Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: Analysis of Setting
"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" features a unique and layered setting that plays a critical role in the narrative. The play begins in a seemingly featureless space where the titular characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, engage in conversation and chance games, creating an atmosphere that reflects the uncertainty and absurdity of their existence. This setting is intentionally ambiguous, suggesting both an outdoor locale near Elsinore Castle and potentially within it, blurring the lines between different physical spaces. As the play progresses, the second act intertwines with Shakespeare's "Hamlet," yet Stoppard preserves the vagueness of locations, echoing the original's minimal stage directions.
In the third act, the setting shifts to what appears to be a ship at sea, indicated through sound effects and stage props like barrels. This act continues the theme of disorientation, eventually revealing that the location is not a ship but rather the Danish court, hinting at a deeper, perhaps posthumous, reality for the characters. Overall, the settings in Stoppard’s play serve not only as backdrops but also as reflections of the characters' internal struggles, emphasizing themes of existence, fate, and the search for meaning.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: Analysis of Setting
First published: 1967
First produced: 1966, at Cranston Street Hall, Edinburgh, Scotland
Type of work: Drama
Type of plot: Existential
Time of work: 1600
Places Discussed
Elsinore Castle
Elsinore Castle. Apparent location of the play’s first act. Tom Stoppard’s stage directions for act 1 describe the scene as “Two Elizabethans passing the time in a place without any visible character.” The location seems to be a featureless place, neither indoors nor out, where the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern discourse and toss coins. At length it becomes clear that this is an outdoor location close to the castle of Elsinore, because the traveling players approach them en route to the castle. However, Hamlet himself appears at the end of the act, so the setting may be within the castle itself. This anomaly is intentional, for the setting of the whole play is more one of “inner space” (inside the mind) than any physical place.
The second act makes use of some of Shakespeare’s original lines in Hamlet, with which it soon becomes obvious Stoppard’s play is dovetailing. However, Stoppard never makes the location clear (just as Shakespeare, with minimal stage directions, never makes his locations clear for Hamlet).
Ship
Ship. Apparent setting for act 3. Even more curious than the first two acts, this act is apparently set on a ship at sea—an inference the audience draws from the sound effects suggested by Stoppard, such as “soft sea sounds” and “ship timbers, wind in the rigging.” There are three large barrels on the deck (sufficient to hold one or two actors), and a few steps lead to an upper deck. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are taking Hamlet to England after the death of Polonius, perhaps. But at one point all the traveling players emerge from one of the barrels, and at the end of the play it is clear that the setting is, magically, not a ship but the Danish court.
Perhaps one is meant to assume (from the title) that the play is posthumous, with all the characters dead throughout, not just killed at the end of act 3.
Bibliography
Brassell, Tim. Tom Stoppard: An Assessment. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985. An excellent discussion of Stoppard’s themes that includes a chapter on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Corballis, Richard. Stoppard: The Mystery and the Clockwork. Oxford: Amber Lane Press, 1984. Corballis suggests that, with the death of tragedy in the twentieth century, Hamlet had to be redefined and that Guildenstern is the existential hero.
Hunter, Jim. Tom Stoppard’s Plays. New York: Grove Press, 1982. Hunter discusses Stoppard’s work from the perspective of staging, playing, talking, and thinking. Also provides a study guide with page references to listed discussions.
Jenkins, Anthony. The Theatre of Tom Stoppard. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Thematic interpretations of Stoppard’s work, with an interesting discussion of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead that explores their plight as a game where the rules are not understood by all the players.
Schlueter, Jane. Metafictional Characters in Modern Drama. Columbia: Columbia University Press, 1979. Includes the chapter “Stoppard’s Moon and Birdboot, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,” an excellent discussion of the way in which Stoppard handles characters who move between different fictive realities.