William Shakespeare's Hamlet and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Essay Example

?Up s occur every 1440 minutes. Comparison and Contrast of Shakespeare's Hamlet and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Hamlet contrasts the text in the Stoppard’s play, in that each play highlights similar issues, concerns and themes centered on different societies, values and contexts. Each play tests if the audience understands the other play, and they both echo the composition context. This paper explores the comparison between Stoppard’s play, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet showing the textual relationship between these plays and period they were written. Hamlet was written in 1601 Elizabethan era by Shakespeare having borrowed from Greek classic tragedies. The contexts of religion, natural chain of being, fortune, death, destiny and fate are echoed throughout the play in the represented values, dialogues, and themes. Written in 1964, Stoppard’s play is an existentialist and absurdist rendition of Hamlet. It contests traditional viewpoints, theatre, assumptions, and values of their then changing society by dramatizing a revenge tragedy, therefore, shifting the attention from royalty to the average person. The play becomes a statement to society reflecting existential concerns and ideas, increasing secularism, and defying authority. Fate as a theme constantly comes out in both texts. The belief in a higher power was dominant in the Elizabethan context, and the society widely accepted their fate as unchangeable. This blind acceptance of one’s circumstances as a result of suppression is represented severally throughout Shakespeare’s play. Stoppard’s play similarly represents fate negatively. Unlike Hamlet, fate is not a life fact in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and their fate is representative of the modern societal dangers and hopelessness. This places the play in a position that questions previously adopted ideologies concerning predetermined fate. The societies in both texts share death as a context. Stoppard’s play uses comic relief and vulgar humor to represent death. It questions the longstanding views of religion, heaven, the afterlife, and whether God exists. This has resulted in a growing secular society leading to the conception that God and death are the same. The theme of death remains constant as a reflection the 1960’s context of defying preset ideas, thus giving rise to existentialism and individualism. Death is considered and discussed as a key concern throughout Hamlet. This comes out clearly in Hamlet’s most known line which questions death and existence. The idea of Hamlet’s identity and humanism, and its association with death is a resounding thought in his third soliloquy. He is interested in finding the significance of his existence, and if the influence of fate on his life makes it less worth living. The overhanging idea of death throughout the play mirrors the beliefs of inevitable death during the Elizabethan era. This belief went beyond the modern perception of death and included ultimate acceptance and faith in God’s existence, religion and an afterlife. Rightful hierarchy and inheritance is highly regarded during Elizabethan England, and this is mirrored in the portrayal of a corrupt Denmark when the rightful king is murdered. The natural order is disrupted by the King’s murder, and the balance has to be restored to meet the Elizabethan expectations. Avenging his father becomes Hamlet’s destiny, and his destiny is conceded to the misconception of control and power of choice. Hamlet’s Christian morals are the cause of his dilemma owing to his belief in supernatural forces behind good and evil, and he decides to gather more compelling evidence and capture the king’s conscience as a result of his morals. The natural order and chain of being in Stoppard’s play is unbalanced. The confliction, thoughts and philosophies of the hero are silenced and are denied from the audience. The play’s context and text defies the formerly unchallenged hierarchy of the Elizabethan era. The small man and the average person are both represented in the play through the main characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. This symbolizes the 1960’s context of societal democracy, the growing significance of the common man, and communism. Religion is another key topic highlighted in both plays; however, it is done in completely dissimilar ways. Hamlet portrays religion as the backbone to its text, just as it is to the Elizabethan society. The play has religious connotations spread throughout its text asserting the impact religion has on those living in the Elizabethan era. Stoppard’s play, on the other hand, holds religion as an insignificant non-event that that plays no major role in the determining the actions of the characters and as well as their lives. The lack of religion in Stoppard’s play is symbolic of the society in the 1960’s which was characterized by increased existential questioning, secularism, and individualism. The prescribed idea of a God and religion was growing increasingly insignificant to the society as they questioned the nature of chance and truth, as well life’s meaning. The notion of a non-existent God, as well as skepticism, started to arise. The repeated out-of-context use of the Lord’s Prayer in the play further demonstrates the insignificance of religion to the society during the 1960’s. The audiences’ understanding of Hamlet is challenged by Stoppard’s play. The reason behind this is that it chooses the common man over the noble hero in Hamlet as the main character, therefore, opposing the assumptions, values, and traditions represented in Hamlet. The medieval man in Elizabethan era was starting to perceive truth from a humanist viewpoint. This is demonstrated in the play by Hamlet’s questioning of the pros and cons of acting irrationally, by disregarding the possibility of Claudius’ innocence or guilt, and whether or not the ghost is telling the truth. Both Stoppard’s play and Shakespeare’s Hamlet use humor in their texts. Black humor is used throughout Hamlet’s reflections on death primarily as his reaction to the dreadful thought of death. Stoppard’s use of humor, on the other hand, predominantly highlights the absurdist essence of the play. Hamlet is intended to be tragic by design with an eventual resolution in the end. Hamlet’s weakness is his indecisiveness as his mind is always in a constant state of conflict with itself. Whereas Hamlet is meant to be a tragedy with some comic elements, the play by Stoppard is a comedy that is absurdist in nature, and that has a tragic end. The weakness of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is in their powerlessness, which is a feature that the audience can relate to due to their portrayal as laypeople in the play. The alteration of Hamlet by Stoppard shows that tragedy is a global factor that can also occur in normal people’s lives. Both plays use language to substantiate their texts. Shakespeare adds meaning to the text in Hamlet using language, and his language has been placed on a pedestal of linguistic artistry. Hamlet expresses truth, beauty and reason through its language and also uses it as a manipulative and deceptive tool. Its meaning is consequently transcendent in nature, revealing truth when analyzed. Universal humanity is the focus of traditional criticism, and understanding it is only achieved through scrutiny of the form and language. Shakespeare displays a collection of his linguistic talents which include irony, prose and verse, colloquial, formal, soliloquies, dialogue, puns, and a variety of imagery etcetera. Stoppard’s play uses language to show that truth is vague in nature. The play does not have ulterior fixed meaning in its text. The insistent use of questions in the language used by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is fragmented to mirror the nonexistent level of control in their lives. In Stoppard’s play, he has adopted a lingual theory stating that universal truth cannot be expressed through language. A move in a game loses meaning outside the game. Language viewed in the same way loses the transcendent value of language in the play and adds to the list of differences between Hamlet and Stoppard’s play. Stoppard uses cultural reference, black humor, puns, irony, burlesque, and cliche to reveal an array of his verbal artistry. Cliched and colloquial language are used to represent the existential predicament faced by mankind. This serves to undercut the conventional attachment of significance associated with Shakespeare’s poetry thus deflating the mystical authority of his language. Stoppard uses wit, humor, and comedic timing to make the predicament Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's bleakness more palatable. In conclusion, the texts in Stoppard’s play and Shakespeare’s Hamlet are poles apart. There is a contrast in the attitudes, values, setting, and language used in both plays, and each play challenges the comprehension of the other. On the other hand, both plays exhibit similarities in their texts by addressing parallel themes, issues, concerns, and themes all through their content. Works Cited Draudt, Manfred. "Two sides of the same coin, or... the same side of two coins’: An analysis of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead." (1981): 348-357. Newell, Alex. The soliloquies in Hamlet: the structural design. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1991. Vonwiller, Benjamin. "The Spectre of Shakespeare in Tom Stoppard’s' Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead'." Sydney Studies in English 24 (2008). Read More