DISCLAIMER: I've sat down to write this so many times. It's barely edited. So just know that. When I started college I was simultaneously embarrassed and proud that I had never read or seen Hamlet. Of course, I got the gist. I've seen The Lion King (the movie, the Broadway show, and the Jewish summer camp Hebrew version) and I can still recite the "What a piece of work is man" monologue because of it's inclusion in the musical Hair. But as of August 2013, I had never seen or read the source material. I was proud because this was entirely due to my high school English teacher Mrs. Frank, the best teacher and person my life has ever crossed paths with. In my high school curriculum, students were expected to read approximately one Shakespeare play every year. For me, that meant freshman year was Romeo and Juliet, sophomore year was Macbeth, and we didn't read one junior year because the AP English theme was American lit, hence no Shakespeare. Senior year everyone was supposed to read Hamlet. All the other English teachers taught Hamlet, but Mrs. Frank was bored of teaching Hamlet, so we read King Lear instead. Mrs. Frank being bored is also why I have never read a single novel by Mark Twain and why we weren't allowed to write essays about The Great Gatsby. QUICK DEPARTURE FROM THE POINT- have you SEEN the trailer for the Amazon Prime King Lear?? WILD, right? It dropped a few weeks ago and I haven't watched it yet because I'm scared of the eye-gouging out scene (not a spoiler, it's literally in the trailer and the play is hundreds of years old) but I love this play and Emma Thompson so I'll have to give it a go sometime soon. BACK TO THE REGULARLY SCHEDULED BLOGGING: So I get to college and as mentioned in my last point I read Hamlet three times in one year and watched the David Tenant version. I get the hype, it's a pretty good play. For those of you even more out of the loop than I am, before we discuss Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, the actual play this post is supposed to be about, I am going to summarize Hamlet in five sentences or less, without pulling out my copy or googling it, mostly just to see if I still can. After writing it I will go back in and add corrections in red, just for the sake of full transparency. Our main man Hamlet comes home from faraway law school (This is in a place called Wittenberg, apparently) because his father, the King of Denmark has died and his uncle Claudius has usurped his rightful spot on the Danish throne by marrying the Queen, Hamlet's mother, Gertrude. There's also an important bit where Hamlet's father appears to him as a ghost and straight up tells him that Claudius killed him. Hamlet senses something is not right about this and Claudius senses that Hamlet senses that and so he tries to make Hamlet think he's going crazy (This is not right, Hamlet decides to make Claudius think he is going crazy) and then Hamlet hires these actors to perform a play within a play that is supposed to expose Claudius's crimes. Also Hamlet kills his lady friend Ophelia (Ophelia kills herself, but for the record I pretty consistently confuse Ophelia and Desdemona for no good reason at all, and Othello DOES kill Desdemona) and his best friend Polonius (Hamlet's friend is Horatio, Polonius is the chief counselor to the King, but Hamlet DOES kill Polonius cause he thinks he's Claudius) and himself (also wrong, Laertes kills Hamlet). Other Act V deaths include Laertes, Claudius, Gertrude, and definitely not Horatio. And Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but we'll get to that later! Okay, so my summary wasn't that bad. It was kind of bad. But let's talk about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They did not make a huge impression on me in my three freshman year reads of Hamlet, they barely made it into my haphazard summary of the play. However, they play a larger role in the plot than I remembered. This brings us to the play this post is actually about. I have another embarrassing confession. When I was looking for a copy of the play I spent an unfortunate amount of time very confused as to why the New York Library of the Performing Arts (arguably my favorite place in the world) did not have ANY plays by Tom Stoppard... before realizing I was in the American playwrights section and Tom Stoppard is definitely British. This was the first play I've read for this series where I really truly wished I had seen it first instead of read it first. This is my first departure from traditional form, and as it happens it was sometimes difficult to read on the page. Tom Stoppard begins the story of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with a Godot-esque scene in which our two protagonists are betting on a coin toss and Rosencrantz repeatedly bets on heads and wins over and over again- every. single. time. I call this Godot-esque not because I've seen or read Waiting for Godot, because I think it's important that you know that I haven't, but because it says so on the back of the copy of my play. Also, everyone knows what Waiting for Godot is all about. They continue in this fashion until the famed tragedians arrive on the scene and we get our first moment of metatheacricality in which actors playing actors comment on acting. It's exhausting and overdone, but probably wasn't in 1966 when the play premiered to rave reviews and sky-rocketed Tom Stoppard to capital G Great Playwright status. After this we get some real scenes from Hamlet which was kind of fun and unexpected. Also, while I'm on the track of confessing my theatrical knowledge gaps, I did have to check that the scenes were in fact, form Hamlet and not Tom Stoppared just being really good at fake Shakespeare and iambic pentameter (something I am very much not good at). Then there's the play within the play and lots of other stuff happens and honestly, I don't really want to summarize the play anymore so we're gonna skip to the ending, which is my favorite part, probably because I forgot how Hamlet ended like the dramaturgical disaster that I am In Act III we find our two heroes and Hamlet on a boat to England. Claudius has given Rosencrantz and Guildenstern a letter to deliver to the King of England upon their arrival explaining the madness and urging them to take Hamlet in. They decide to open the letter only to find out that Claudius has actually ordered the King to KILL HAMLET. That night, Hamlet switches the letter with one he has written telling the King to kill Rosencrantz and Guildenstern instead. This shouldn't be shocking considering (a) the title of the play and (b) this also happens in Hamlet, but Hamlet is a real dick. In the next scene, Hamlet is no where to be found, suddenly all the tragedians appear on the boat, and then pirates attack. When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern lament their fate, the Leading Player explains that all paths lead to death- and this is where things get straight up WILD. Something in Guildenstern, a character I didn't really read as being capable of violence, snaps and he stabs the Leading Player with his own dagger! The scenes plays out as follows: "And he pushes the blade in up to the hilt. The PLAYER stands with huge, terrible eyes, clutches at the wound as the blade withdraws: he makes weeping sounds and falls to his knees, and then right down. [. . .] The TRAGEDIANS watch the PLAYER die: they watch with interest. The PLAYER finally lies still. A short moment of silence. Then the TRAGEDIANS start to applaud with genuine admiration. The PLAYER stands up, brushing himself down." The remaining players act out the famous Act V deaths of Hamlet for... what? Their own amusement? To further irk Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? To further drive home the point that everyone dies? As they play out the scenes we know all to well, they include the inevitable deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and the following scene is the final lines of Hamlet, where the Ambassador from England confirms their deaths to Horatio, to whom Hamlet has left the Kingdom of Denmark. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a great play, especially if you're at all into absurdist comedy and/or questioning your own mortality and/or the significance of art and theatre. I enjoyed reading it, but I would definitely prefer to see it. I'm so curious about how some of these these absolutely bizarre scenes are interpreted by directors, actors, and designers. I want to see the 2D play become the 3D play. I don't have as much to say as I probably should, mostly because I read the play two weeks ago and procrastinated hardcore on writing this all down. I guess my 23rd birthday is as good as any other day to write about a play and meditate on death. Next up I'm planning to read The Elephant Man by Bernard Pomerance. Does this mean we'll be talking about ableism? You betchya. I don't know why I'm being so chipper about it, it sucks, but I like talking about it. I should stop writing now.
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Stephanie KaneI like reading plays, drinking lots of coffee, and holding other people's Tony Awards. Archives
August 2018
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