ACT TWO

SCENE TWO: Things Start to Fall Apart at the Castle

Notes

When Rosencrantz tries to approach Hamlet when he is debating suicide, we realize that this would be the perfect time to talk to Hamlet seriously, to really get him to divulge is innermost thoughts and feelings. Yet for some reason Rosencrantz cannot do it. The only explanation he gives is that he has succumbed to HamletÂ’s personality. Indeed, it seems likely that someone like Rosencrantz, who, though he has existential troubles, most likely never thinks about suicide, would be intimidated by someone with real emotion. He would not know what to say to Hamlet were Hamlet to confess his secrets to him. He has no real character, and therefore no real part in the story of Hamlet. He is a minor character--from the way he acts, it seems that he was somehow created that way and has no way of changing.

This inability to advance to "reality" is similar to the situation of the main character of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," a poem by T.S. Eliot. Tom Stoppard acknowledges this work as a parallel, if not a direct correlation, to Rosencrantz. The poem is a narration by someone who can never quite decide what to do, because he is so afraid of the consequences of his actions that he prefers not to act at all. He stands on the sidelines, saddened that he can never be part of the action. Yet his sadness is not high tragedy, like HamletÂ’s. Rather, it is pathetic. He does not nobly and bravely try to fight, failing because of something beyond his control. His failure comes from his fear, foolishness, and perhaps his laziness. These are qualities he arguably shares with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Yet one gets the sense in Rosencrantz that the two main characters are bound to a certain plot, from which they cannot escape. Even they themselves seem to understand that they have no control (as does the Player, who also is relegated to a mere bit part in Hamlet). Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Prufrock all stand aside, morosely watching the main characters of their worlds play out their lives. But Prufrock seems to be there by his own doing, while Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, though they have some of PrufrockÂ’s sad silliness in them, seem to truly be at the mercy of some higher power.

Thus, while EliotÂ’s poem might share some elements with StoppardÂ’s play, Stoppard is not as concerned with how to be (or not be) a genuine person. He is also, in a sense, playing with paper dolls: he creates pseudo-personalities for two minor characters from a Shakespeare play, using them as mouthpieces for his clever dialogue. They are never, unlike Prufrock, even treated as entirely real. Nor, of course, is the rest of the cast of Hamlet--OpheliaÂ’s tears are played for a laugh in StoppardÂ’s play. The audience is not meant to take the tragic play seriously.

The Player does not seem to even notice the events of the castle: these "bit players," in fact, are not often even curious about the intense drama that is playing out around them. They recognize that they are spectators, and feel little more than annoyance when the "main characters" interrupt their little lives. The players watch Hamlet scream at Ophelia, then immediately go back to their rehearsal. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are focused not on helping their friend Hamlet, but on simply returning home again.

When the stage goes black and the audience hears the cries of people watching The Murder of Gonzago, we are meant to understand that the King is finally realizing that Hamlet knows that he murdered HamletÂ’s father. Though this is perhaps the climax of ShakespeareÂ’s play, Stoppard does not even allow it to occur in the background: it is composed of voices heard in a dark room. There is no real reaction to it by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Its only effect on the play is to draw the main characters nearer to their own inevitable ends.

Their connection to the forces that bring about those ends is strangely inconsequential. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern themselves fixate on the most inconsequential aspects of their experience: they hear Hamlet proclaim a bit of nonsense about which directions of the wind find him sane and which insane, and they cannot let it go. They spend the rest of the play trying desperately to determine which way is east. As well, they are convinced that the events going on around them actually revolve around them, and that the members of the court may actually be trying to confuse them.

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