Subjects:
How has Tom Stoppard used Shakspeare’s Hamlet to explore traditional themes and ideas and raise contemporary issues through his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead?
By transforming a revenge tragedy into an absurdist play, Tom Stoppard has been able to extract ideas from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet to construct new meaning for a contemporary audience. This is done through a change in focus from those at the top of the social hierarchy (the Royal family of Denmark) to common man. This change in focus reflects a change in societies values and provides a new perspective with which we can analyse the issues confronted such as religion, fate and destiny, and death.
The context each play was written in has largely determined the plot of the plays, which acutely echo the values of society. Hamlet for example, opens with an obvious theological discourse that must be corrected by Hamlet, forming the basis of the plot. The idea that the disruption of hierarchical structure (consequently divine order) leads to chaos and tragedy reflects the significance of Christianity in Elizabethan society. It instilled structure and
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Stoppard often refers to death as objectively. Stoppard has employed the technique of dramatic irony, as the audience know why their “little deaths” are so significant through Hamlet. The disruption of order has been transformed from one of theology to one of mathematics, symbolised not by a ghost, but by a coin. ” To which Ros responds “Shouldn’t we be doing something constructive?” This reflects the attitude of the Absurdist play movement: that language is merely constant miscommunication and misinterpretation therefore, questions have been so distorted by the time an answer is relayed back to the inquirer that asking questions is pointless- hence language is meaningless. This is an effective use of symbolism by Stoppard as it suggests that we no longer live in a world reliant on divine order. In the 1960’s however, with the decline in Christianity, purpose and identity became harder to specify.
Stoppard humours this idea of “searching for answers” using cyclical duologues, where Ros and Guil tangle themselves in a perpetual web of questions. For example the soliloquy after which Hamlet concludes: “More relative than this. Like Hamlet, disorder is the crux of the play, made apparent by Ros flipping a coin that consistently lands on heads.
Unlike the purpose-driven plot of Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead conforms to the conventions of Absurdist Theatre, which is more cyclical, lacking in direction and reflects a sense of confusion. In Hamlet, death is contrived by people: plotted, vengeful and highly dramatic. Use of satire and black humour when addressing the topic of death is confronting and uncomfortable for the audience, however its ironic because the audience is reacting to an unreal depiction death.
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