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Two sides of the same coin,

or ...the same side of two
coins’: An analysis of Tom
Stoppard's Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are dead
a
Manfred Draudt
a
University of Vienna ,
Published online: 13 Aug 2008.

To cite this article: Manfred Draudt (1981) Two sides of the same coin, or ...the same
side of two coins’: An analysis of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are
dead , English Studies, 62:4, 348-357, DOI: 10.1080/00138388108598125

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00138388108598125

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 TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN, OR ...THE SAME SIDE OF TWO
COINS': AN ANALYSIS OF TOM STOPPARD'S
ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD
When the play opens we see two characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstem,
passing their time as they wait by tossing coins. This nonsensical game defies
the rules of chance and causes bewilderment in Guildenstern's more probing
mind. After some discursive rambling he at length concludes with the existen-
tial commonplace: 'We have not been ... picked out... simply to be abandoned
»i
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Although the Beckettian echoes and parallels of this situation have been duly
noted,2 both favourable and unfavourable critics seem to have failed to realize
that the game of coin-tossing has a deeper significance.3 Particularly at crucial
moments this game is taken up again and again, as can be seen, for example,
when Rosencrantz and Guildenstem meet the players. Rosencrantz's attempts
to pick up the coin hidden under the Player's foot, which seem to be merely a
comic routine, dramatize the way he and Guildenstem gradually lose their grip
on reality. Whereas in the first instance Rosencrantz was able to snatch away
the coin (p. 24), he is not only frustrated but even injured when he tries to repeat
his previous success later on (pp. 54-5). And a third 'game' with coins provides
another telling comment on their increasing insecurity. When Guildenstem
taps Rosencrantz's fists and finds both hands empty (pp. 43-4), his genuine
consternation is clearly reminiscent of that caused by the impossible run of
'heads' at the beginning of the play. Later on, however, Rosencrantz keeps
coins in each hand to comfort his distressed friend (p. 74). By playing this trick
he is, as it were, making a naive attempt to cheat the malevolent 'chance' whose
incalculable caprice had initiated their journey into the unknown (cf. p. 12),
which, eventually, will end in their deaths.
The use of coins also reinforces our impression that in the course of the play

1
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstem are Dead (London, 1967), p. 14. All subsequent
references to this edition of the play will be given in the text as simple page references.
2
See, for example, Dieter Mehl, 'Stoppard. Rosencrantz and Guildenstem are Dead', in Das en-
gische Drama, II, ed: D. Mehl (Düsseldorf, 1970), pp. 339-40; John Russell Taylor, The Second
Wave (London, 1971), p. 100; Robert Brustein, 'Waiting for Hamlet. Rosencrantz and Guilden-
stern are Dead', in The Third Theater (New York, 1969), p. 151 ; Walter D. Asmus, 'Rosencrantz
and Guildenstem are Dead, Shakespeare Jahrbuch West (1970), p. 120.
3
There are also a number of passages which might unconsciously echo this concern with coins:
for example, 'the currency of living' (p. 48), or 'a king's remembrance' (p. 29), which may be
associated with 'a King's Remembrancer', i.e. an officer collecting debts due to the sovereign. In
addition, the English expressions ' a coin rings true' and an honest statement has 'the ring of
truth' may be behind the frequent references to 'truth' and 'trust' (cf. pp. 48, 22, 28), most of
which give evidence of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's doubts and of their search for an 'expla-
nation' (p. 89).

348
 the two attendant lords assume the mercenary status of the players. Whereas at
the beginning it is the actors who receive money from the patronizing pair (pp.
16-24), towards the end the courtiers are on the receiving end, being in
Claudius' pay (pp. 74-5).
Much more remarkable, however, is the fact that the coin seems to be one of
the principal keys4 to an understanding of Stoppard's play. Though it is only
occasionally employed as a metaphor, the image of the coin is basic to the
concerns, form, and structure of the play, for it epitomizes the idea that two
different aspects, or even separate identities, can meet in one and the same
thing. The coin, whose two sides belong together but are yet opposed one to
another, embodies a paradox: the dichotomy and identity of two opposites.

