Reading Order
Rosencrantz & GuildensternRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Reading Order
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) by Tom Stoppard is the play that made Stoppard's reputation — the two minor characters from Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (who cannot tell each other apart and spend most of the play not being entirely sure which is which), experiencing what happens to them in the gaps between their scenes in Shakespeare's play. The play is organized around the observation that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are entirely passive: they are summoned, they are sent, they are dispatched with a letter (which they do not read, and which turns out to contain the order for their execution), and they die because the plot of Hamlet requires it, not because of anything they have done. Stoppard uses this observation — that Ros and Guil are entirely subject to the plot that surrounds them — to investigate the philosophical questions of free will, determinism, and the nature of theatrical existence. The play premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 1966 and was immediately recognized as a major work; it was made into a film by Stoppard in 1990 with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth.
Where to start
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) — the complete text. Requires reading Hamlet first (or knowing it well). Best Stoppard reading order: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead → Jumpers → Travesties → The Real Thing → Arcadia
Complete Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Book List
- 1Buy
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Tom Stoppard·1966·The play that made Stoppard's reputation — Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, the Players, and the questions of free will and determinism that the plot of Hamlet raises. Premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 1966; moved to the National Theatre; made into a film by Stoppard in 1990 with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth - 2Buy
Hamlet
William Shakespeare·1603·The source and the companion — the plot within which Ros and Guil exist and from which they cannot escape. Hamlet is not optional before or alongside Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; 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 - 3Buy
Arcadia
Tom Stoppard·1993·The later companion and Stoppard's finest play — the Sidley Park estate in 1809 and the present. Both Arcadia and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are companion investigations of the relationship between determinism and free will: Ros and Guil cannot escape the plot of Hamlet; the characters of Arcadia cannot escape the second law of thermodynamics - 4Buy
Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett·1953·Beckett's companion in the tradition of the theatrical investigation of the human condition through two figures who cannot escape the situation they are in — Vladimir and Estragon waiting for Godot. Ros and Guil and Didi and Gogo are companion theatrical pairs: both are organized around two figures who are stuck in a situation they cannot understand or escape, who pass the time with wordplay and games, and who are waiting for something (Godot; the plot of Hamlet to require them) that they cannot control - 5Buy
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Luigi Pirandello·1921·Pirandello's companion in the tradition of the theatrical investigation of the nature of fictional existence — the Characters who have been abandoned by their Author. Both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Six Characters are 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? - 6Buy
The Invention of Love
Tom Stoppard·1997·The later companion Stoppard play — the old A.E. Housman and the young A.E. Housman, the classical scholar and the poet, meeting at the Styx. The Invention of Love and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead are companion Stoppard plays about a man's relationship to the life he has lived and the life he has refused to live — both are organized around the impossibility of going back and the question of what remains - 7Buy
If on a winter's night a traveler
Italo Calvino·1979·Calvino's companion in the metafictional tradition — the reader trapped in a series of novels. Both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and If on a winter's night a traveler are organized around the experience of being inside a fiction you cannot escape and do not fully understand - 8Buy
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Marina Lewycka·2005·Lewycka's companion in the comic tradition of the investigation of two figures (the two Mayevskyj sisters) who are thrown together by circumstances they did not choose and cannot control. Both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian are organized around two people who must deal with a situation they cannot understand or escape, and whose relationship to each other is the comedy's center
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead about by Tom Stoppard?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead shows what Rosencrantz and Guildenstern — the two minor characters from Hamlet who are summoned, dispatched, and killed in Shakespeare's play — experience in the gaps between their Hamlet scenes. The play opens with Ros and Guil flipping coins (which have come up heads ninety-two times in a row — the first indication that they are in a universe where the normal rules of probability do not apply), being summoned to Elsinore, meeting the Players, observing fragments of Hamlet from the outside, being dispatched to England with Hamlet and a letter whose contents they never read, and finally arriving at the understanding that they are going to die — because the plot of Hamlet has been running all around them and has been heading toward their deaths since the beginning. The play's comedy comes from the two characters' inability to understand what is happening to them: they are inside a plot that makes perfect sense from the outside (Claudius uses them to spy on Hamlet and then dispatches them with Hamlet to England with orders for his execution) but that from the inside appears as a series of incomprehensible summonings, sendings, and meetings. The play's philosophy comes from the implications of their passivity: if they cannot make meaningful choices (because the plot of Hamlet determines what will happen to them), what does that say about the nature of free will, and what does it say about the relationship between fictional existence and human existence?
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