by Tom Stoppard
Two traveling men are flipping coins and contemplating what it means to be lucky. They are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, friends of Hamlet (yes, THAT Hamlet), who were summoned on a matter of urgency by King Claudius and Queen Gertrude.
The premise of the pair’s trip is that there is something wrong with Hamlet. The king (Hamlet’s uncle and new stepfather) and queen (Hamlet’s mother) have asked them to speak to him to determine if he is sane.
However, lacking the resources to understand what is asked of and happening to them, and completely dependent on those around them to provide them information, direction, or meaning to their existence, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become the primary characters, with Hamlet and various antagonists as mere plot devices, in a very Seinfeld-esque play about nothing and everything.
With extraordinary verbal wit and a profound black humor which sets up everything as equally ridiculous, playwright Tom Stoppard’s very first and best known play turns Shakespeare’s tragedy into one of the finest examples of theatre of the absurd.
