Download I was asked to come here today and respond to the play. To what

I was asked to come here today and respond to the play. To what play?, I wondered. But it quickly became
clear that it was no play; it was serious. …What?... The play? The play was serious? That’s contradictory.
That can’t be. … Can it? I won’t. I quite liked it. And now, like a crystal ball, I read you:
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is an absurdist, existentialist tragicomedy by Tom
Stoppard first staged…in 1966. The play expands upon the exploits of two minor characters from
Shakespeare's Hamlet, the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The action of Stoppard's play
takes place mainly "in the wings" of Shakespeare's, with brief appearances of major characters from
Hamlet who enact fragments of the original's scenes. Between these episodes the two protagonists
voice their confusion at the progress of events of which—occurring onstage without them in
Hamlet—they have no direct knowledge.”
That is what Wikipedia says. And it’s true. That’s what it says. So why did you send for me? Well, here I am.
At your service. Not the finest crystal, mind you, but good service none the less. To be sure I could offer more
obvious fare, but would that be fair? Now, I ask you….
What does the play mean? Well, what does it say? You did hear what it said, didn’t you? Then surely that
was enough. You heard what it said. You know what that meant. Syllogism: therefore, you know what it
means--already. The logic is impeccable. So, why are we here? …I get it. You want crystal clarity. But can
you handle it? It can break...you…that’s it...you want me to handle it, so you don’t have to. But you see, you
do have to. That’s the point. That’s his point. Get it? You think you can avoid it. You try to avoid it. You
don’t understand it; you busy yourselves with your lives; you…block it out. Well, you are actors, after all. And
an actor has a role to play. But the actor’s role is already written, so the actor is already destined for eternity.
Some philosophers present the human condition this way. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus said:
“Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such a kind as the author pleases to make it. If
short, of a short one; if long, of a long one. If it is his pleasure you should act a poor man, a cripple, a
governor, or a private person, see that you act it naturally. For this is your business, to act well the
character assigned you; to choose it is another's.”
But others have claimed that humans are free. We can shape up a life, of our choosing. And, we are told, we
should; we ought to do that. And yet, look around. Is anything else in the universe free? Uh, nope. Well,
then, in an unfree universe, how could we be free? Uh-oh. Don’t you just want some consistency? Logic so
inflexible….
But it’s worse than that. Could it be worse? It could and is. Even when Epictetus thought that our lives were
predetermined, at least we were still actors. We had a character, we had a life, not just life, but A life. A life
to live. We had a purpose, our lives had a meaning.
One way to understand humans in this way was through the lens of religion. The Psalmist rejoiced:
“What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou
hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor.”
God made humans to be radically different from the rest of the world. The only problem is that in an unfree
world, how could there be God? So, there goes that kind of account….
There were other ways of making sense of humans as actors, as agents, as having a character, as living a life,
as being of worth—but they vanished too, as we shaped up our modern worldview. All gone. Poof! You could
no longer look up and see the heavens; you could see only stars. You could no longer experience spirits in you
or around you; you could find only objects, matter in motion. You could no longer conceive of humans as
having a significance, a place, a purpose, in the larger scheme of things; you could think only that humans are
a small accident in the formation of the physical universe. So, that left us no longer able to make sense of
ourselves in the world--because of our new understanding of the world. The problem is: we are in the world.
Shakespeare lived at a time when this metaphysical inconsistency was just beginning to be felt, dimly, mostly
by writers. In Henry the 4th, Glendower boasts,
“I can call spirits from the vasty deep.”
But in reply, Hotspur sneers,
“Why, so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them.”
On the one hand, the Bard writes, in “As You Like It”,
“All the world's a stage. And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their
entrances.”
On the other hand, Hamlet says (to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern),
“I have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and
indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile
promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this
majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and
pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how
infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in
apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither…”
Shortly after “Hamlet” is written in the early 1600s, the poet John Donne identifies the modern problem
explicitly:
“And new philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the Sun is lost, and the
Earth, and no man’s wit, can well direct him where to look for it.”
