Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: a play by Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard took the title of his 1966 play from a line towards the end of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”. All the main characters are dead, which leaves the concluding lines to be spoken by Hamlet’s friend Horatio and the Norwegian general Fortinbras. An ambassador from England announces that he has come too late to tell the Danish king that his orders have been obeyed and that “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead”. 

These two minor characters appear much earlier in the play as spies sent by King Claudius to try to work out what is in Hamlet’s mind that could explain his bizarre behaviour. They are old friends of Hamlet and are greeted warmly at first but then less so as Hamlet is clever enough to work out their true purpose and taunts them about their duplicity. 

Later on, Claudius sends Hamlet on a ship to England, accompanied by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are bearing a letter from Claudius that requests that Hamlet be killed on arrival, but Hamlet is able to switch the letter for one that condemns his two former friends to death. Hamlet is able to escape from the ship when it is attacked by pirates and return to Denmark, but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not so lucky.

Tom Stoppard was born in Czechoslovakia in 1937 but has lived in Britain since 1946. His widowed mother married a British army major, which therefore gave Tom and his brother Peter British citizenship. He began writing plays in the 1950s and in 1964 wrote a one act play entitled “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear”, which evolved into the three act play in which King Lear plays no part.

Stoppard was interested in the many unanswered questions arising from “Hamlet”. Clearly, the characters were used by Shakespeare for a specific purpose, and they always appear as a pair with little to distinguish one from the other. They are also overshadowed by the much stronger character of Hamlet. However, what if they were put in the limelight and the other Shakespeare characters played bit parts? Also, what if their actions were seen in a comic light as opposed to being elements of a tragedy? These were the possibilities that inspired Tom Stoppard to write his play.

Stoppard turns everything on its head by concentrating on the times when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are off-stage as far as Shakespeare’s play is concerned. One can imagine that the main action of Hamlet is happening on another stage in parallel to what one is seeing here. At times the two plays interact and a scene from “Hamlet” appears in Stoppard’s version.

One of the main themes of “Hamlet” is the main character’s musings on the nature of existence and the purpose of life, as exemplified by the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy. For Stoppard, the same questions apply to his main characters, and much of the comedy of the play comes from their introspections and conclusions on these matters.

Act One

The play opens with the two courtiers flipping a coin and betting on heads or tails, which immediately poses questions about fate, chance, and the nature of reality. The coin always comes down heads, 92 times in a row, thus prompting the characters to reckon that they are subject to unnatural forces. The scene is therefore set for happenings that are beyond their control and which they will struggle to understand.

When the pair are summoned by Claudius and Gertrude to undertake their mission to spy on Hamlet, great play is made of Shakespeare’s apparent inability to tell them apart. This even extends to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern themselves. Hamlet’s central question of “Who am I?” is thus presented with a comic twist.

The travelling players from “Hamlet” also make an appearance in this act. Just like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern they spend a lot of time off-stage, so Tom Stoppard imagines that all these bit players might get together at such times. However, the play that they put on for the courtiers is a lot more bloodthirsty than the wordy and courtly performance they enact in “Hamlet”. During their “time off” they clearly have other preferences.

Act Two

In Act Two there are many interactions between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the chief player, the king and queen, and Hamlet. Questions of reality and unreality crop up with confusing frequency, aided by the contrast between what the players do on stage and off (they produce a dress rehearsal of “The Murder of Gonzago” which they perform in “Hamlet”), and always against the background of whether Hamlet’s madness is feigned or real.

Issues of life and death arise when the players foretell the fate of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and the couple are asked to find the corpse of Polonius after Hamlet has killed him in error, thinking that his victim was Claudius.

Act Three

Act Three takes place on the ship to England as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern escort Hamlet to England, sent there by Claudius in a bid to have Hamlet killed. Questions of existence arise at the outset because the pair have no idea how they got there and need proof that they are actually alive. They open Claudius’s letter and thus discover the king’s true purpose. However, Hamlet switches the letter while they are asleep.

Also on board are the players, who have decided to escape the expected wrath of Claudius. They have stowed away in barrels on deck, which also prove to be good hiding places for all the characters when the pirates attack. After the pirates have gone, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern discover that Hamlet has gone too.

When they look again at the letter they learn the truth about Hamlet’s treachery and have to face the fact that their fates are sealed. However, they cannot understand why they deserve to die. The chief player offers Guildenstern an intended consolation along the lines that everyone must die, but this enrages the courtier who takes the player’s dagger and stabs him with it. The player falls but then rises again, because his dagger is a theatrical one with a retractable blade. This provides another approach to the question of the reality of life and death.

In the final scene the two main characters muse on the existential issues that have pervaded the play but still fail to come to any satisfactory conclusions. Could things have been different? Could they have changed the course of events in either their own drama or the parallel one that keeps impinging on theirs? The lights go out on each of them in turn and the line “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and dead” sounds as the final moment of the play.

Although this is a comedy, it has a number of messages and poses many questions. Just as there are no easy answers in “Hamlet”, so there are none here. An audience member will come away with the uneasy feeling that, as well as being the main character in his or her own life story, they are also a bit player in that of every other person they know, to a greater or lesser extent. 

