| Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Tom Stoppard I've always thought you had to be in a very peculiar mood to truly enjoy and appreciate Waiting for Godot. It's such a fine balance between tragedy and comedy, it's easy to sway one way or the other, either laughing at them and not caring about them or caring about them too much to laugh at them. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is the same type of play, but much easier on the reader. There are truly funny, funny scenes in this play, many of them, scenes worthy of Abbott & Costello. Perhaps as a result, it is easier to care about the characters, even as you're laughing at their haplessness, and to echo their philosophic cries into the darkness. So I think this play outdoes the play it copies. I would rather watch it, or read it, anyway. A word about the Shakespeare -- sure, it adds to the play to know something about Hamlet, but it's probably not necessary. And I don't really think this "logically follows" after Hamlet, like some kind of sequel. They are very, very different plays. The jumping off point is simply that in Hamlet, "R & G" die deaths that don't really make any sense -- and no one really cares. Perfect philosopical place to start an absurdist play. |