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Molly Fortnow
Dr. Holt
AP English Literature and Composition
29 February 2016
Perchance to Dream
To be or not to be? Perhaps the most famous line of any play ever written, Hamlets
struggle over whether or not to kill himself resonates throughout time and is ubiquitous around
the world. But Hamlets choice to live is not an act against dying but a postponing of the
unstoppable. In Hamlet, Shakespeare argues that death is inevitable regardless of attempted
choices and actions, and Stoppard uses Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as vessels to expand this
argument to the everyman.
Hamlet does not want to die he says to Polonius, you cannot take anything from me
that I would not more willingly part withal except my life, except my life, except my life
but he craves death as an entity (Shakespeare 45). He contemplates suicide and seeks revenge
because it gives him some feeling of control in his life. Hamlet struggles to define himself with
his actions in the midst of high stakes, but is unable to take any real action until the end of the
play. He executes small actions mocking polonius with his feigned madness, persuading the
players to put on the play he wants but he doesnt actually kill the king, or himself, or anyone
he means to kill or contemplates killing, until the end of the play. Hamlet struggles to define
himself because he knows his choice is not between living or dying, but between dying now or
later. He does not make an active choice to live, but a passive choice to postpone death because
he knows his actions will make a difference if he remains alive a little while longer.
Hamlet is plagued with similar inaction throughout the play. After he meets the ghost,

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Hamlet sees his duty [to kill the king] clearly, but he puts off the execution of it (Barnett 12).
He uses the play within the play as a trap and proves [the king] guilty, but still he does nothing
(12). Barnett argues that Hamlets inaction his inability to kill the king after he knows he is
guilty results in the unnecessary deaths of Polonius, Ophelia, Laertes, and Gertrude (12). All
these accidental deaths could have been avoided, if only Hamlet had killed the king right away;
Poloniuss surprising murder, Ophelias consequent madness and drowning, Laertess fatal
scrape during the duel, and the queens accidental poisoning were all unintentional results of
Hamlets passivity. But Hamlet himself is a paradox of of life and death, action and inaction; he
cannot and does not take action to kill the king until it is the last action he can possibly take. His
first real, intentional action that ends in its desired consequence is his decision to board the pirate
ship and return to Denmark, because it marks the beginning of the end for him (12).
Hamlet and Claudius must define themselves with action because the stakes are so high
because for them stakes like life and death, as well as the crown and future of Denmark.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, on the other hand, represent the everyman because they have
very little stakes, serving more as props than characters (Mathis). They spend most of Hamlet in
the wings doing virtually nothing; their primary function in the play is to serve as a bewildered
audience for Hamlets feigned madness (Rafferty). When Stoppard tries to imagine how they
pass their time when they are alone in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, he depicts them
idly contemplating life, asking questions and refusing to answer them.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead was written in the context of existentialism, a
movement whose ideas are directly applicable to Hamlets struggles. Existentialism grew out of
the uncertainty of the twentieth century as science shifted from certain and testable to relative
and unpredictable, and the western world moved from an idea-centered value system to an

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action-centered one, existentialists asked themselves what the point of existing was, and
answered that we are all measured not by our idle thinking but by our actions (Mathis). Hamlet,
who struggles to define himself in the midst of his inaction, is the most assured of himself when
he finally takes action, especially in dueling and killing. Similarly, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, characters virtually indistinguishable from each other, remain undefined by their
inaction not only in Hamlet, but in the play for which they are the title characters (Rafferty).
Stoppard emphasizes Rosencrantz and Guildensterns inability to act by showing them do
nothing about the lack of free will and they know they have. They wonder whether death could
possibly be a boat and then they admit that our movement is contained within a larger one that
carries us along as inexorably as the wind and current (Stoppard 122). At one point,
Guildenstern tells a young actor that they could create a dramatic precedent here, meaning they
could walk off the stage, and yet they remain in the play to demonstrate the lack of power they
have over their lives.
The stakes are never life and death for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as they constantly
are for Hamlet, and yet, sure enough, they die too, right along with the rest of them. They may
take the fact that death comes to us all and that we all die sooner or later as a given, but their
death is still an unexpected, abrupt occurrence (110). Even in Hamlet, where their death is
announced rather than depicted, unimportant to the real plot of the story, Rosencrantz and
Guildensterns death is out of the blue, with no warning. With these two characters, Shakespeare
argues and Stoppard expands on the argument that every person, regardless of the stakes their
situations present them, regardless of how much action they take to get there, end up dead.
At one point in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, a question is posed: Who decides?
Decides? the player responds, It is written (80). Just as Rosencrantz and Guildensterns fates

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were written into the script of Hamlet, and just as Hamlets fate was written into his deadly
actions, everyones fate is written and sealed regardless of the actions or inactions we define
ourselves with. So should we act, and make our lives mean something in a meaningless void that
will inevitably swallow us back up anyways? Or should we channel our Stoppard everyman
and just not bother? Now, that is the question.

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Bibliography
Barnett, Thomas Duff. Notes on Shakespeare's Play of Hamlet. 2nd ed. New York:
George Bell & Sons, 1893. Print.
Mathis, Gordon. The Galloway School. Atlanta, GA. 3 Feb. 2016. Lecture.
Rafferty, Terrance. "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Review." New Yorker: n. pag. Print.
Shakespeare, William, and Robert S. Miola. Hamlet: Text of the Play, the Actors' Gallery,
Contexts, Criticism, Afterlives, Resources. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011. Print.
Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. New York: Grove, 1967. Print.