For some of us it is performance, for others patronage. They are two sides of the same coin, or, let
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us say, being as there are so many of us, the same side of two coins, (p. 16)

The idea that the human race can be divided into actors and spectators is
certainly not what Stoppard wants to say,5 yet such a classification does elu-
cidate the complex and shifting relationship between Rosencrantz and Guilden-
stern and the players, who are the only people with whom they can successfully
communicate: GUIL: 'The truth is, we value your company, for want of any
other.' (p. 47) Because Stoppard significantly expanded their roles, the actors,
and particularly their relationship with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, merit a
more detailed analysis.
When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern encounter the troupe of players for the
first time, they insist on the distinct division into actors and spectators (ROS: 'I
thought we were gentlemen.', p. 16), and they are convinced of their own
superiority over the low 'rabble'. They are shocked at the suggestion of taking
part in a 'performance' of the Rape of the Sabine Women and adopt a patroniz-
ing air towards the players:

GUIL: Perhaps I can use my influence.

PLAYER: At the tavern?
GUIL: At the court. I would say I have some influence, (p. 18)

Although the Player by his retorts deflates their hollow-sounding protestations,

he plays up to their condescending attitude and treats Rosencrantz and Guil-
denstern as his prospective patrons. Nevertheless, the Player's critical remarks
and his 'faux pas', 'I recognized you at once — as fellow artists' (p. 16), has
made us aware that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern may not be spectators only.
In the course of the play we shall see how they desperately try to avoid becom-
4
Cf. John Russell Taylor, who maintains that the play '... is very evidently the working out of an
intellectual, almost one might say a scholarly, conceit ...' (p. 101).
5
'Jeder Versuch, die Bühnenmetaphorik des Stückes in Analogie zur Wirklichkeit zu bringen,
inhaltliche Aussagen mit Realität verbinden zu wollen, denunziert die vermeintlichen Tiefen als
Untiefen.' (p. 130). This Statement of Walter D. Asmus shows that he misses Stoppard's irony
and does not consider the total dramatic context, in which these seeming 'platitudes' take on a
relevant and complex function, as will be demonstrated in the following.

349
 ing embroiled in the action in order to maintain their positions as 'spectators',
never realizing that actor and spectator are interchangeable roles, that is, two
sides of the same coin.
Throughout the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern remain unaware that,
like the players, they are being employed at the court of Elsinore, whereas the
audience clearly sees how they constantly betray their real natures:

GUIL: Give us this day our daily mask. (p. 28)

They've got us placed now — (p. 30)
We don't know how to act. (p. 48)
Give us this day our daily cue. (p. 74)

Not only their words but also their actions and games enhance this dramatic
irony by showing them as actors. Just as the players rehearse 'The Murder of
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Gonzago', Rosencrantz and Guildenstern practise for their encounter with

Hamlet (Guildenstern assuming the identity of the prince, pp. 33-6) and per-
form the scene of their arrival and welcome in England, Rosencrantz playing
the English king (pp. 78-9). Thus they unconsciously assume the role of 'actor'
which they have resisted earlier.
The scene in which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern watch the rehearsal of the
'Mousetrap' is the most significant moment in the play, about which the action
turns. The Player's request, 'Now if you two wouldn't mind just moving back
...' (p. 55), tellingly suggests that actors and spectators have changed positions.
Having given up their former pretentiousness,6 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
have become more and more insecure, while the disreputable players have
successfully established their superiority:

PLAYER: I can come and go as I please.

GUIL: You're evidently a man who knows his way around.
PLAYER: I've been here before.
GUIL: We're still finding our feet.
PLAYER: I should concentrate on not losing your heads. (p. 47)

Even when they are face to face with their mirror-images, viz. the two Spies,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are unable and, it seems, unwilling to recognize
their real selves.7
ROS: For a moment I thought — no, I don't know you, do I? Yes, I'm afraid you're quite wrong.
You must have mistaken me for someone else.
PLAYER: Are you familiar with this play?
GUIL: N O . (p. 60)

6
Cf. 'GULL: NOW mind your tongue, or we'll have it out and throw the rest of you away, like a
nightingale at a Roman feast.' (p. 44) '... you may have no doubt whom to thank for your
performance at the court.' (p. 46).
7
Dieter Mehl, whose interpretation of the play is otherwise very sensitive, gravely misunderstands
the reactions of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: 'Doch auch die Spielwelt der heruntergekom-
menen Mimen beläßt die beiden nicht in ihrer Zuschauerrolle; denn als die für den Hof bestim-
mte Tragödie The Murder of Gonzago geprobt wird, erkennen sie sich plötzlich in den Gestalten
zweier Spione wieder ...' (p. 342).

350
 They insist on being spectators,8 ironically even clapping at the performance
that anticipates their own tragic destiny (p. 62). It is this illusion about their
own status, this discrepancy between what they think they are and what they
really are — mere pawns in the hands of the Danish court — that blinds them
to reality and makes them stumble helplessly towards a fatal end, while the
players, in contrast to them, just go on playing — and living.9 In this key scene
Stoppard heightens the dramatic irony by means of the identical coats worn by
the two Spies and by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and by having them
''sprawled on the ground in the approximate positions last held by the dead SPIES'
(p. 62) (thus emphasizing for us an identity which the two characters do not
themselves recognize); yet he also skilfully demonstrates that reality and illu-
sion, real and acted life,10 rehearsal and performance, spectator and actor, are
simply two sides of one and the same coin. In contrast to Rosencrantz and
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Guildenstern, the actors accept this paradox as a fact: 'We do on stage the
things that are supposed to happen off.' (p. 20). In this conversation with the
pair, the Player ironically seems to support their idea of a dichotomy:

... [we are] demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore,1 * speaking as no man
ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords,
hollow protestations of faith hurled after empty promises of vengeance — . . . Don't you see?! We're
actors — we're the opposite of people! (p. 45)

Yet Stoppard portrays him as somebody who does not differentiate between his
persona as an actor and his off-stage life:12

GUIL: Well...aren't you going to change into your costume?

PLAYER: I never change out of it, sir.
GUIL: Always in character.
PLAYER: That's it. (p. 24)

This identification of the two normally incompatible positions of spectator and

actor is, however, more than 'the working out of an intellectual conceit'. Be-
cause Stoppard expresses this idea in a play to be performed in front of an
audience, the recognition of this paradox must be deeply disturbing to any
perceptive spectator. The mood of complacent detachment in which we have
been watching the ridiculously confident bearing and the childish games of the
two protagonists will gradually give way to a feeling of unease, for we cannot

8
'GUIL: Keep back — we're spectators.' (p. 57).
9
'PLAYER: ... we troupers just go on and on. Do you know what happens to old actors? ...
Nothing. They're still acting.' (pp. 83-4).
10
The Player's seemingly absurd warning, 'Don't clap too loudly — it's a very old world.' (p. 16),
[my italics], also suggests such an identity between play world and real world. Cf. John Osborne,
The Entertainer (London, 1961), p. 59: 'Don't clap too hard — it's a very old building, [i.e.
theatre].'
11
An authorial irony concerning the opening of the play (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern walking
about in Elizabethan costume) might be intended.
12
PLAYER:We always use the same costumes more or less, and they forget what they are supposed
to be in you see.' (p. 55). Compare also Dieter Mehl, p. 342.

351
 but see a parallel between ourselves and these petty actors who stumble through
the unknown towards death. Seen in this light, Stoppard's direct attack on the
audience by means of an alienation effect13 (Rosencrantz leaping up and bel-
lowing 'Fire!' at the audience, p. 43) is not merely a 'formalistic game'14 but a
deliberate attempt to bring home the disturbing message of the interrelation-
ship, and exchangeability, of play world and real world. Although the idea of
employing different fictional levels may have a parallel, or even its origin, in the
play within the play of Hamlet,15 Stoppard's use of a sophisticated mirror
technique rather reminds one of Peter Weiss's The Persecution and Assassi-
nation of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under
the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.16 Just as Weiss unmasks the smug com-
placency of the theatre audience by confronting, and thus identifying, them
with the presumptuous 'enlightened' audience of 1808 watching the 'distant'
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events of 1793, Stoppard unsettles his audience when he makes them first laugh
at but later identify themselves with the tragi-comic protagonists. The complex
irony derives from the fact that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who boast, on
stage, of their superiority as 'spectators', are actually twice removed from the
reality of the audience (actors impersonating figures in Stoppard's play who, in
turn, are based upon two characters from Hamlet); yet they are also gradually
shown as human beings becoming trapped in the circumstances in which they
find themselves.
The disreputable actors, on the other hand, 'know which way the wind is
blowing' (p. 47) and therefore can offer advice to the respectable courtiers, who
are more and more at a loss.

GUIL: But for God's sake what are we supposed to doV.

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your
situation at every turn.

13
Stoppard not only attempts to involve the audience but also constantly forces it to judge 'reality'
and 'truth'—to find out which side of the coin is which. One of the first instances intended to make
us critical towards the protagonists is Rosencrantz's statement: 'The toenails, on the other hand
never grow at all.' (p. 13). The Player's mock-dying scene (pp. 89-90) is another brilliant touch
where the audience's awareness of reality is tested — and where it is again identified with the
gullible pair.
14
Walter D. Asmus describes it as 'formale Spielerei' (p. 119).
15
See Dieter Mehl, p. 342, and Walter D. Asmus, pp. 118-20. In this context the Renaissance
commonplace. 'All the world is a stage' and Hamlet's words as to 'the purpose of playing' ought
to be considered, too. In her exemplary study of Shakespeare's use of the acting image (Shakes-
peare and the Idea of the Play, Harmondsworth 1967) Anne Righter maintains that 'the play
metaphor had served as a bridge between the audience and the domain of the stage. It guided
that relationship of actors and audience upon which Elizabethan drama relied, reminding the
latter that life contains elements of illusion, that the two worlds are not as separate as might be
supposed.' (p. 182).
16
It may be coincidence, but possibly indicative of some degree of influence, that Stoppard took
part in a literary seminar in Berlin when he was also working on the first draft of Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern are Dead during the summer of 1965, in which Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade was
first performed at the Schiller Theater. (For the facts see Charles Marowitz, Confessions of a
Counterfeit Critic (London, 1973), p. 104).

352
 GUIL: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.
PLAYER: Act natural. ... Everything has to be taken on trust; ... One acts on assumptions,
(pp. 47-8)

Thus their continuous questioning is exposed as being negative. It is also clear

that the initial relationship has been reversed, the players now being the 'heads',
whereas Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have become the 'tails'.
Although they are 'All in the same boat' (p. 82) — or of the same coin — the
actors, in contrast to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, appear to have the right
strategy for survival. Even being dismissed in disgrace or forced to hide as
stowaways does not worry them, for they 'take [their] chances where [they] find
them' (p. 18) and unquestioningly submit to misfortunes, just as they accept
death.17
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PLAYER: We follow directions — there is no choice involved. The bad end unhappily, the good
unluckily. That is what tragedy means. (p. 58)

Guildenstern's remark, 'I'd prefer art to mirror life ...' (p. 58), indicates that,
because of their disastrous narrow-mindedness, they again fail to see the ob-
vious identity of art and life, play world and real world.
The Player's thrilling mock-death, which finally gives drastic emphasis to this
point, cunningly tests — because of its seeming reality — not only Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern's but also the audience's awareness of reality; it occurs after a
violent clash has again displayed the difference in their range of vision:
PLAYER: In our experience, most things end in death.
GUIL: Your experience! — Actors! (p. 89)

In Stoppard's 'comedy', just as in Shakespeare's tragedy, death is the central

problem, appearing in almost every conversation until its final physical impact
is felt with the disappearance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Of course,
death has different associations and implications in a sixteenth- and a twentieth-
century play, but it would be wrong to assume that the existentialist philos-
ophy of the 'absurd' dramatists18 has been absorbed uncritically, or is the only
view expressed in Stoppard's play; evidently, it is only one side of the coin.
The nihilistic definitions of death, which we find in many of Guildenstern's
speeches, correspond perfectly with the 'absurd' situation and techniques em-
ployed, and these underline Stoppard's indebtedness to Beckett.

GUIL: Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being, (p. 78) Death is not anything...death is not...It's
the absence of presence, nothing more...the endless time of never coming back... (pp. 90-1)
17
'PLAYER: There's a design at work in all art. ... Events must play themselves out to aesthetic,
moral and logical conclusions. ... It never varies — we aim at the point where everyone who is
marked for death dies. ...
Between "just deserts" and "tragic irony" we are given quite a lot of scope for our particular
talent.' (p. 57)
18
Compare Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (Harmondsworth, 1968), pp. 23-5.

353
 Dieter Mehl has pointed out that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is not
a simple imitation of Waiting for Godot, as, for example, Robert Brustein
(p. 151) suggests, but that it can also be interpreted as a parody of Beckett.19
Concrete evidence for this argument is to be found in those passages in which
death is described in terms that are decidedly non-existentialist, for example
when Rosencrantz first comes to think of death:

Another curious scientific phenomenon is the fact that the fingernails grow after death, as does the
beard. ... The fingernails also grow before birth, though not the beard. (pp. 12-3)

Here death is not the ultimate end (something continues to grow) but, para-
doxically, has something in common with birth, viz. the growing of the finger-
nails. This concept of two linked opposites again recalls the image of the coin; it
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can also be associated with the Player's formulation of his position:

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. (p. 20)

This maxim plainly exposes Guildenstern's limited and one-sided perception of

the world ('[Death is] - an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced ...', p. 61). If he
could see the other side of the coin, i.e. the entrance behind every exit, his
nihilism would be transformed into the Player's optimistic acceptance of life.
Strangely enough, however, his dying words seem to contain such a positive
note: '... we'll know better next time.' (p. 91).
The coin image, which can also be applied to the corresponding counterparts
of murderer and victim —

... some of them kill even better than they die. The rest die better than they kill. They're a team. (p.
61) —

illuminates not only Stoppard's concept of death but also another major motif
of the play, the exchange of personality. This is a particular aspect of the
problem of identity, which is a theme common to many modern plays. Again,
Stoppard adopts a motif from Hamlet,

King. Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.

Queen. Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz. (II.ii.33-4),

working it out in the manner characteristic of Beckett or Pinter. By elaborating

the comic implications of the identity motif ('CLAUDIUS: Thanks, Rosencrantz
(turning to ROS who is caught unprepared, while GUIL bows)...', p. 26), as well as
19
'Überhaupt sollte der Vergleich mit Beckett nicht allzu genau genommen werden.' (p. 340); '...
die Technik des absurden Theaters [wird] hier mit ... Distanz verwendet ... und man könnte das
Stück streckenweise durchaus als Beckett-Parodie verstehen ... als ... Umdeutung bekannter
Konventionen des modernen Theaters durch die ständige Konfrontation mit Sprache und Tech-
nik des klassischen Dramas.' (p. 341).

354
 its complex ironies (similar to those of the actor-spectator relationship), Stop-
pard gives it a highly original twist. First, he multiplies the instances in which
the royal family get Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's names wrong 20 and lays
stress upon the grotesqueness of the situation:

ROS: He [Claudius] wouldn't discriminate between us.