Would a patron of this play who did not know “Hamlet” reasonably well get as much out of it as someone who did? The answer to that is probably No, because there are so many subtle references to Shakespeare’s play in “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”. Also, it would be difficult for someone who was completely ignorant of “Hamlet” to be aware of the points of contact between the two plays, or even of the significance of the title. That said, the play is entertaining and enjoyable in its own right, and might be an interesting point of entry (if somewhat confusing!) to “Hamlet” for someone who had not seen it.

© John Welford

Relatively Speaking, a comedy by Alan Ayckbourn

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” So wrote Sir Walter Scott in his poem “Marmion”. However, this line could be the motto for many plays that have graced the British stage in the 20^th and 21st centuries, with Alan Ayckbourn’s “Relatively Speaking” definitely being among their number. It is a typical example of the English “comedy of confusion” that has proved popular with audiences for many years. Indeed, the genre has its roots as far back as the comedies of Shakespeare and Sheridan, with many more since then.

Alan Ayckbourn (born in London in 1939) has written more than 70 plays, most of which have enjoyed considerable success. The world he portrays is that of lower-middle-class suburbia with its particular pretensions and moralities. Nearly all his plays have been first performed at the theatre managed by Ayckbourn (until 2009) in the Yorkshire seaside resort of Scarborough, before they hit the London stage.

Ayckbourn’s plays are therefore first seen by audiences of lower-middle-class holidaymakers who are looking, first and foremost, to be entertained but who are confronted with people on stage with whom they can relate. They can thus imagine themselves facing similar situations and so form bonds with the characters in question. The best comedies work by persuading audiences to look inside themselves, and that is one important reason for Ayckbourn’s continuing success.

“Relatively Speaking” dates from 1965 and is one of Ayckbourn’s earliest plays; indeed, it was his first big success. It had its Scarborough premiere on 9^th July 1965 and was first seen in London’s West End (at the Duke of York’s Theatre) on 29^th March 1967. It has been revived many times since then and has always been well received due to its sparkling dialogue and absurd misunderstandings.

It is a play in two acts and has only four characters.

The play opens in Ginny’s London flat which she shares with Greg, her lover. Ginny is on the point of leaving the flat in order to pay a visit, so she says, to her parents in Buckinghamshire. While she is getting her things together, Greg finds a pair of slippers under the bed that he knows are not his. This discovery, which is on a par with the flowers and chocolates that are also evident in the flat, causes him mixed feelings, as the realisation that there could be another man in Ginny’s life evinces a spark of jealousy in him but also leads him to think that this would be good time to propose marriage in the hope of securing her for himself.

Greg suddenly has a bright idea, which is that if he follows Ginny to her parents’ house he will be able to ask her father for permission to marry Ginny as well as making the proposal directly to her. This will mean getting on the same train as Ginny but without being seen, so off he goes shortly after she leaves.

The second act is set at the house in Buckinghamshire to which Ginny has set off. Greg actually arrives at the house before Ginny does, and so he is convinced that the man who opens the door is Ginny’s father, whereas he (Philip) is actually her married lover, a much older man than Greg, and the owner of the mysterious slippers. Philip is naturally confused, and imagines that the woman Greg is asking to marry is Philip’s wife, Sheila.

Ginny’s object in making this trip had been to break the relationship with Philip so that she could marry Greg. When she arrives she is naturally shocked to find her two lovers in conversation with each other, and she realises the importance of neither Greg nor Sheila finding out who Philip really is. She therefore persuades Philip to pretend to be her father, which is what Greg believes him to be. Greg also, of course, thinks that Sheila is Ginny’s mother.

With this mixture of misunderstanding and deception, it is no surprise that things get even more muddled until, by the end of the play, it would seem that the chances of any of them remaining in a relationship with anyone else are extremely slim. The one person who does not seem to have grasped the truth by the time the curtain falls is Greg, whose naivety remains intact throughout.

“Relatively Speaking” has no deep significance as a drama unless it is the warning from Scott mentioned above. One’s sympathies can lie with Greg, who believed that he was doing the right thing by forgetting about the slippers and proposing to Ginny, but the latter was also being honourable by taking steps to end the old relationship without involving Greg (although it could be argued that she should have done this some time before). Nobody has behaved maliciously, and the worst crime has been one of deception at a level that most people would forgive.

In the final analysis, “Relatively Speaking” is a bit of good clean fun in which nobody gets hurt and the audience members leave the theatre feeling that they have had a good laugh and their money’s worth.

© John Welford

After Easter, a play by Anne Devlin

“After Easter” is the final part of “The Belfast Trilogy”, a set of plays by the Northern Irish playwright Anne Devlin (born 1951). The subject matter of the plays is the “Troubles” of the 1970s and 1980s as seen from a female perspective. The plays therefore echo the “Dublin Trilogy” by Sean O’Casey (1880-1964) which were based on the events surrounding the Irish Revolution of 1916-21.

The title “After Easter” is a further echo of the past, given that it was the Easter Rising of 1916 that, although it was a failure by virtue of being put down within a week by the British Army, lit the fuse that was eventually to lead to Irish independence in 1922. The symbolic importance of the Rising was massive, and it continues to be so to the present day.

