3rd Year, Semester 1 English German

Inter-textuality in Tom Stoppards play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Inter-textuality can be explained as the entire circuit of relations with other texts that is activated in the mind of the reader when reading a particular text,different from the original one.More precisely,intertextuality can be seen as a reshaping of an original source,text or meaning. Interrelations between two texts are metonymic,when the repetition of a theme,story or styleme evokes in the reader the wider whole of the pre-text.(Juvan 132).There is a function of inter-textuality which defines the literature of our times.The characteristics of a postmodernist text do not live in a world which imitates our own,but in textual worlds which imitate other texts.Sometimes they realize that they have been transported from one textual world to another.This feature of postmodern inter-textuality is found in Tom Stoppards play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which it will be discuss in a few pages.
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First of all,it must be said that the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead has it predominant elements reshaped after Shakespeares Hamlet and Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot. Thus Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at first live in a Beckettian world, they suddenly find themselves transported to the world of Shakespeare. Stoppard creates for the two minor characters an imaginary world interwoven with the world of Shakespeares play,yet resonating of Samuel Becketts seminal absurdist play Waiting for Godot. (Ciugureanu 147). There can be identified the connection between Gogo and Didi from Becketts play. They seem to share the same clumsiness and the characters have in common even the fact that their identities are not fixed,and often confused.They are all characters looking for the meaning of their life.Like Vladimir and Estragon ,they use the more sympathetic and casual names.This name game can also be interpretated as an ironically,amusing treatment of Hamlet with its serious sounding names:

Claudius : Welcome, dear Rosencrantz(He raises a hand at Guil while Ros bows Guil bows late and hurriedly)and Guildenstern. (He raises a hand at ROS while Guil bows to him Ros is still straightening up from his previous bow and half way up he bows down again.With his head down,he twists to look at Guil, who is on the way up). (Stoppard 35). Claudius: Thanks Rosencrantz ( turning to Ros who is caught unprepared, while Guil bows) and gentle Guildenstern ( turning to Guil who is bent double). (Stoppard 36). Gertrude ( correcting) : Thanks Guildenstern ( turning to Ros, who bows as Guil checks upward movement to bow too both bent double,squinting at each other)and gentle Rosencrantz ( turning to Guil, both straightening up Guil checks again and bows again.) (Stoppard 37). Moreover, the title is more than suggesting the fact that this play has its mother text in the shakespearian creation, Hamlet. The title is used as an inter-textual sign,clearly emphasizing the scene where an ambassador from England reported that theRosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead! ,making prince Hamlet proud that the word that he gave was accomplished,the two ones being dead,but dead from becoming in any way idealistic or instructive in Stoppards play.
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This name game can be seen as a major problem in constructing both characters identities and purposes in life.These questioning of fate is viewed as a show,or a parody of Hamlets to be or not to be,written with the intention of creating an intense comic atmosphere,ironically,because this question is really a serious problem in the world in which Hamlet was living.The fact that these two characters of Tom Stoppards dont seem to manage to accomplish their purpose,which is that of knowing the meaning of their lives,is rather sad and sadistic: Guil: (Seriously) Whats your name? Ros : Whats yours? Guil : I asked first. Ros : Statement.One-love. Guil : Whats your name when youre at home? Ros : Whats yours? Guil : When Im at home? Ros : Is it different at home? Guil : What home? Ros : Have you got one? Guil : Why do you ask? Ros : What are you driving at? Guil : (With emphasis) Whats your name?! Ros : Repetition.Two-love.Match point to me. (Stoppard 43) Another game that is presented in Stoppards play is the game of playing roles.Guil enacts the role of Hamlet and Ros plays the role of the King of England.Their performance doesnt turn out to be as one may
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expected.Because of their limitated own perspectives and experiences, they seem rather ridiculously than successful.Their world is a playground,a scene where they perform.Ros and Guil are both actors performing in Stoppards play and audience for the Tragedians,Hamlet and the court.(Ciugureanu 157). Furthermore,the symbolic loss of orientation can be pictured as an image,which is borrowed by Stoppard from Waiting for Godot.Ros and Guil try to define daytime,positions and seasons on stage,while Didi and Gogo do the same,but in an empty landscape.Though,the main source from which Stoppards play is inspired is without question Shakespeares play.There is, however,a difference between Stoppards and Becketts play in the sense that Becketts characters have no meaningful context whereas Stoppards have Hamlets tragedy as context.In <<Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead>>, two play worlds collide: Hamlets and the theatre.(Ciugureanu 168). In addition, the connections made between plays are created for the Theatre of Absurd,developing another world,most probably fictional which defies any law or sense.Perhaps <<Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead>> performs like the theatrical version of a metaphysical conceit : it draws connections which can be seen and heard between unlikely partners,and it does not dwell on any single combination or explain its significance.(Levenson 160). All in all,Tom Stoppards play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a well organized creation of a master of the Theatre of the Absurd,based on inter-textuality,written in a postmodernist charm based on an 16th century play,creating an ironic and undefined world.

Bibliography

Ciugureanu, Adina. Post -War Anxietes. Constanta : Ex Ponto, 2006. Juvan, Marko.Comparative Cultural Studies :History and Poetics of Intertextuality.Trans. Timothy Pogaar.USA: Purdue University, 2008. Levenson, Jill L. Stoppards Shakespeare : textual re-visions.Cambridge Up: Katherine E. Kelly,2001. Stoppard,Tom. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead .New York : Groove Press, 1991.