One Book And One Week : كتاب واحد وأسب

Week Four: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard [6/10]

Knighted British playwright Tom Stoppard’s fourth play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, was three acts long and took me roughly three days to complete. I purposefully picked this play as a lighter work to read for week four, but though slender in size, this play is big in message. 

 As a general rule, I (as a reader) have a hard time finding plays as engrossing as novels. For one, often times there is less to interpret in a novel. The author reveals much more in description than a playwright would. Alternatively, in a play, so much is left to the interpretation of the actors, the director, and the viewer, it’s almost as if it’s a shell to be filled by the reader. When I was reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, there was no majesty to get lost in, no engrossing world. But maybe that’s part of the charm of the play itself.

An existentialist play with an absurdist design, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is designed to cause the spectator to question life, death, and the meaning of existence. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern themselves are bit characters in Shakespeare’s infamous tragedy, Hamlet, and Stoppard elected to give them a story of their own. Throughout the play, the characters of Hamlet weave in and out, affecting the destiny of these two characters-a destiny they have virtually no control over. They have no free will, no control, and can make virtually no choices.

The play was done well, and it achieved its ends almost perfectly. However, I give it a 6/10 purely based on enjoyability. It caused me to think, and it was speculative, but it echoed a lot of other plays I have already read (Waiting For Godot, for one), and novels such as The Stranger achieve the same end in a way that I, personally, find easier to read. Honestly, I’m of the opinion that plays should be watched, and not read, which is part of the reason for the lower rating.

Happy reading!