HAUNTOLOGICAL CRISES OF IDENTITY, MEMORY, AND PERSONAL HISTORY IN TOM STOPPARD S ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD

Abstract

First staged at the Edinburgh Festival fringe in 1966, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard garnered acclaim by presenting an inverse play in which the two peripheral Elizabethan courtiers in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, remain the focus whereas the characters in Hamlet have only minor roles, make brief appearances and enact fragments from the original play in scenes where the two plays converge. The crux of this existential comedy revolves around the exploits of the duo, who were summoned by the king to “glean what afflicts” the Prince of Denmark, and whose tragic deaths go unnoticed amidst the chaotic turmoil at the end of the original play. Stoppard’s absurdist text expands against the backdrop of Hamlet and lays bare the mishaps of the two childhood friends of Hamlet off the stage. This article is committed to exploring the central conflicts in Stoppard’s play such as identity, memory, and personal history through the lenses of Derridean “spectres”, and investigating how far the characters’ conception of the past, present and future accord with the narratives of “hauntology”.