Essay: Contemporary shadows

24 Jul 2005

Is the contemporary transformation you have studied anything more than the shadow of the classic text on which it was based? 1019 words.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard’s transformation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is a shadow of the original work from which it draws its inspiration, by design. Stoppard shifts focus in his 1967 appropriation of the original to highlight the minority roles of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in order to achieve his purpose, which should not at any time be considered analogous to that of Shakespeare in the original work.

Certainly, elements between plays are common, the most obvious being the characters used. Even this, however, is done in such a way that there is little common in the characterisation between texts: the characters in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are but a shadow of the shadow-characters in Hamlet. They are nothing more than a shadow of the original characters, for they are characters in their own right. Shakespeare renders a sketch of these figures sufficient to empower them as supporting figures only: they cannot exist in their own right, given the power balance in the play – namely, that royalty are depicted as a dominant force throughout the play and bear full responsibility for the chain of events leading to tragic demise as a result of upheaval of the imperturbable Elizabethan notion of a “Great Chain of Being”.

For Stoppard, however, these two characters stand alone – though they exist primarily as a representation of the common man – they direct or, significantly, fail to direct the events that unfold in this play, simultaneously depicting the plight of Hamlet and those who hold power (the royalty of Hamlet) as something common to all people, whilst, through this, conveying the existentialist ideology that Stoppard proclaims.

Hamlet’s own uncertainty and farcical behaviour confers the point Stoppard attempts to make centuries later through his “shadow” of a text: his lack of control is manifest not only in Hamlet’s eventual demise, but also in his actions that lead to this and the clear instability of this character. It is possible to assert that Hamlet’s declaration “When the wind is southerly/I know a hawk from a handsaw” is a suggestion his madness is contrived, and yet, if this is so, his earlier questioning of the consequences of suicide are even more irrational. Indeed, the irrational behaviour of Shakespeare’s protagonist is a core element of both the original play and its subsequent transformation, though for completely different reasons.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet depicts a protagonist deeply affected by his father’s death, due to the disruption of the “natural order” of things. Conversely, in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet is depicted as being in control, relatively empowered: “He murdered us!”, Rosencrantz complains. This transformation is but a shadow of the original work, and, more than this, it is an unfaithful shadow. It does not even pretend to honour the sentiment put forth by Shakespeare, but blithely ignores his characterisation and thematic influence, with a shameless Stoppard instead appropriating (as in theft) the established elements of Shakespeare’s play to form his own corrupt shadow, or appropriation (as in transformation). When Hamlet is presented in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he is chiefly in a dominant role: there is, for example, no presentation of him deep in philosophical monologue of uncertainty that dominates much of Shakespeare’s original work; but Stoppard preserves Hamlet issuing instructions to the Players in his play-within-a-play act of satire against the establishment, as well as Hamlet unequivocally beating Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in a conversation designed to solicit information: “Twenty-seven-three” being the final score.

Control is something neither Rosencrantz nor Guildenstern appear to have much of. They are depicted by Stoppard as being entrapped in this absurdist-reality drama, in which their fate is inexorably committed and unchangeable. Throughout the whole play, their dialogue is incessant and ultimately meaningless – In the last scene, an irate Guildenstern shouts at Rosencrantz: “Shut up! I’m sick of it! Do you think conversation is going to help us now?”

Conversation, ironically, had never helped them: it merely served to aid them in their procrastination, which is itself another “shadow” of the original play retained by Stoppard in his contemporary work. The idea that they are waiting for the inevitable is delivered in fierce style by Guildenstern in the closing act, whose vicious declaration against the fallacies of the acting profession appears to be wholly in response to a melodramatic tradition – one comparatively common in Elizabethan theatre – and the idea that something must always happen. Even earlier in the play, when Guildenstern instructs Rosencrantz to “Tread warily, follow instructions” and Rosencrantz asks in response, “For how long?”, Guildenstern’s answer to him is simply “Till events have played themselves out.”

The pun inherent in “played” is clearly a critique of the values of theatrical tradition such as that respected and followed by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, especially when viewed in light of the sentences that follow: “There’s a logic at work – it’s all done for you, don’t worry. Enjoy it. Relax.” Guildenstern continues a while, before an ellipsis and the question “Do I contradict myself?” Yes, he does. Stoppard uses lines such as these to establish a connection between the tangible threads of the original work from which he delineates his “shadow” reflecting the influences of the culture and philosophy of his time.

Without a doubt, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is but a shadow of the original work composed by Shakespeare many centuries prior. Its setting in the wings of a canonical work such as Hamlet expose it to criticism, yet to view it as inferior is invalid. Whilst Rosencrantz and Guildenstern remains a shadow of the work upon which it builds, the view that it is “nothing more” than this is narrow-minded, and fails to recognise the ideological contributions that Stoppard has imparted upon the original text in adopting a view of the text through a twentieth-century mindset, and by the foregrounding of what were once minority characters.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern fails to accurately represent Hamlet, with deliberate purpose in mind: The depiction of a new set of values and ideologies shaped by those of Stoppard’s contemporaries and popular thinking of that period, over those presented by Shakespeare through his original play, Hamlet.