Quotations and Literature Forum

My English class is currently reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and I was just wondering what everyone else thought. I personally think its incredible ! Your thoughts?

Hello, I have heard "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" for the first time in my life.Well pls do give in some details to it.

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Ishrat Noor Khan

hahaha it is a very interesting piece ! it is a kind of game. its rules:
1-every question must invent as a reaction of the question before
2-you can not stop or take a break
3-you can not repeat
4-you can not ask "retoric questions"
5-you can not use affirmative sentence
6-you can not ask synonymous questions..
good luck

look:

rosencrantz: we could play at questions.
guildenstern: what good would that do?
ros: practice!
guil: statement! one-love!
ros: cheating!
guil: how?
ros: i hadn't started yet!
guil: statement. two-love.
ros: are you counting that?
guil: what?
ros: are you counting that?
guil: foul! no repetitions. three-love. first game to--
ros: i'm not going to play if you're going to be like that.
guil: whose serve?
ros: hah?
guil: foul! no grunts. love-one.
ros: who's go?
guil: why?
ros: why not?
guil: what for?
ros: foul! no synonyms. one-all.
guil: what in god's name is going on?
ros: foul! no rhetoric! two-one.
guil: what does it all add up to?
ros: can't you guess?
guil: were you addressing me?
ros: is there anyone else?
guil: who?
ros: how would i know?
guil: why do you ask?
ros: are you serious?
guil: was that rhetoric?
ros: no.
guil: statement! two-all. game point.
ros: what's the matter with you today?
guil: when?
ros: what?
guil: are you deaf?
ros: am i dead?
guil: yes or no?
ros: is there a choice?
guil: is there a god?
ros: foul! no non-sequiters, three-two, one game all.
guil (seriously): what's your name?
ros: what's yours?
guil: i asked you first.
ros: statement. one-love.
guil: what's your name when you're at home?
ros: what's yours?
guil: when i'm at home?
ros: is it different at home?
guil: what home?
ros: haven't you got one?
guil: why do you ask?
ros: what are you driving at?
guil (with emphasis): what's your name?!
ros: repetition. two-love. match point to me.
guil (siezing him violently): who do you think you are?
ros: rhetoric! game and match!

Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead belongs to the genre of the Theatre of the Absurd. Therefore, we keep on questioning while reading this play - Where are we? What are the rules of this world we are in? What sort of reality I'm dealing with, and why characters are behaving the way they are? In the Theatre of the Absurd, the protagonists are discovered in a world which they do not, indeed they cannot, understand. The confusion is not a matter of a conflict between competing meanings, but rather the absence of anything that might help one to understand oneself, one's purpose, or one's place in the social scheme of things.Tthe protagonist's identity seems to be problematic as they are without a sense of purpose and without the courage, energy, wit to forge one for themselves. They spend their time anxiously confronting an incomprehensible world, often desperate for some reassurance that there is something or someone who can help them out, but incapable of helping themselves.Their situation becomes all the more helpless as they have no reliable memory, so they cannot even orient themselves and their present situation to what they once were--they can create no intelligible historical narrative for their lives. Hence, they are radically unsure of who they are.

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"Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act."

I haven't read this but probably should cuz I love theatre of the absurd...thx for the info express_india

Rana

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'One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.'
~Sophocles