Core Concept #3: 12/13/10-1/7/11

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

The Play

• We all become a part of the performance because we willingly suspend belief
• Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead" "breaks the 4th wall" between actors and the audience
• The play breaks into our comfort zone
• It is meant to be a part of Hamlet (layered over Hamlet)
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have vastly different personalities, yet Stoppard insists on confusing them
• Famous quote: "Life in a box is better than no life at all"
• Although Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is supposed to be the missing layer of Hamlet, the universe is vastly different, and many tricks are played

Delving Deeper

• The play is one of the Theater of the Absurd and asks existential questions
• The play is an allegory: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are us; the box, boat, play are the container/vehicle of life: it has the illusion of boundlessness, but it is in fact written for us: it's all an illusion; the playwrite is fate/god
• Hamlet is a paradoxical character, he is the most important/powerful person in Denmark, but he is stuck in a web not of his design and in the end, he resigns himself to the providencial God
• Is a life in a box (life) really better than no life at all?
• Stoppard turns Hamlet's messages inside out

Being Born

• A character is born when the playwright commands it, people are born when God/fate commands it
• In the beginning Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are in a dark bar, and then they are summoned into the light (they are born)
• Rosencrantz & Guildenstern can't remember anything after that: when they're on the horse, they mention that they can't remember how they got there
• "There must've been a time in the beginning when we could've said no". This quote is ironic because it is a life. In the beginning, we had no choice but to be born.

Lecture on Stoppard

• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a highly derivative play
• The play belongs to the Theater of the Absurd, thus the play does not have the "horizon of significance" of other plays, the protagonists' attempts to deal with their world is often absurd, its heroes lacks what it takes to act confidently in the world, the protagonists are often waiting for something to happen, there is bleak humor, and the language is unpredictable, unreliable and deceiving
• This reminds me of British Literature, when we read The Tempest by William Shakespare. In the play, Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano decide to take over the island, but the world is absurd to them because they don't understand the traditions of the upper class that surrounds them, nor do they understand that their every move is being guided by Prospero through magic (much like a playwright guides his characters), and they often get distracted from their goal (much like how Rosencrantz and Guildenstern get distracted from their goal of getting information out of Hamlet)
• Stoppard builds a lot of the absurdness of the play with rhetorical devices (using many of the devices that we've learned of before: such as repetition, irony, diction, syntax, parallelism...)
• There is a unique element of friendship in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, giving each of the main characters more of a specific identity
• Art is at odds with the world of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern because art confers order

Death of a Salesman

• Death of a Salesman is a play. Form follows function and Miller must've chosen to write Death of a Salesman as a play for all that a play can offer, and despite all the limits of plays
• We learned about the good parts about plays previous: it's powerful, and it gives the audience the sense of a communal experience that heightens meaning
• Limits of plays are that it has to be able to hold the attention of the audience and it requires artificiality,
• Linda is like a mother to Willy because Willy is a man who never grew up
• Evidence: his name is Willy (not William, not Bill, but Willy), he says "gee", a lot of people call him "kid", Biff calls him a "prince", not a "king"
• Linda keeps on trying to feed Willy dairy products, like breastfeeding
• Linda does not respect Willy, if she did, she would treat him like an equal and call him out on his lies
• Thus, Biff and Happy have to compete with Willy to win the affection of their mother
• Did Ben really make his fortune in African diamonds, or is he a shadier character?
• In Death of a Salesman, the women are either "mothers" or "whores". This is actually a motif in Western literature
• Well-liked v. Loved
• Willy wanted to be well-liked, but he didn't realized that he was loved and that was what mattered
• This idea of well-liked v. loved is very relevant even today because people want to be liked, and sometimes, in that quest to impress people and to get others to like them, people often lose sight of their loved ones who have stayed by them and loved them all along
• It turns out that Willy had the wrong dream all along
• Death of a Salesman is about the corruption of the American Dream
• Willy, like Biff, was born to work with his hands, but he choose a career as a salesman because he thought it will bring him success and happiness, when in fact if Willy had been a farmer or carpenter instead, he would've most likely have found success and happiness
• Willy seems to be afraid to take risks
• He did not go to Alaska with Ben
• He was scared by the new technology of the tape recorder
• He didn't ask for a promotion until Linda talked him into it
• The Lomans (Lo-Man) are not "leaders of men", as Willy would like to believe
• Biff might be right in that he is "a dime a dozen"
• Thus it is ironic when Willy says that he is not "a piece of fruit" because he is. All of his resources have been extracted by his company, so in the end, they have no more use of him and he is fired
• Happy seems doomed to follow Willy's footsteps, while Biff is not

Homework

• Read "Lecture on Stoppard"
• Death of a Salesman Annotations
• Tragedy Forum
• "Fathers" Forum
• Core Concept Notes and Outside Readings Journals