Showing posts with label Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Show all posts

Monday, November 3, 2008

"In the beginning was the Word..."

Welcome to the very first post!
It's hard to know where to begin? Do we start with the best lines from Hamlet? - "not where he eats but where he is eaten"? or "ay, there's the rub, / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / when we have shuffled off that mortal coil must give us pause" or "The play's the thing / Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king" or "Tho this be madness / Yet there is method in it"? We could go on and on and on, but we've learned from Polonius that "brevity is the soul of wit," so we'll cease here.
Perhaps we should start with our new friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (or is it Guildenstern and Rosencrantz?) who find themselves in a delicate position "fit for a king's remembrance." Does the word "remembrance" make you a little uneasy? This is a tragedy after all. But then "Life in a box is better than no life at all" so they say.
So what do you think of Stoppard's version of the play? Absurd? Existential? Tragicomedy? Just downright weird?