Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead By Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard, early years � Born Tomas Straussler on July 3, 1937, in Zlín, Czechoslovakia � Family fled to Singapore in 1939 to escape the Nazis � World War II, he went with his mother and younger brother to India to escape the invading Japanese

Tom Stoppard � His father, a doctor, stayed behind in Singapore ◦ He died on his way to join his wife and sons � In India, his mother met and married Kenneth Stoppard, a major in the British army � In 1946, the family moved to Bristol, England, just as India declared its independence from Britain � Tom embraced British life ◦ English literature ◦ English word plays

Writing � Stoppard left school at age 17 ◦ Journalist writing play reviews for Scene magazine in London ◦ Also began writing plays ◦ wrote a one-act play in 1964 called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear ◦ Rewrote, expanded into three acts, and retitled ◦ Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead �Stoppard’s most famous play ◦ Premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1966 ◦ The National Theatre in London in 1967 ◦ Debuted on Broadway in the United States later that year � Stoppard went on to win the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright in 1967 � Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead earned the Plays and Players Best Play Award in 1967 � Tony Award for Best Play in 1968

Career � 1980 s he began working in the movies ◦ wrote the script for Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun (1987) ◦ rewrite on Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) � To secure financing for a movie version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Stoppard decided to write the screenplay and direct the film himself (1990) ◦ The movie, which stars Gary Oldman and Tim Roth, earned the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival in 1990 � His other screenplay credits include: ◦ ◦ Billy Bathgate (1991) The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) Bond 22 (2007) Screenplay for Shakespeare in Love (1998) earned Stoppard and his co-writer, Marc Norman, an Oscar and a Golden Globe for Best Screenplay � This movie imagines a young William Shakespeare, poor and suffering from writer’s block, entering into a passionate but doomed love affair

Hamlet �Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead borrows heavily from Hamlet ◦ The title is taken directly from the final scene of Shakespeare's Hamlet. �http: //www. sparknotes. com/shakespeare/ha mlet/

Title � � � Prince Hamlet, having been exiled to England by the treacherous King of Denmark (his uncle, who murdered Hamlet's father to obtain the throne) discovers en route a letter from the King carried by his old but now untrusted friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern The letter commands Hamlet's death upon his arrival in England Hamlet rewrites the letter to command Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's death and escapes back to Denmark By the end of Shakespeare's play, Prince. Hamlet, Laertes, Ophelia, Polonius, King Claudius and Gertrude all lie dead An ambassador from England arrives to bluntly report "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead" (Hamlet. Act V, Scene II, line 411) and so they join all the stabbed, poisoned, and drowned key characters. By the end of Hamlet, Horatio is the only main figure left alive http: //en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Rosencrantz_and_Guildenstern_Are_Dead

After Rosencrantz and Guildenstern… �Became politically active �Wrote several scripts about political prisoners and the fall of communism in the Czech Republic �Stoppard is considered to be a potential candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature