History Theatre / RosencrantzAndGuildensternAreDead

** For all their raging at their own helplessness, here is arguably ''one'' moment in the play when they could have broken out of the flow of events -- which they totally ignore. They actually read Claudius's letter to the English king and discover that it's all a ploy to have Hamlet killed... and they decide to do ''absolutely nothing'' about it, passively accepting their pinball status.

-->'''Rozencrantz''' ''(possibly)'': To sum up: your father, whom you love, dies. You are his heir. You come back to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his young brother pops onto his throne and into his sheets, thereby offending both legal and natural practice. Now... why exactly are you behaving in this extraordinary manner?

* On the boat:

-->'''Rosencrantz''': Do you think death could possibly be a boat?\\

* WrongGenreSavvy: Twice Rosencrantz thinks he's found more objects behaving unusually just like the coin that proves their world is being manipulated. The two instances are a dropped ball and feather, and a set of pots arranged like a Newton's Cradle. In the case of the pots, [[spoiler:they break instead of swinging]]. In the case of the ball and feather...

* GeniusDitz: Rosencrantz. In spite of being rather slow to understand what is going on around him, he has a great deal of scientific curiosity and insight - to the point of replicating some of Archimedes and Galileo's key experiments.

* CriticalExistenceFailure
* DeadpanSnarker: Guildenstern.

* TheDividual: Taken UpToEleven with Rosencrantz & Guildenstern. Even ''they themselves'' can't tell which one is which.[[note]]The script gives them names for convenience—the more self-aware, neurotic one is "Guildenstern", the more cheerful, dim-witted one is "Rosencrantz"—and these names are conventionally used when actors are listed in the playbill. But the text of the play itself is very careful not to give any clue which is which; "Rosencrantz" answers to both names without noticing it.[[/note]] This goes back to a joke in ''{{Theatre/Hamlet}}''. When R and G appear at court, the King addresses them with "Thanks Rosencrantz, and gentle Guildenstern", and the Queen says "Thanks Guildenstern, and gentle Rosencrantz." Though the script doesn't say so, this is almost invariably performed as the Queen correcting the King, who mixed their names up.

[[caption-width-right:304:Do you ever think of yourself as actually ''dead'', lying in a box with a lid on it?]]

-->'''Rosencrantz''': You would think this [a ball] would fall faster than this [a feather], wouldn't you? (He drops them. [[spoiler:The feather, encountering more air resistance, is much the slower to fall.)'' ...And you'd be absolutely right.]]

-->'''Rosencrantz''': You would think this [a ball] would fall faster than this [a feather], wouldn't you? ''(He drops them. [[spoiler:''The feather, encountering more air resistance, is much the slower to fall.)''...And you'd be absolutely right.]]

-->'''Rosencrantz''': You would think this [ball] would fall faster than this [feather], wouldn't you? ''[drops them]'' [[spoiler:''[the feather, encountering more air resistance, is much the slower to fall]''...And you'd be absolutely right.]]

* PopculturalOsmosis: Even people who haven't seen the play and know nothing of its contents are aware of it -- and its leads.

-->'''Guildenstern''': (after counting) ...six!

-->'' A "thunk!" is heard as two more actors pantomime themselves hanging on the gallows on stage. These are clearly the in-play versions of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern themselves.''

--> '''Guildenstern''': "...stabbing his elders, abusing his parents, insulting his lover, and appearing hatless in public..."

'''The Player:''' We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.

-->"We can show you rapiers!" ''Players mimic a man and woman fencing'' "Or rape!" ''Players mimic the woman jumping on the man's crotch.'' "Or both!" ''Players mimic the woman raping the man while fencing another man.''
--->''(later in that same scene)''
-->"We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see."

-->'''Rozencrantz''' (possibly): "To sum up: your father, whom you love, dies. You are his heir. You come back to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his young brother pops onto his throne and into his sheets, thereby offending both legal and natural practice. Now... why exactly are you behaving in this extraordinary manner?"
-->'''Guildenstern''' (maybe): "I can't imagine."

--> -- '''First Ambassador''' in ''Theatre/Hamlet'', Act V, Scene II

->''The sight is dismal,\\

That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.''

* TheCuckoolanderWasRight: Rosencrantz, frequently. Guildenstern is the smarter of the two in terms of raw cognitive power, but has a tendency to think in circles. Rosencrantz comes closer to actual brilliance, but falls short of the mark trying to vocalize or demonstrate his thoughts to Guildenstern.

* AnyoneCanDie: One of the play's major themes is the fact that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were mostly innocent go-betweens and messengers in the whole Elsinore intrigue surrounding Hamlet and Claudius, and yet they're still paid for their peripheral participating with their lives.

* AnyoneCanDie: One of the play's major themes is the fact that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were mostly innocent go-betweens and messengers in the whole Elsinore intrigue surrounding Hamlet and Claudius, and yet their still paid for their peripheral participating with their lives.