Another significance of the title is a religious one, given that Easter is the Christian festival that celebrates the central event of the Christian story, namely the Resurrection of Christ. In the play, one of the characters (Greta) claims to see a vision on Pentecost Sunday, which is seven weeks after Easter.

The theme of the play is how Northern Irish Catholic women can come to terms with their past and the political background of their native city (Belfast) with its sharp divisions between Catholics and Protestants and the assumed loyalties that these impose on women who are expected to fall in line with the views and prejudices of their male family members.

“After Easter” follows the fortunes of three sisters, Aoife, Greta and Helen, who have chosen their own ways of dealing with these pressures in a process of self-healing. Aoife has chosen the domestic route by making a “safe” marriage and living not far from her parental home.

However, Greta and Helen have chosen to leave Northern Ireland and live in England, where they have found that having a Northern Irish accent is a distinct disadvantage at a time when many people on the British mainland were terrified of terrorist bombings and regarded anyone with such as accent with deep suspicion. Helen got round this difficulty by adopting an American accent instead.

The women had been brought up in a strongly Republican and Catholic household ruled by their father, a socialist and a man who sought to control every aspect of his daughters’ lives. They have now returned to Belfast to attend his funeral and must make decisions about where their futures lie.

Greta’s escape from her father’s influence had been to marry an English left-wing academic who encouraged her to abandon her Catholic faith. She has not coped well with the change in that she suffers from hallucinations that lead her into eccentric behaviour. For example, on her return to Belfast she steals communion wafers from a local church and hands them out to people waiting for a bus. She maintains that one of her “voices” told her to do this to “stop the killing”.

Greta’s mental instability is, however, compared with the more general madness of life in Belfast when her sister says: “In England they lock her up if she’s mad but let her go if she’s political. In Ireland they lock her up if she’s political and let her go if she’s mad”. This is not so much a political play as a psychological one, but this comment seems to be making a political statement that is not far removed from that of the Cheshire Cat in “Alice in Wonderland” when he compares the characteristics of dogs and cats (dogs growl when displeased and cats growl (or purr) when pleased) and concludes that “we’re all mad here”.

If Belfast is mad, then Greta, by showing symptoms of madness, is the only one who is truly sane, in that she belongs to her environment.

Helen’s response to the situation in Belfast was to make herself fit into a different environment, namely that of London society. However, she deliberately chose to adopt a persona that was neither Irish nor British, through the expedient of pretending to be American. She also refused to be labelled as anything that might connect her with her background, by not allying herself with any faction, be it religious, political or social.

The point made here is that London, being a melting-pot of every race, creed and proclivity imaginable, allows anyone, man or woman, to be exactly what they want to be and not be forced to choose between conflicting loyalties, which is the situation in Belfast. Helen is able, with justification, to say that she is “a citizen of the world” and that “You don’t have to stoop to other people’s expectations”.

Of the three sisters, Helen is clearly the strongest character. She is an artist who has financial as well as social reasons to throw off her past and adapt to the commercial world in which she can make a living. The fake American accent was in part a ploy to attract American buyers of her paintings. However, after her father’s death she feels able to make a voluntary decision to sell her London flat and return to Belfast. Her strength of character is sufficient, she believes, for her to be able to stand on her own feet in the otherwise stultifying atmosphere of Belfast. She also maintains that, in order to build a secure future, it is necessary to forget elements of the past. As an artist she believes that “It’s my memory that stops me from seeing, so I’m concentrating on forgetting”, and she also thinks that she can use her art to “create and free” whereas the attitude of the Irish political class, represented by her late father, had been to “seduce and dominate”.

Each of the three plays in “The Belfast Trilogy” has a strong element of autobiography, and Helen is clearly closest to the author in “After Easter”. Anne Devlin wrote the play in 1994, some nine years after the second play “Ourselves Alone”. Like Greta and Helen she had emigrated to Britain but it was not until 2007 that she was to follow the example of her characters and make the return journey. Even in 1994 the political situation in Northern Ireland was becoming easier, that being the year in which the Provisional IRA announced its ceasefire and the Peace Process began to make real progress. This was therefore a time of hope for an Easter-like resurrection of normality. The play offers a view of how the people of Northern Ireland, and particularly its women, might respond in personal terms.

The play ends with the thoughts of Greta, after she has had her hallucination at Pentecost. She fears that her father’s influence will always be there, but she also has hope because she is now pregnant. Her vision involves feeding a stag in a snowbound and frozen forest. The stag acquires human features and the snow and ice all melt away. As she says, the stag “took me to the place where the rivers come from, where you come from . . . and this is my own story”. She has therefore found healing for her mental state and been resurrected as a woman with hope for an untroubled future.

“After Easter” might not be the greatest play in terms of its dramatic qualities, and it might be thought of as being over-optimistic and even slightly pretentious, but it does make a powerful statement about the essential place of women in the rebuilding of a broken society. It is therefore worth the effort to see a performance, should one take place in one’s locality, or at least to read the text.

© John Welford