Tom Stoppard Writes for the Theatre of the Absurd

Going further into the absurd part of the theatre, we find that chaos has a major role in the play of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. From little things like the coin flipping in the beginning to the chaos of the pirates invading the ship towards the end of the play, the chaos is just a bunch of events happening that seem to have an explanation. After meeting the Player from the Tragedians, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are told some information about exits and entrances. “The Player in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead speaks of “every exit being an entrance somewhere else”” (Schlueter 45). With all the chaos happening already and that will be happening in the future, the Player sees that the chaos is starting to happen in a new manner so a new part of the story opens up. With saying “each exit being an entrance” (Schlueter 45), the coins that were being flipped earlier in the play always landed on heads until the time it landed on tails, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern end up in Hamlet as if they were already there the whole time just in the background. This dramatic exit is just as much as an entrance that has already been explained by the Player. Another part where this happens is when they, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are watching the Tragedians practice for their performance they are to be giving to the king. While the Tragedians are performing, brings the exit of Hamlet and Ophelia from Hamlet but entering Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead onto the very stage the Tragedians are performing on. This is just after the entrance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who start talking to the Player before Hamlet’s exit/entrance. When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern entered they were leaving Hamlet so we have the effect of two exits/entrances. This brings chaos to this part of the play and when Hamlet leaves Ophelia on the stage makes the entrance of Claudius and Polonius. The whole absurdity of this is the fact that they (the characters in Hamlet) do not care who is around them at all. They do not change the way that they are doing anything or acting to accommodate what is around them. The chaos of finding out what is wrong with Hamlet leads to more dramatic exits and entrances throughout Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead ending with the most dramatic one, Hamlet leaving the ship with the pirates.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is a play that is written to make thoughts come about what is going on around the characters and what is happening to the characters. Tom Stoppard did write this play to be a piece within the Theatre of the Absurd. Many of his pieces seem to fall into this category because of the way he writes and understands the rules of the Theatre of the Absurd. Basing essential facts or pulling from Samuel Beckett made Tom Stoppard’s play a great play who truly upheld the absurdity that has been expressed over the years and the years before him. Showing that things cannot be changed, chaos exists, the play strives to express its sense of the senselessness of the human condition and the inadequacy of the rational approach, and the basics from Beckett. This play was not written based on fate or faith. It was just written for the very essence of being absurd and to make questions come about.

Another part of the play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern that has to do with things not changing is the fact before they read the letter sentencing Hamlet to death. “IN their afterlife in Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem to suspect what everyone who has Hamlet knows: Rosencrantz and Guilden

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