-page tome takes
its title nearly too seriously. Foster
creates a near-futurescape that is
at once funny and terrifying, where
entertainment can be completely
debilitating. Praised as Pynchonesque,
dismissed as bloated, bought by many,
read by few, the novel achieved a kind
of cult status when it appeared. The
title is taken from Hamlets musing
over poor Yoricks chapfallen skull in
Act V, scene i.
Cruel to Be Kind (1979)
Nick Lowes song told us all it was
imperative to be cruel to be kind in
the right measure. Originally written
for Elvis Costellos band, the tune was
rejected, so Lowe decided to record
it himself. O, Nick Lowes prophetic
soul, it was a big hit for him. The
title is crushed a bit from Hamlets
sorrowful admission that he has no
other comfort for his motherI must
be cruel, only to be kindin Act III,
scene iv.
What a Piece of Work
Is Man (1967)This adaptation
of Hamlets plaintive outburst to
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern about
his melancholy and discontentment
was set to music by Galt MacDermot
and woven into the musical Hair. It
comes from Act IIIs long and fruitful
scene i.
Next Stage: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead [ ::
Yep,
All the Worlds A stAge
(so You Better Know Your lines)
It





will not have escaped your notice
that a number of cast members
in todays performance of
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are
Dead are playing actors. They
are actors of course, strictly
professionals. But just as Tom
Stoppard has asked that one
actor play Rosencrantz, and one
actor play Guildenstern, one play
Hamlet, one Ophelia, one Polonius,
one Gertrude, and one Claudius,
six of the company are asked to
play actors. Whats more, they
are asked to play tragedians;
indeed, they are asked to play the
Tragedians who pop in at Elsinore
and offer their services to the
highly excitable young prince
of Denmark, who will deputize
them to help him catch the
conscience of the king. Nothing
so unusual in this; any production
of Hamlet worth its salt will have
to have such players. But it is how
Stoppard has employed his troupe
and the prominence hes given
them in his drama (particularly
The Player at their helm) that
makes all the difference.
Next Stage: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead [ :z
Tom Stoppard uses his Tragedians to create a kind of
threshold, a liminal space between the world of the
characters and that of the audiencea no-mans land
between their reality on stage and our reality in our seats.
This is a common device for Stoppard, who is very fond
of putting performance front and center in his work: in
addition to Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, The Real Inspector
Hound, Jumpers, Travesties, and The Real Thingjust to
name a fewall feature performance of some kind and
most have a literal play-within-the-play. Such layering
creates an intentional confusion of realms, allowing each
level of relative reality to comment upon the other, pointing
up the unreliability of language, the diffculty of sincerity,
and the disquieting percentage of our so-called real lives
that is actually a performance of some kind.
Actors make a marvelous symbol of this trio of troubles:
their lines are scripted for them, so what they say is not
always in their power; they must take on a personality
(or more than one) supplied for them by a sometimes
indifferent, sometimes hostile higher power, viz. the
playwright; they must always be on. Stoppard is not the
frst to recognize the usefulness of the actor as Everyman.
After all, Shakespeare, who frst wrote that all the worlds
a stage, and that life is but a poor player that struts
and frets his hour upon the stage, constantly worked
the metaphors of his profession to describe the human
condition. He knew whereof he spoke, because William
Shakespeare, in addition to penning plays, trod the boards
himself.
The life of an Elizabethan actor was interesting for both its
unique opportunities and overwhelming obstacles. While
itinerant performers who did not enjoy noble patronage
were hounded and berogued, those who did wear the
livery of a lord found themselves largely able to escape the
badgering of local law enforcement. Still, touring players
were often little more than organized beggars. And even
members of Londons most successful troupes, like the Lord
Chamberlains Men or the Admirals Men, were obliged to
take to the road when the theaters were closed due to an
outbreak of plague. Of course, virtually every year in the
reign of Elizabeth I and James I was considered a plague
year. And the authorities could shut down any place where
people congregated to minimize the risk of contagion
whenever the number of plague deaths in a week reached a
certain number.
Actors who managed to become shareholders in the major
companies could do pretty well for themselves; Shakespeare
bought himself a coat of arms with his earnings, which
allowed him to call himself a gentlemanno small thing in
such a class-rigid society. The theater was the fnancial and
social making of gifted actors like Ned Alleyn and Richard
Burbage. It also brought fame without security, as it does
today, to fascinating and talented wastrels.
While Londons thirst for theatrical entertainment was all
but unquenchable, the profession was nevertheless subject
to a scourge worse than plague: faddism. Having survived
the lust for blood that made bear-baiting so popular and
the bloody mess of the plague, theater nearly fordid
itself by promoting a noveltycompanies of young boys.
