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Books Like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Best books to read after Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
Readers who love Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard are drawn to its combination of philosophical playfulness, the devastating comedy of two figures who cannot understand or escape the situation they are in, and the investigation of free will and determinism through the lens of theatrical existence — they want plays and novels that deal with the experience of being inside a story you cannot control, the relationship between performance and reality, and the metatheatrical tradition.
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Buy on AmazonArcadia
by Tom Stoppard
The later and finest Stoppard play — the Sidley Park estate in 1809 and the present. Companion Stoppard plays: both organized around the relationship between determinism and free will, with Ros and Guil trapped in the plot of Hamlet and the characters of Arcadia trapped in the second law of thermodynamics
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Buy on AmazonHamlet
by William Shakespeare
The source and the companion — the plot within which Ros and Guil exist and from which they cannot escape. Not optional: Stoppard assumes complete familiarity with Shakespeare's text, and the play's comedy and philosophy both depend on knowing what happens to Ros and Guil in the source
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Buy on AmazonWaiting for Godot
by Samuel Beckett
The companion in the tradition of the theatrical investigation of two figures who cannot escape the situation they are in. Ros and Guil and Didi and Gogo are companion theatrical pairs: both organized around two figures who are stuck, who pass the time with wordplay and games, and who are waiting for something they cannot control
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Buy on AmazonSix Characters in Search of an Author
by Luigi Pirandello
Pirandello's companion in the tradition of the theatrical investigation of fictional existence — the Characters who have been abandoned by their Author. Both organized around the same fundamental question: what is the existence of a fictional character, and what does that character's life look like from the inside?
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Buy on AmazonThe Real Thing
by Tom Stoppard
The companion in Stoppard's more emotionally direct mode. Reading Stoppard in order shows how The Real Thing represents his turn toward the personal and emotional: Rosencrantz is organized around philosophical game-playing; The Real Thing around the genuine difficulty of love and art
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Buy on AmazonIf on a winter's night a traveler
by Italo Calvino
Calvino's companion in the metafictional tradition — the reader trapped in a series of novels. Both organized around the experience of being inside a fiction you cannot escape and do not fully understand
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Buy on AmazonThe Invention of Love
by Tom Stoppard
The later companion Stoppard play — the old and young A.E. Housman meeting at the Styx. Companion Stoppard plays about the relationship between the life you have lived and the life you refused to live, and the impossibility of going back
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Buy on AmazonEvery Good Boy Deserves Favour
by Tom Stoppard
Stoppard's companion play about the relationship between two figures (a dissident and a man who genuinely believes he hears an orchestra) who are confined in a Soviet psychiatric hospital and whose situation they cannot control. Companion Stoppard plays about confinement, the impossibility of escape, and the comedy that emerges when people try to make sense of a situation organized by forces they cannot see
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