Rosencrantz & Guildenstern
(my interpretation so far)
I think the wit in the exchanges of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (in puns, philosophy, confusion, finishing each other's sentences, etc.) is brilliant. It's like the author/playwright exactly recorded every single word going through his head (or anyone's, for that matter) and put it in the mouths of these two characters. Every time they go back and forth, it seems like any one person could think exactly what they're saying. It might not seem ingenious on the author's part to be able to write down what he's thinking, but I think if you try to do this, the ideas will tend to jump from one to the other. The author here makes everything really flow naturally--even if it may seem random.
Eg.: when they keep their "rhetoric" scores (of their questions and answers) against each other or another character, I think they capture the conscious and the unconscious...in a way. Subconsciously, we tend to keep track of how we're doing in a test (i.e. evaluation, interview, competition, etc.), even if we may consciously say we did the opposite.
Also, when they get off track and forget they're trying to figure out the wind direction (beginning of Act 2), it's in a way that any normal person could go from thinking about the wind to being confused about where the sun came up.
Seeing this, I think "Ros & Guil Are Dead" is more a philosophical study than it is a story.
Molly
I think the wit in the exchanges of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (in puns, philosophy, confusion, finishing each other's sentences, etc.) is brilliant. It's like the author/playwright exactly recorded every single word going through his head (or anyone's, for that matter) and put it in the mouths of these two characters. Every time they go back and forth, it seems like any one person could think exactly what they're saying. It might not seem ingenious on the author's part to be able to write down what he's thinking, but I think if you try to do this, the ideas will tend to jump from one to the other. The author here makes everything really flow naturally--even if it may seem random.
Eg.: when they keep their "rhetoric" scores (of their questions and answers) against each other or another character, I think they capture the conscious and the unconscious...in a way. Subconsciously, we tend to keep track of how we're doing in a test (i.e. evaluation, interview, competition, etc.), even if we may consciously say we did the opposite.
Also, when they get off track and forget they're trying to figure out the wind direction (beginning of Act 2), it's in a way that any normal person could go from thinking about the wind to being confused about where the sun came up.
Seeing this, I think "Ros & Guil Are Dead" is more a philosophical study than it is a story.
Molly
posted by L Lazarow | 3:38 PM
5 Comments:
Thanks for creating this section Molly, and for your interpretation!
I have a question about the beginning of this play that has been bothering/confusing me for some odd reason... when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are playing the coin game, and there are 90 heads in a row, Guildenstern begins to ramble about the different reasons why that could have happened... why were so many heads flipped in a row?
When the players are acting out the mime scene and the author includes Hamlet and Ophelia's entrance, is that meant to be a part of the mime scene or are they just randomly walking across stage arguing/crying? In which case, why is it all taken so lightly after Ophelia's breakdown? Do Ros and Guil not realize that they aren't acting and assume it to be part of the play (or something)? Any thoughts on this scene? I found it rather confusing.
Is it just me or do Hamlet and R&G speak very differently? Yes Hamlet is royal, but haven't they all had similar schooling? Or was this done intentionally by the author to highlight something about the characters?
Is it just me or do Hamlet and R&G speak very differently? Yes Hamlet is royal, but haven't they all had similar schooling? Or was this done intentionally by the author to highlight something about the characters?
Ellie, I think the goal was to maintain Hamlet's dialogue as written by Shakespeare while adding a modern perspective on R & G, which a person today could more easily understand through less grandiloquent speech than that of Shakespeare. The characters and their personalities are more easily understood through everyday speech, which it may have been more common for R & G to use anyway because they weren't among royalty all the time. Also, many of Hamlet's lines are in iambic pentameter, which can make for odd sentence structure.
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