The town went mad for these pint-sized players. In fact,
Shakespeare puts his own disdain for the trend into Hamlet,
as Rosencrantz explains to Hamlet why the Tragedians are
touring instead of playing in the city. Hamlet asks if the
players have grown rusty; Rosencrantz answers bitterly:
Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace:
but there is, sir, an aery of children, little eyases,
that cry out on the top of question, and are most
tyrannically clapped fort[.]
Hamlet, Act II, scene ii
In fact, theres so much about the art of the actor and its
intersection with life in Hamlet that Stoppards choice to
take the play to pieces and reassemble it as something
completely his own to describe our modern world seems
not only obvious but almost imperative. In Rosencrantz
& Guildenstern Are Dead, moved by the metaphysical
implications of the comparison between acting and being,
Stoppard seeks to formulate questions that dont have neat
answers. Our deepest feelings, our most private thoughts,
can only be communicated by using the same tools that an
actor employs to create a character. So is truth beggared?
Or is acting ennobled? Consider Hamlets anger when his
mother accuses him essentially of overacting his grief for his
fathers death. He wheels on her:
Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
Hamlet, Act I, scene ii
When Stoppards Player says, We do on stage the things
that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity,
if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere
else, an entire new dimension of our experience opens
up. Does a character exist offstage? Before you answer
defnitively, ask yourself, Are we doing more than acting
in our everyday lives? And whats more alarming, In
whose drama?
We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off.
Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.
The Player, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
{ }
Next Stage: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead [ :
Atonement: reparation for an offense or injury.
Avuncular: having to do with an uncle.
Cartographers: mapmakers.
Capon: a neutered roosteronce a fairly standard menu item.
Coxn: the coxswain (pronounced cox-un) is the person in
charge of steering a boat.
Disport: to amuse or divert.
Dogmatic: asserting strict opinions in a doctrinaire or arrogant
manner; opinionated.
Elsinore: a city in eastern Denmark, whose castle provides the
setting of Shakespeares Hamlet.
Empiricism: a theory of knowledge emphasizing the role
of actual experience, especially sensory perception, in the
formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate
ideas or mere hypothesis.
Equanimity: even-tempered.
flagrante delicto: caught red-handed or in the act of the
crime; especially used as a euphemism for being caught in the
act of sex.
Guilder: name for a gold coin.
Inexorable: unyielding; unalterable or inevitable.
Law of averages: the notion that outcomes of a random event
repeated will even out over timeapplied in everything from
fipping coins or betting on a roulette wheel to commenting on
sports.
Law of diminishing returns: the economic observation that,
in a production system with fxed and variable inputs, there
comes a point when each additional unit of variable input
yields less and less additional output.
Law of probability: the likelihood that something will or wont
happen (commonly perceived as a likelihood that changes in
relationship to events of the recent past).
Lee: the quarter or region toward which the wind blows, or
shelter from the wind.
Lot: Abrahams nephew in the Biblical book of Genesis and
in the Koran; his wife turns into a pillar of salt feeing the
destruction of Sodom, and in the Genesis account Lot is
subsequently seduced by his two daughters.
The Murder of Gonzago: an anonymous tragedy that begins
with a dumb show and whose plot tells the story of a king
murdered by his brother. In Shakespeares Hamlet, the play
is called The Mousetrap when it is reworked and performed
before Claudius in conscious parallel to the events of the
Danish court.
myopia: near-sightedness; more fguratively, a lack of
foresight; a narrow view of something
Non sequitur: something that doesnt follow; a logical fallacy
or a statement with no evident relation to the preceding
comment, and often humorously absurd as a result.
nomenclature: a system of naming.
Portentous: full of signifcance or meaning; a prophetic
indication.
Pragmatism: a practical approach to solving problems.
the Rape of the Sabine Women: a legendary incident in the
early history of Rome, which in turn inspired many works of art
and literature.
Remonstrate: to argue, especially to urge reasons in opposition
Stays: heavy ropes, wires, or rods on sailing ships that run from
the masts to the hull, usually along the centerline of the vessel.
Syllogism: in deductive reasoning; a formal argument
consisting of two premises and a deduction purporting to
follow from them. Often, syllogistic reasoning lends itself to
false conclusions: all tables have four legs; my dog has four
legs; therefore, my dog is a table.
tang Dynasty: Chinese dynasty from 618 to 907; a golden age
of culture and art.
truancy: intentional unauthorized absence, as for instance
from compulsory schooling.
ventages: A small hole, like the stop in a fute.
gloSSary
Next Stage: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead [ :