Codas in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Hailey Hansen, Molly Senter, Olivia Rosera, Kylie Plouff

● The codas act as a cue for a common theme: mortality. The

music signifies a pondering of life/the meaning of it.

● The lines paired with the cue of the coda is a couplet. These
lines stand out due to their rhyming and more song-like nature.

● The lines of the codas are all plays on a line from the Lord’s
Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.” The reference to the
Lord’s Prayer highlights an element/explanation of mortality
itself. Organized religion, in this case,
Christianity, attempts to explain mortality in a
spiritual regard. In the Christian religion it is
commonly believed that mortality extends past
physical death. In this case, if Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are dead, they still are not.

● “Consistency is all I ask, give us this

day our daily mask” (Stoppard 39) is the first
line with a coda. This line occurs after the King confuses their
names, possibly signifying that mortality is dependent on
identity (They do not react to being addressed as
the other because they identify with one another.
Their mortality is of each other). In the preceding
dialogue, Guildenstern mentions that “The only
beginning is birth and the only end is death” (39).
As the coda plays, the two characters are attempting
to establish to what extent mortality does exist.
● “Immortality is all I seek. Give us this day, our
daily week” (Stoppard 45) is the second line
with the coda. This one directly addresses
mortality. It also considers the role time plays
in mortality and whether or not mortality has
a limit in regards to time.

● “All I ask is our common clue, give us this day our daily cue”
(Stoppard 102, the fourth coda line, hints at
the play becoming self aware of its existence
as a play. On a literal level, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are only characters. Their
mortality is brought into question here again
because they are not, on a literal level, real
people.