GUIL: Even if he could.
ROS: Which he never could.
GUIL: He couldn't even be sure of mixing us up.
ROS: Without mixing us up. (p. 75)

A completely new element is then introduced by their own insecurity regarding

their identities,21 a trait that emphasizes their indecision, passivity,22 and lack
of control.
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ROS: My name is Guildenstern, and this is Rosencrantz.

... I'm sorry — his name's Guildenstern, and Fm Rosencrantz. (p. 16)

The comic potentiality of this motif is fully exploited when it is realized in

concrete physical terms as, for example, in the scene in which Rosencrantz
mistakes Guildenstern's leg for his own (p. 70), or in the scene in which they try
to find out who was given the king's letter (pp. 76-7).
It is in Guildenstern's diagnosis of their predicament, in his desperate excla-
mation, 'What could we possibly have in common except our situation?' (p. 34),
and in his grateful acknowledgement of a companion that we recognize the coin
image as an appropriate symbol of their personalities23 and fate:

But we are comparatively fortunate; we might have been left to sift the whole field of human
nomenclature, like two blind men looting a bazaar for their own portraits ... 24 At least we are
presented with alternatives. ... — But not choice. (p. 28)

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two individuals, but also a team — the
'straight man' and the wit; although clearly distinguishable, they are also mutu-

20
Cf. pp. 25-6 (Claudius and Gertrude), pp. 37-9 (Hamlet), and p. 62. In addition, Stoppard extends
the mixing up of their identities to the fictitious scene of their welcome by the English king (p.
88).
21
In Tudor and earlier drama, clowns and Vice characters had problems remembering or knowing
their names. Compare, for example, the two characters A and B in Medwall's Fulgens and Lu-
crece, Ambidexter in Preston's Cambyses, and Ignorance in Redford's Wit and Science.
22
Seen in terms of the dichotomy of actors and spectators, it is striking that Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern constantly refuse, or hesitate, or do not dare, to act (in both senses of the word).
Compare one of their characteristic utterances: 'ROS: I don't care one way or another, so why
don't you make up your mind, GUIL: We can't afford anything quite so arbitrary. Nor did we
come all this way for a christening.' (p. 28). Cf. also Dieter Mehl, p. 342.
23
See Wolfgang Baumgart, 'Hamlet's Excellent Good Friends', Englische Dichter der Moderne, ed.
R. Sühnel and D. Riesner, p. 590: 'Sie sind niemand, aber zwei, ein Paar, zusammengehörig wie
Kopf und Zahl einer Münze:'
24
In the rehearsal scene (p. 60) they, ironically, fail to recognize their 'own portraits', i.e. their
counterparts in the figures of the two Spies.

355
 ally exchangeable, not only in regard to the roles they play25 but also in the eyes
of the others who mix up their names; furthermore, they are inseparably linked
by a common fate. The mixing up of their identities becomes even more confus-
ing — and hilarious — when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern rehearse their
prospective meeting with the prince. Rosencrantz, who has always found it
difficult to discriminate between his own and his friend's name (cf. pp. 28, 36,
91), is completely perplexed by Guildenstern's assuming of Hamlet's persona:

GUIL: I don't think you quite understand. What we are attempting is a hypothesis in which / an-
swer for him, while you ask me questions. (p. 34)

Rosencrantz's question, 'Am I pretending to be you, then?' is not simply a

funny line but indicates his naive attempt to carry the game of 'exchanging
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identities' to its logical conclusion.

A further complicating factor is Hamlet's unbalanced mind, which makes his
persona as elusive as the identities of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

ROS: He talks to himself, which might be madness.

