West Side Story Play Analysis

‘West Side Story (1961) was the second highest-grossing film of the year in the United States and swept the Academy Awards, winning ten Oscars, including Best Picture – more than any other musical. It garnered uniformly enthusiastic critical accolades (…). The soundtrack album was one of the best-selling LPs off all time up to that point.’ (Keith, page 100)
West Side Story is known as one of the greatest musicals of all the time. Furthermore, the fusion of the magnificent play of colors with splendid melodies and the insertion of the classic love story of Romeo and Juliet transforms it into a rich artistic whole. West Side Story is a metaphoric re-presentation of the original play, written by William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet. The way it

Plays and musicals inspired by W. Shakespeare
1. ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD written by Tom Stoppard (Hamlet) Hamlet is one of the most distinguished plays written by William Shakespeare, what’s more, Hamlet, the main character, is the most outstanding and the greatest Shakespearean character. This play served as an eternal source of inspiration for numerous authors, as it was for Tom Stoppard when writing ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD.
The Shakespearean play reveals the story of a royal family surrounded by rivalry which leads to a tragic end. In these 5 acts the reader learns about the death of Hamlet’s father, the king, who was killed by his brother, Claudius. The fact that his mother, Queen Gertrude, has married her husband’s murderer was a shattering experience for the young prince, Hamlet, which triggered vindictiveness.
The play, written by Tom Stoppard, centralizes on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two secondary characters from Hamlet and it is reducing all of the major characters. As mentioned by Cristopher Innes, in his work entitled Avant Garde Theatre, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern “expresses the existential philosophy fashionable in the early 1960s. (Innes, page

Another difference which can be identified easily at the first sight is that Hamlet is structured in 5 acts, while ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD is written in 3 acts.
“Stoppard’s breakthrough came with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a whimsical retelling of Hamlet from the point of view of its fringe characters. Said Stoppard: “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two people who have been written into a scheme of things and there’s nothing they can do about it except follow through and meet the fate that has been ordained for them, which is to die violently.”” (Kabatchnik, 528) Beneath the surface of the structure, there are numerous similarities, as mentioned before the major themes of the Stoppardian play are identical with the Shakespearean ones. Another feature which can be found in both plays would be that the authors are insisting on the internal conflicts of the individual, on the inner thoughts of the complex