Tom Stoppard’s absurdist play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966) is a modern continuation of Shakespeare’s most important legacy: to push boundaries, question the existing order of things, and even to reinvent literature as it stands.
Even if you could find someone who somehow didn’t know the name Shakespeare, they would still be able to recognise his voice in almost all contemporary literature. As a writer during the Renaissance, a time of cultural ‘rebirth,’ Shakespeare helped to reinvent language and popularise the styles and genres we still use today. He created hundreds of words, including ‘radiance’ and ‘watchdog,’ as well as the literary tropes that we all know and love, such as star-crossed lovers (Romeo and Juliet) and the anti-hero (Macbeth). He is even credited with inventing blank verse. However, the most significant contribution that Shakespeare has had on literature is arguably his innovative approach to language and character which inspires writers to continue to push boundaries even centuries later.
Many of Shakespeare’s plays question social order and are sceptical of grand narratives such as religion, governance, and love. He does not provide easy answers, and this ambiguity is arguably what keeps his works alive and in conversation with the present day. Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is an absurd tragicomedy which similarly flips the script.
Stoppard’s play takes two minor characters from Hamlet and places them on centre stage, forcing them to play a part in a plot which they are completely unaware of. As they try to navigate their roles in this nonsensical universe, they interact with Hamlet (who is now a minor character) and a troupe of actors who demonstrate the superficiality of art and its limited capacity to represent reality. The resulting confusion opens discussions about the nature of meaning, the function of art and theatre, and the randomness of the universe.
While Shakespeare’s Hamlet largely speaks to Renaissance anxieties surrounding Protestantism and Catholicism, private revenge and public justice, and corruption in the monarchy, its existential musings around certainty, action and death are still relevant to the modern audience. Stoppard builds on these themes to create a play that reflects the postmodern rejection of objective truth and a singular, fixed reality governed by a higher power. Through the use of existential games, such as the central characters flipping a coin 92 times and landing on heads each time, or realising that they are trapped in a predetermined narrative, of which the audience knows the tragic outcome, Stoppard presents a universe that, while absurd, eerily mirrors our own.
In the wake of scientific theories such as Einstein’s determinism, Hawking’s multiverse, and Edward Lorenz’ chaos theory we can no longer accept the familiar and easy truths of the past. Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead resonates with and anticipates this new world, in the same way that Shakespeare’s plays prefigure the intellectual movements that shaped the Enlightenment, and even the modern and postmodern eras beyond it.
The fact that Shakespeare’s ideas can be used to question the metanarratives of the 20th century and voice the fears of modernity is a testament to the enormity of his influence on contemporary literature. The universality and revolutionary nature of his storytelling means that writers will use his works as looking glasses into the world for centuries to come.
“Sir John Gilbert (1817-1897) – ‘The Plays of William Shakespeare’” by sofi01 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0