GUIL: If he didn't talk sense, which he does.
ROS: Which suggests the opposite. ...
GUIL: I think I have it. A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense
not to himself.
ROS: Or just as mad.
GUIL: Or just as mad.
ROS: And he does both.
GUIL: SO there you are.
ROS: Stark raving sane. (pp. 48-9)

Madness and sanity, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, actor and spectator —

these are all complementary but also interchangeable counterparts, different
manifestations of one and the same principle.26
Finally, it remains to demonstrate that the coin image is also related to the
aspects of language and structure. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's favourite
occupation, their playing with words, shows that words, too, are items easily
interchanged:

ROS: I'm out of my step here — ...

It's all over my depth — ...

25
I n general, Guildenstern is the brighter, m o r e intellectual of the t w o a n d therefore t h e d o m i n a t -
ing personality. I n some of the games, however, their roles are reversed a n d t h e ' d i m ' Rosen-
crantz proves t o b e superior ( c o m p a r e , for example, t h e different results o f the first a n d second
question games). Rosencrantz's consoling function, t o o , must n o t b e forgotten. Cf. p . 7 5 : ' R O S : I
can't think of anything original. I'm only good in support.'
26
Because of this o n e underlying principle, S t o p p a r d c a n successfully integrate a n d interrelate the
various motifs, as, for example, the sanity/madness problem and the identity and actor motifs:
'ROS: He's not himself, you know,GUIL:I'm him, you see.' (p. 33). Similarly, Hamlet's 'trans-
formation' is seen in terms of 'inside/out' (pp. 35, 46), the very terms that the Player uses for
describing his on- and off-stage activities (p. 20). Thus the sanity/insanity contrast is related to
the dichotomy of play world and real world.

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 — out of my head — ...
— over my step over my head body! — I tell you it's all stopping to a death, it's boding to a depth,
stepping to a head, it's all heading to a dead stop — (p. 27)

In this instance, as well as in the great number of puns which exploit the
ambiguity of language ('England! That's a dead end.', p. 88), a playful and
comic façade hides a menacing reality.

GUIL: I have influence yet.

PLAYER: Yet what?
(GUIL seizes the PLAYER violently.) (p. 18)

In the first quotation the freely associating mind is somehow driven towards ' a
dead stop', which is a very telling anticipation of Rosencrantz and
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Guildenstern's rambling course through life that also heads towards and ends
in death. In the second quotation, the Player's twisting of 'yet' exposes their
pomposity and pathetic illusions of safety. Under the commonplace phrase or
everyday situation there lurks the unexpected shoal, and the absurdly comic
surface very often conceals a serious implication or even a tragic aspect.27
Almost simultaneously we laugh at and feel pity for the two struggling pro-
tagonists, because the play successfully demonstrates that comedy and tragedy,
too, are opposite sides of the same coin.
As has been demonstrated above, the image of the coin is related to structure
in the way that it expresses in dramatic form the 'head/tail' sides, i.e. the
relationships of spectator/actor, real/play world, reality/illusion, etc. But struc-
turally even more significant is the fact that the coin is also basic to the inge-
nious idea around which Stoppard built his play; the Player's assertion, 'every
exit [is] an entrance somewhere else', helps us to understand this idea more
clearly. By focussing on and dramatizing the off-stage life of two characters
from Hamlet, Stoppard can be said to have taken the Player's statement lit-
erally: practically every exit in Hamlet is an entrance in Rosencrantz and Guil-
denstern are Dead. Within such a concept based on reversals it is logically
coherent that minor characters should become the new protagonists and that
Shakespeare's enigmatic hero should be reduced to a figure in the background,
from where he silently delivers his famous soliloquy (p. 53).
By constructing his play around one paradoxical concept, which is the basis
of both the play's meaning and form, Stoppard has shown that the force of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's insistent entreaties, 'Consistency is all I ask',
has not been lost on their creator.

University of Vienna MANFRED DRAUDT

27
Cf. Clifford Leech, Tragedy, The Critical Idiom, I, ed. John D. Jump (London, 1969), p. 29: '...
there is a tragic element ... in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966) ...
[but the play is] deliberately eschewing the tragic manner.'

357