ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN

former schoolmates of the title character in William Shakespeare's Hamlet. The two friends are minor figures who are commissioned by King Claudius to spy on Hamlet, and they eventually meet their deaths when Hamlet discovers and alters a letter they bear whereby he is to be killed. The pair are the central characters in Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (produced 1966). Stoppard's characters play games, tell jokes, and have philosophical discussions in the intervals of time between the scenes in which they figure in Shakespeare's play. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead addresses such issues as free will, death, and personal identity, as the characters, more fully developed by Stoppard than by Shakespeare, are still often mistaken for one another. Though they are bewildered by their lives, they try to live them with dignity, and they ultimately accept their fate willingly.