R&G Are Dead - My Thoughts #3 (Act II)

How fun would it be to play Hamlet? Mel Gibson sure is a lucky dude. "I am but mad north north-west; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw" (55). Rosencrantz notices that "half of what [Hamlet] said meant something else, and the other half didn't mean anything at all" (57). I just think it would be really fun to play a crazy - or should I say "crazy" - person, whether he's faking it or not.

David and Carly came over last night to do our UTT project, and I had R&G Are Dead sitting on my desk. David picked it up and flipped through it. (Their class just watched the movie and didn't read the book). He pointed out that you're not supposed to know which character is which, whether the person speaking is Rosentrantz or Guildenstern, and that he didn't like that in the book the characters are distinguished and you can see who is saying what. That's partly necessary just because it's a play - if you saw it performed you wouldn't necessarily know which one is Rosencrantz and which one is Guildenstern. At the beginning of the play the writer does make character notes for them, but once again, we as the audience are not supposed to know which one struggles with wondering why and attempting to reason away bizzare circumstances and which one goes with the flow and seems a bit...slow...

Guildenstern's quote on page 60 picks up on the idea of providence that Hamlet grapples with as well as R&G in previous scenes in the play. "Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are...condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one - that is the meaning of order." This also highlights determinism, the idea that everything you do impacts another event, like the butterfly effect or a chain of cause and effect.

Page 66 shows a conversation that embodies postmodern concepts, and life questions in general:

PLAYER: Uncertainty is the normal state. You're nobody special.
GUIL: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!
PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.
GUIL: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.
PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.
GUIL: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.
PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions. What do you assume?

This dialogue addresses a large number of central themes and postmodern beliefs. First of all, uncertainty is accepted and embraced in postmodernisn - we cannont know anything beyond the only two concretes in life (we are born and we die) and everything else is abstract and therefore unknowable. Guildenstern would be Madison here - "Why?? I don't get it? It doesn't make sense!" He's the one searching for answers, but the player essentially spurts back every postmodern tennet in response. This conversation also highlights the idea of R&G being sponges. They only know what they are told; they only do what they are asked to do; they "[soak] up the king's countenance." "When he needs what you have gleaned," Hamlet tells them, "it is but squeezing you and, sponge, you shall be dry again" (90-91). Back to the dialogue, the player poses the postmodern challenge of truth, and also presents the idea of existentialism - "everything has to be taken on trust" parallels to a leap of faith.

Ok, I put a sticky note with a heart on it next to this quote just because I love the sound and the structure, the vocabulary and the imagery, and the artful craft with which the writer composed it:

"Autumnal - nothing to do with leaves. It is to do with a certain brownness at the edges of the day....Brown is creeping up on us, take my word for it...Russets and tangerine shades of old gold flushing the very outside edge of the senses...deep shining ochres, burn umber and parchments of baked earth - relflecting on itself and through itself, filtering the light. At such times, perhaps, coincidentially, the leaves might fall, somewhere, by repute. Yesterday was blue, like smoke" (94).