ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD

“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” masterfully plays out Shakespeareʼs classic plot: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern – Danish Prince Hamletʼs childhood friends, with whom he also studied at a German university – are summoned by King Claudius, the murderer of Hamletʼs father, to accompany the prince to England. The king hands them a secret letter with a request to behead the rightful heir to the crown. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern accompany Hamlet to his certain death, but after the prince successfully exchanges the letter, they themselves fall into the snares of fate.
Scholars of contemporary dramaturgy emphasise that in “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” classical Shakespearean dramaturgy is fused with Beckettian literary experiments and aesthetics of the absurd, while intellectual puzzles and virtuosic wordplay are intertwined with English irony.