Tom Stoppard is merely agreeing. Our modern philosophy calls all in doubt. Our very existence makes no
sense, at least not in our modern worldview, and that’s the only worldview we have. “The times are bad
indeed; the very air stinks.”
The actors in Stoppard’s play seek the reason why Hamlet is crazy. Yes, of course, he should be upset with the
immoral actions surrounding the throne and his parents. But that should make him angry, vengeful,
scheming, perhaps, but these are understandable, even rational, responses. None of those amount to
insanity. What would be driving Hamlet insane? One answer is that he is feeling the new modern angst. It is
not merely that the actions of some around him disgust him. Rather, he dimly grasps that how people are
now acting is a result of the new worldview, which infects everyone and from which one cannot easily escape.
Listen to John Donne again:
“Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone, All just supply, and all relation;
Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot, For every man alone thinks he hath got To be a
phoenix, and that there can be None of that kind, of which he is, but he. This is the world’s
condition….”
The Chinese, Hindus, Hebrews, Christians, Greeks, Romans and Medievals believed that everything has a way
that it ought to be. Even the elements have a way that they ought to be: they have a natural place, a place
where they ought to be, and they will move as they ought, that is, move toward their natural place. Earthy
things will move below watery things, because earth ought to be below water. Similarly, humans have a way
they ought to be by nature; ethics makes sense in that value-charged worldview, because, if you will,
everything has an ethics. In premodern worldviews, ethics was grounded in metaphysics.
But our modern worldview is a value-free worldview; it leaves us no logical room for believing that anything
has a way that it ought to be by nature. The new physics, our physics, being developed in Shakespeare’s and
Donne’s time, denies that nature has a way that it ought to be. Well, if nature has no way that it ought to be,
then neither do we, because we are part of nature. So, it follows that there is no way that an uncle ought to
act, no way that a mother ought not to act, no way that a son ought to act, no way that a prince ought not to
act. “Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot…” This is what is driving Hamlet mad. Look, people acting
immorally is a story as old as history. Still, such people might come to recognize the moral error of their ways.
But people acting immorally because morality no longer makes sense in their worldview is a radically new,
distinctively modern story. Such people will have no possibility of righting themselves morally, because they
no longer take morality seriously.
The characters in Stoppard’s play are simultaneously characters in Shakespeare and in Stoppard. As
characters in Hamlet, they do not yet realize the modern problem, and so they can wonder what Hamlet’s
problem is. But as characters in Stoppard’s play, they do realize our modern problem. They articulate it,
understand it, agonize over it. They realize that they cannot just go on living their lives, they cannot claim not
to understand it, they do not block it out. They realize that modernity undoes us, turns our actions into mere
events, turns us into mere things, turns freedom into mere probability, turns morality into superstition, turns
lives into the effects of chemicals. They will speak the truth—as actors onstage.
Yet, we don’t acknowledge these ugly modern truths. We try to go about our lives, as if everything were just
fine. But that would make us like actors, pretending, which belongs onstage. In this play, the actors are
reflecting onstage what you are really like offstage. They are more in touch with reality than you are. Which
is exactly what Stoppard told you, except that you don’t want to acknowledge that they are really you, their
problems are really yours. So, you laughed. As if it were a play. But it’s serious. Wait, a serious play? That
can’t be. Can it? Why would I do that? I quite liked it.
Any questions?
-------------------------------------------I have three, but there are questions within questions, so I have more than three:
1) More than any other play that I know, this play deliberately and repeatedly mocks and insults its audience,
sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly. Why? Is it justified?
2) We have the Gonsolvo play within Hamlet, and Shakespeare’s play within Stoppard’s play. Why this
multiple use of literary frames? What does a frame do?
3) Why didn’t Stoppard pen a straightforward play in which he directly confronts the issues he wanted to treat
in the play? Why resort to absurdity and confusion, misdirection and indirection?