Hamlet's BFFs

Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard is the first play I read for our summer reading project. If you haven't read Shakespeare's Hamlet, go do that first. And if it's been five years, like it has for me, go read it again. I wish I had done that because I had a lot of questions while I was reading it.

In case you don't know, Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Hamlet's friends. But they never appear in the original. So this story attempts to explain what they are doing during the drama with Hamlet and how they end up dead. If you don't like Shakespeare, you probably won't like this. Despite being written in 1966, Stoppard stays true to Hamlet with his use of Shakespearean language.

Roz and Guil spend the whole play confused. They don't remember where they came from and they don't understand their own deaths. To add to their confusion, and sometimes mine, random characters occasionally pop on stage to give cryptic speeches and disappear again. And all this confusion makes Roz and Guil indecisive. Even when they discover they are taking their friend to his death, they are unable to save him. For me it was all confusing. Roz's and Guil's stupidity seems unreal. They go to their deaths knowingly and willingly. And when they attempt to catch Hamlet hiding Polonius' body, they hold their belts out like a kid trying to catch the robbers in his house. It really is childlike they way they stumble along.

I think after watching the movie and possibly a second read, I'll like it a lot more. I am just so excited about some books coming up that I just wanted to get through this book.