We have analysed Beckett’s remarkable play in a separate post, but the key similarities between Beckett’s and Stoppard’s two post-war visions lie in the rather helpless passivity of the two central characters in each play, the emphasis on repetition (calling to mind Camus’ absurdist essay, ‘ The Myth of Sisyphus’), and the philosophical emphasis in both. But it almost certainly would never have been written in Samuel Beckett had never written Waiting for Godot, the post-war play which did more than any other, perhaps, to take theatre in a new direction. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead could not have been written, of course, without Hamlet. They were ‘sent for’ by Claudius and Gertrude, who want to find out what’s up with Hamlet. And like Hamlet himself – thrown into a role, that of avenging son, which he seems reluctant to adopt – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are characters who appear not to be in control of their own destinies.
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