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Teachers' Resource Web Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Al Drake, UCI Act Two opens with R and G continuing their conversation. They have been telling Hamlet about the player they met on the way to Elsinore. Hamlet has seen through their idle chatter and forced from them the confession that they "were sent for'' by Claudius and Gertrude to see what's wrong with him. After mocking the King's advisor, Polonius, who has belatedly entered to tell Hamlet about the players' arrival, Hamlet leaves. R and G fall to repeating bits of the conversation for several pages. How do they diagnose Hamlet's behavior? and their own position? Hamlet asks the players to perform "The Murder of Gonzago'' and takes his leave of R and G, who don't see the significance of Hamlet's request. Then R and G drift into a conversation about death. (This occurs shortly before Hamlet delivers his "To be, or not to be'' soliloquy.) Gertrude and Claudius come by to ask R and G what news they have gleaned about Hamlet. R and G think of interrupting Hamlet's soliloquy, but they don't. The players enter again and rehearse their dumbshow to the part where the Queen accepts the murderer of her husband. At which point R and G hear the noisy argument that Hamlet and his insignificant other, Ophelia, have been carrying on. Claudius himself has been listening to this argument and decides to send Hamlet to England. Poor R and G are still trying to figure all this out. The pantomime continues--along with a discourse a bit like the one that Hamlet himself makes when he speaks to the players in Hamlet III.ii. Hamlet's own words are very wide of the mark in terms of the immediate plot. So how are we supposed to interpret it? But there's more--the pantomime includes things from later in Hamlet and in essence predicts the future of R and G. They are going to die. This prompts a serious metaphysical discussion about the significance of death. R and G also discuss the moral force of art, of an artistic death. Right at the poisoning scene, R and G take the place of the murdered king. What is the point of this? Just now, things begin to happen quickly--the King confers with R and G and says that Hamlet must be shipped quickly off to England. Hamlet goes to have it out with Gertrude and reform her. But Polonius, listening in behind the arras, is run through by Hamlet's misguided sword--the Prince had thought in Hamlet that Claudius was the one he was stabbing. Too bad. (Once again, Hamlet's intense desire for revenge has led him to commit an injustice. As Francis Bacon said, "Revenge is a kind of wild justice.'') R and G confront Hamlet, and are warned of their own vulnerability to Claudius' schemes. Nonetheless, they are left to question it all. The act ends with a reference to Fortinbras, nephew of the King of Norway, marching by Hamlet just before Hamlet leaves for England. R and G miss hearing Hamlet (Hamlet IV.iv) take his vengeful cue from Fortinbras' empty quarrel over a Polish patch of land.
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