Hamlet Andante/Hamlet Allegro: Tom Stoppard’s Two Versions

Summary

With the passage of time, Tom Stoppard’s first Hamlet begins to look like his Romeo and Juliet: an experiment undertaken during a period of energetic theatrical activity in England, and a spirited union of materials from various dramatic and non-dramatic sources. As soon as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead appeared in performance, reviewers and academic commentators recognized its derivation not only from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but also from Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. They have noticed other influences as well: Pirandello, T. S. Eliot, Wilde, Kafka, and Pinter have left theatrical or literary traces, and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s late Investigations provide philosophical bearings. For the most part, critics describe the composition of Stoppard’s play as if it had been neatly prescribed by a recipe: plot and characters from Shakespeare folded into a Beckettian ambiance, or vice versa; a dash of concept, echo or tone from the other dramatic or literary sources; and Wittgenstein’s philosophy cracked, its language-games separated and used to bind the other ingredients. Yet the texture of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead hardly resembles that of a pudding, or any other confection assembled in a predictable way. Let that be the character note of Stoppard’s dramaturgy.