About the Play:

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues and Male/Male Scenes.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was one of Royal National Theatre of Britain's top 100 plays of the 20th century.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a full-length comedy by Tom Stoppard. Hamlet is turned topsy-turvy in this brilliant modern comedic masterpiece that thrusts Shakespeare's two minor characters to the forefront with no rules except one: they are being sent to their deaths by forces they are unable to comprehend. Can our hapless protagonists triumph in a battle of wits, escape their fate, and make sense of a senseless world? Especially recommended for school and contest use.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is the fabulously inventive tale of Hamlet as told from the worm's-eve view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two college chums of Hamlet. Their story is what happened behind the scenes in Shakespeare's play. In Tom Stoppard's best-known work, this Shakespearean Laurel and Hardy finally get a chance to take the lead role. What were they doing there in Elsinore anyway? "I don't know; we were sent for." They are not only anti agents, but also anti sympathy, anti identification, and in fact anti persons, which is uniquely demonstrated by their having such a hard time recollecting which of them goes by what name. The Players come and go; Prince Hamlet comes through reading words, words, words; foul deeds are done; Hamlet is sent abroad, escapes death; and in turn Rosencrantz and Guildenstern find their "only exit is death." Acclaimed as a modern dramatic masterpiece, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead has played across the globe, been adapted into an award-winning film and is now as recognizable as the classic on which it is based.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was first staged in 1966 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, by a student company, the Oxford Theatre Group. The play transferred to the National Theatre in 1967 and made the 29-year-old Tom Stoppard's reputation virtually overnight. The play's success did not end there: it was the first National production to transfer to Broadway, where its subsequent run brought it the same enthusiastic acclaim. Winner of both the Tony and New York Drama Critics Circle awards. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional repertory, middle school, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 2 female, 14 male, 12 extras, and 6 musicians

What people say:

"Very funny, very brilliant, very chilling; it has the dust of thought about it and the particles glitter excitingly in the theatrical air." — New York Times

"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead [is] verbally dazzling ... the most exciting, witty intellectual treat imaginable." — The New Yorker

"A stimulating, funny, imaginative comedy." — New York Daily News

"One of the most original and engaging of post-war plays." — Daily Telegraph

About the Playwright:

Sir Tom Stoppard (1937-2025) was a British playwright often hailed as among the greatest of his generation. Born Tomáš Sträussler in what was then Czechoslovakia, the family fled at the onset of the Nazi invasion finally settling in England when he was eight, and Stoppard adopted the last name of his stepfather. He was catapulted into the front ranks of modern playwrights overnight when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead opened in London in 1967. He wrote prolifically for TV, radio, and stage in a career that spanned six decades and also included a parallel career as a Hollywood script doctor, much in demand to provide dialogue to others' film scripts, and shared a best-screenplay Oscar for his contribution to Shakespeare in Love. He was knighted in 1997 and became one of the most honoured dramatists in British theatre.