Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_
As an outsider of the story
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Ivy Lee
First , there are some introduction about the writer Tom Stoppard. Tom
Stoppard was born "Tom Straussler" in Zlin, Czechoslovakia on July 3, 1937.
His family moved to Singapore in 1939 to escape the Nazis. He wrote many
kinds of play, such as Hap good, If You're Glad I'll Be Frank ,Indian Ink ,The
Invention of Love .Night and Day ,The Real Inspector Hound ,The Real
Inspector Hound and Other Plays ,The Real Thing ,Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are Dead ,Rough Crossing ,Rough Crossing & On the
Razzle ,Separate Peace ,Shakespeare in Love: A Screenplay.
Second, I want to talk about this play. It first staged at the Edinburgh
Festival Fringe in 1966. And the main character are two minor characters from
Shakespeare's Hamlet. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is a pair of
schoolmates and childhood friends of Hamlet.
The whole story is focusing on their actions with the events of Hamlet as
background. In all of this play, they sense that important events are going on
around them but they die without ever understanding the action.
There’s a introduction I found in a website that introduce Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern: They are Hamlet’s classmates in college. They come to take
care of Hamlet with the Claudius’s (who murdered Hamlet’s father) please.
Although the two people in the play are not much useful, the Prince quickly
suspected them to be a spy. Then the King gave a secret order to murder
Hamlet, who was away in the United Kingdom that time and hide his name.
Then, the two characters died inexplicably behind the scene.
In this introduction, they even not mention none of the importance of those
two characters.
There are even a club in Face book about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead. Fans of this film wrote a lot about how they feel about this play and
how they love it!
I could watch this every day and always
find something new to love!
Now every time I see a version of Hamlet,
my heart leaps up a little when
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern first
appear.
My opinion is that, it seems that they are portrayed as two clowns in a world
that is beyond their understanding, like they cannot identify any significance in
words or events, living their life of no purpose and no incomprehension of their
situation.
I.
As an outsider

Used to be an insider
We are always an insider when we see a movie. Being an audience, we can
see barely the whole scene and the clearly process when something is
running. Unless the film is hard to understand, we can really tell in detail what
happened of someone in a play.

When we go outside
But in this case, those two” main” characters have no understanding about
what really happened even until they die! It just like everything is none of their
business when they are in the scene .
It just seems that everything become unclear and inexplicable when we stand
on the two character’s side.
II.
Brief reflection
I think it’s an interesting view to see this film in this way. Not to be the main
character. It’s more close to our daily lives situation. After all, we don’t used to
be clear of everything every time. Sometimes we just see something
happening in front of us without realizing a thing. So why not read a play like
that? Although you may feeling nothing after watching the performance, it’s
still an interesting experience, isn’t it?
Reference material :

http://zh-hk.facebook.com/pages/Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern-AreDead/33989335282?v=wall
(the face book page of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosencrantz_and_Guildenstern_Are_Dead
(wiki pedia )

C.R.Reaske(1977). How to Analyze Drama.
林國源譯 <<戲劇的分析
>>。書林書店

William Shakespeare. Hamlet. 朱生豪譯 <<哈姆雷特>>