A discussion of the implications of the various meanings of the word "game" in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Tom Stoppard's production Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is very intelligent in its linguistic style, thinking ability and way of speaking. The two "main" characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (R&G), engage in complicated wordplay as they take comfort in a world they don't understand. Their play on words, and the play on the word "play", results in great comedy, as well as serving as a means for Stoppard to explore the relationship between the audience and the cast. His absurd theater suggests an existentialist theory as the bewildered R&G flounder in their indifferent and bizarre universe. At the beginning of the show, R&G decides to "play" a question game, in the form of a tennis match. They believe that their "ping-pong" questions will help them question Hamlet about his gloomy state. A very funny battle of words follows, reminiscent of Hal and Falstaff's banter in Henry IV and Richard and Anne's stichomythia in Richard III:Ros: We could play with the questions.Guil: What good would that do?Ros: Practice! Guil: Declaration! One Love. (33) Unlike Richard, however, who won Anne's hand, R&G's wordplay accomplishes nothing. It is Hamlet who “kills” them during the interrogation, as he makes them look “ridiculous” (47). The allegory of the tennis match continues; according to Guildenstern they were “caught on the wrong foot once or twice” (48). Likewise, their clever play on words also goes nowhere, as each question is answered by another: “Guil: Do you think it's important? Ros: It's not important to you? Guil: Why should it be important? Ros: What does it matter because?Guil (joking gently): It doesn't matter because it matters?Ros: What's the matter with you?PauseGuil: It doesn't matter” (36).Stoppard's clever wordplay on “matter” may allude to Hamlet, 2.2 :191 Polonius: What do you read, my lord?192 Hamlet: Words, words, words.193 Polonius: What is the matter, my lord?194 Hamlet: Between whom?195 Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord. This witty banter continues throughout the play. The implication of this is that Stoppard blurs the line between R&G: they are constantly confused about their true identity of personality between R&G is through their way of speaking – as Guildenstern says, “[words, words. They are all we can go on” (32). The entire work is based on speech. Being without it is like being “a mute person in a monologue” (54). R&G are spontaneous in their speeches – at least they think they are. However, Stoppard wrote his own lines: there is nothing spontaneous about this. They "play" with words in a desperate attempt to display their free will and escape the "game" they reluctantly find themselves in. However, as the audience knows, their wish cannot be fulfilled. Stoppard ironically controls these seemingly casual and bizarre banter between the two. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are just characters in a play. They are nothing more. The result of this is that there is an ironic discrepancy between what we know and the limited and misleading perception of the character. As Rosencrantz says; "They'll keep us around until we're dead!" (85). R&G ignore their fate; dramatic irony comes from great comic effect: "Player (to Guil): Do you know this play? Guil: No. Player: A slaughterhouse - eight corpses in all" (75). This irony is at the same timecomical and decidedly dark. Stoppard plays a delicate balancing act between humor and horror; the show is both intellectual and hilarious. Their wordplay distracts them from the inevitable truth of their helplessness, but it is only a momentary respite. The light banter between them throughout most of the show seems to mask an unbearable anxiety that cannot be expressed in dialogue. As Stoppard himself once said; “There are no words to say how much I love words.” Stoppard mocks R&G because he can't say what he thinks. Words are not enough. The result is frustration. With reference to Hamlet: “Ros: Stark delusional and sane. Player Pause: Why? Guil: Oh. (To Ros) Why?Ros: Exactly.Guil: Exactly what?Ros: Exactly why.Guil: Exactly why what?Ros: What?Guil: Why?Ros: Why what, exactly?Guil: Because he's angry?!Ros: I don't know!" (60). Guildenstern shouts at Rosencrantz near the end of the show; "Do you think the conversation will help us now?" (112). Their senseless discussion goes nowhere. Probing questions like "[c' is] a God?" are quickly refuted; "Repugnant!" (35). Instead of focusing on how to escape their fate, they meditate on their ontological status, the "who what why" in endless puns that repeat and they repeat in cyclical desperation. As an example, Guildenstern repeatedly plays with a verse from the Lord's Prayer, referring to the necessities of life: "Give us this day our daily bread..." Guildenstern sardonically corrupts this and calls for a theistic intervention, knowing that he will not nothing will come: "Guil: Consistency is all I ask for! Ros (softly): Immortality is all I seek…Guil (dying in the fall): Give us this day our daily week…” (37). Guildenstern's work on the famous prayer highlights the absence of 'grounds' in their dark world. The R&G are helpless and must plead to a higher order. They ask for “coherence”; something that is completely missing in the absurd and extravagant world they live in. However, R&G don't seem to truly believe in an underlying purpose - they only care about the plot because it involves their subsequent death. Their world is devoid of spirituality: all that remains is a 'place without any visible character' (1). This structure is repeated over and over again – pages 30, 37, 85, 93, 105 – each time more desperate than the previous time. Without morality, represented in the form of religion, life is nothing – R&G lives in a repetitive world at the “mercy of whim that reason cannot explain” (Robinson 88). Stoppard then abandons any didactic purpose and writes 'anti-theatre' – the lack of logic dominates in his bizarre production, reminiscent of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and other absurd works. It paints a postmodernist picture in which fundamental values ​​have been lost, mainly due to the horror of the Second World War. Stoppard's portrayal of R&G's dark and indifferent universe was influenced by this existentialist theory. R&Gs ask fundamental questions about their existence but receive no answers in return. Their plays on words, the constant questions to which they answer questions, help to reinforce this feeling of absurd desperation: "Guil (seriously): What's your name? Ros: What's yours?...Guil: What's your name when are you at home? Ros: What's yours?...Guil (grabbing him violently): WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?" (35). What results is an inherent absurdity in all their wordplay, an irony as we realize the insignificance of their words in a world of which they are the center. Stoppard brings two marginal characters to the attention of the work. However, their roles are still peripheral to the plot; their words do not rock the metaphorical “boat” of theirs.