R hetorics of the O bscæne

Abstract: Usual stuff, more or less, only inside out. That is the condition under which Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern labor, a condition in which all the world’s a backstage. Taking Shakespeare’s Hamlet as the “supposed to happen,” as a kind of imaginary promptbook, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead reverses theatrical perspectives to show the lives of its not-so-lead characters “off.” In one sense Stoppard’s play blunts the purpose of its dramatic forebear by not keeping to the usual stuff, but then it also highlights the various regions, conversations, and actions of an offstage world that Hamlet , like most other drama, must always take for granted.