Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead

The play is indeed very funny with numerous instances of identity confusion between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, very brilliant due to the numerous puns and play on words, and very chilling during the scarce incidents where Ros or Guil actually “act.” The themes of existentialism make the play thoughtful, and the twist off of Hamlet gives the play an air of anticipation glittering excitingly in the theatrical air. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead gives away the end result by simply reading the title of the play. Despite being a work of tragedy, the play itself is filled with humorous banter between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and at times, even the players are involved. Stoppard successfully uses this humor to simultaneously establish how brilliant the

One the first of these many mix ups occur while Ros introduces himself to the player by saying that his “name is Guildenstern, and this is Rosencrantz” (22). The readers get a good laugh when Ros and Guil continue forgetting their own identity and interchanging it with each other’s as the play progresses. It only gets more comical as other characters such as the King and Queen fail to correctly identify Ros and Guil. It is humorous to note that even Hamlet interchanges their identities while greeting Guildenstern “with an arm raised to Ros,” the humor of the situation intensified by the elaborate confused actions of Ros and Guil upon being addressed wrongly (53). Aside from the identity crisis, Ros and Guil exchange a lot of hysterically funny banter throughout the play. One such instance happens when Ros and Guil are hiding in the dark away from the pirates attacking their boat and Ros panics about not being able to “feel a thing” and pinches Guil’s leg instead of his own