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Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

Displacement is universal. Time stops for no one, and when we look back, it is often difficult to discern how we got to this point. Our place seems foreign. We are a step removed from our dreams, belonging to an echo of what we once knew. Something unsettling and overwhelming and extraordinary has taken over, and our greatest actions create only a ripple in the massive works of our condition. The simplest moments become unclear, and we stagger towards the next, and the next, and the next, hoping for things to pick up, to get getter, to change. Ultimately, even to end.

Such is the case for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern - ripped from one reality and thrust into another, starting from scratch and floundering their way through someone else's story. People come and go, the scenery remains, but somehow they whoosh by from here to there, from scattered beginning to inevitable end. To them, space appears infinite and time eternal, but everything is contained, the structure is set, and the light at the end of all things invariably gleams.

Choices are made every day - perhaps arbitrarily, sometimes unacknowledged. But they are made nonetheless. Our own snippets of action and experience string together something towards which we can hope, and labor, and eventually attain. For us, it is simply a matter of following through. Don't rely on chance or give in to fate. Seize the moment, own the situation, allow the wheels to turn - we'll be all right.

The story is that of Shakespeare's Hamlet from the possible perspective of two intermittent characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Spending their time "offstage" spinning coins, playing at questions, and musing at the lack of clarity and non-existence of metaphysical laws in their current situation, the two glean every clue of their own identity and purpose from the snippets of action provided by the other characters. Although they are charged with figuring out what is wrong with the seemingly transformed Prince of Denmark, they are offered much more from their frequent run-ins with the Player and his troupe of tragedians than Hamlet ever gives away. Their path leads from roadside discovery to castle chaos and finally on-board containment; ultimately, despite their confusion and objections, the duo must fulfill their predetermined fate.