Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead

Act II represents Rosencrantz and Guildenstern more as foils, both failing to achieve what they want. Rosencrantz’s playful attitude turns more into anger as he wants to perform actions that will end his confusion. On the other hand, Guildenstern focuses on making “reason..prevail” (Stoppard 69) to understand the events around him only to fail based on the concrete world. The player sets this existentialism idea throughout Act II, establishing himself as a character that is separated from the absurdity of Ros and Guil, making sense of the play. Before even reading, the stage directions point out the difficulty of deciphering Ros and Guil’s speech to bring all expectations of what happens throughout. As the play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” continues; existentialism motifs, irony, and humor provides more depth to the plot.

He states “[Hamlet] murdered us” (57) creates dramatic irony because we know that he switches letters to order their deaths. Trying to make meaning out of Hamlet’s words becomes useless as they take his rhetoric of wind direction literal. Guil has this continued personality of analyzing to make sense which really results in nonsense.This creates humor because he confuses himself, and the stage directions exploit it as between every sentence he changes direction of “his left..his right..front” (58) which