Popularity Of Hamlet And Rosen Essay Research

Popularity Of Hamlet And Rosen Essay, Research Paper

ESSAY

Four centuries divide the composition of the texts in this elective. With close reference to the texts suggest reasons for the continued popularity of both plays.

Reasons for the continued popularity of Hamlet the Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard are the characters that both plays have, the language and humour used by both playwrights and the audiences they cater for.

Hamlet the Prince of Denmark: or Hamlet by famous playwright William Shakespeare was first performed in 1601. Hamlet is about corruption, incest, murder and revenge. It is a revenge tragedy. Hamlet is the protagonist of the play; he is the revengeful character. Claudius, Uncle of Hamlet is King of Denmark; he married Hamlet s mother Gertrude after killing of the King of Denmark, Hamlet s father and Gertrude s husband. Murder most foul, as in the best it is, /But this most foul, strange and unnatural. Hamlet is considered mad throughout the play and two minor characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are summoned to Elsinor by Claudius to find the means of Hamlet s madness. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are friends of Hamlet from University. These two characters are people who need to be given orders to fulfill their existence, but in Hamlet the action Claudius has assigned is to big for them. They give themselves away. There is a kind of confession in you looks which your modesties have not had enough colour. Hirelings, they end up being destroyed by a plot within a plot of which they have no understanding and over which they have no control. Hamlet warns them off but they are either too greedy, Your visitation shall receive such thanks/As fits a King s remembrance and

Rosencrantz Take you me for a sponge my lord.

Hamlet Ay sir, that soaks up the King s countenance, his rewards.

or too stupid to heed him. Ophelia is Hamlet s love and is used as bait by Polonius, Ophelia s father and Claudius to try and prove his madness. And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose/Will be some danger; which for to prevent. Polonius is Ophelia s father and a loyal retinue to Claudius. Shakespeare presents him as a man whose desire to serve the King is rooted as much in vanity and a sense of his own importance as in duty. The play shows parents controlling their children s lives. Polonius is an authoritarian father who demands unconditional obedience. But as well as presenting Polonius as authoritarian Shakespeare also presents him as sordid.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard was first performed in 1967. In Tom Stoppard s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, the action in Hamlet is viewed through the eyes of two players who journey to Elsinore at the behest of King Claudius and Queen Gertrude. The Royal couple has asked Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to come to Elsinore to determine whether Hamlet, who has put on this confusion, is really insane or just up to something. Tom Stoppard s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are reinvented to those of Shakespeare s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and today it is difficult to present them in the theatre other than as a pair of buffoons, a latter-day Tweedledum and Tweddledee. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the Protagonists of Tom Stoppard s play; they are characters that have no past, no future and no recollection of why they are at Elsinor. They constantly forget who they are as a result for not remembering their past. They are two characters who make up one person and can sometimes be compared to Hamlet, as he to has two sides to himself. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern need each other to survive, we see that their actions are aimless and small things amuse them, for example the constant tossing of coins, which only ever come up as heads. We see from this that Guildenstern is more of a thinker and leader than Rosencrantz. Guildenstern becomes disturbed by the toss of the coins. Is that it, then. Is that all.

Shakespeare s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are presented to us as though they are real courtiers, set real tasks by a real King. Of course in one sense they are characters in a play, but that is not how Shakespeare presents them. With Stoppard s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the case is quite different: doubtless they think they are real human beings, and they have not read the play which that have such minor parts, but nevertheless it is as characters in that play that they are presented to us. In visual terms Shakespeare s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are pictures of real people; Stoppard s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are pictures of pictures.

The characters of both Hamlet by William Shakespeare and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard are still popular today even though they have been written four centuries apart, it is because of the depth of the characters in Hamlet and the constant humour that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern project. Both Hamlet and Claudius come across as being more then what the exterior picture allows us to see.

What if this cursed hand/Were thicker than itself with brother s blood, /Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens/To wash it white as snow. Stoppard s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern wonder aimlessly and play ridiculous games like word tennis or the 90 times at spinning a coin, waiting for orders to do something.