Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are dead
- This is a preview of the essay.
To view the full text you must login!
In the process of transformation the new text becomes a vision for someone else's vision. How has the composer of the contemporary text used the earlier text to say something new.'
The transformation of Shakespeare's Hamlet by Tom Stoppard into Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead involves the recreation of Shakespeare's classic and placing it into a modern existentialist environment. Stoppard's play seeks to transform the values and attitudes inherent in the parent text and address the problems and failings of modern man and society. At the very core of the Tom Stoppard's transformation is the intention to shift the focus onto the everyman character, and to present the apathetic nature of modern man through his form absurdist theatre.
Stoppard's recreation of Hamlet has seen him shift the focus onto two insignificant characters in Hamlet who assume the roles of the protagonists. The characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet are an inseparable pair whose role is primarily to act as comic relief. This is demonstrated by Shakespeare's placement and use of the characters and the choice of their tri-syllabic names which aid in the creation of humor as both Hamlet and Claudius confuse them on numerous occasions. In Stoppard's process the obvious transformation first noticed is the adjustment of the protagonist's names from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Ros and Guil in an attempt to modernise the characters in order for them to relate to Stoppard's immediate twentieth century audience.
This trend of reducing the grandeur presented in Hamlet is continued with the opening act of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead with Ros and Guil spinning coin...