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Definition of Irony
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this seems like a loose definition... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how... read full definition
Act 2
Explanation and Analysis—Never Forget a Face:
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern come face-to-face with a haunting instance of foreshadowing when they watch the Tragedians rehearse the dumbshow. Continuing The Murder of Gonzago, two performers dressed exactly as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern take the stage. Stoppard’s protagonist pair watches them kneel before the King, board a ship, and get beheaded by the king. After their death, Rosencrantz approaches them in disbelief:
Ros: Well, if it isn’t—! No, wait a minute, don’t tell me—it’s a long time since—where was it? Ah, this is taking me back to—when was it? I know you, don’t I? I never forget a face—(he looks into the Spy’s face)…not that I know yours, that is. For a moment I thought—no, I don’t know you, do I? Yes, I’m afraid you’re quite wrong. You must have mistaken me for someone else.
The dumbshow eerily narrates Guildenstern and Rosencrantz’s fate. Life seems to mimic art, and the events of this rehearsal match the play’s plot to a T. By the end of Act 2, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz will be shipped to England to escort their childhood friend. At Act 3’s conclusion, they will be dead. The Murder of Gonzago explicitly foretells their execution at the end of the play.
For the readers who catch the suggestion, this moment sets up a sharp sense of dramatic irony. Rosencrantz comes tantalizingly close to recognizing himself in the dead Spy, yet—bewilderingly—fails to take the cue. He stammers and pauses and stares at the actor, only to let the dumbshow’s not-so-subtle subtext fly completely over his head. Refusing to accept the portrayal and ignoring the parallels, he dismisses the dumbshow’s significance with muddled carelessness. “You must have mistaken me for someone else,” he concludes.
By overlooking a sign that is nearly impossible to ignore, Rosencrantz offers a reminder that tragedy often stems from human misrecognition. The tragic quality of a work lies as much in its characters’ inability to see their misfortunes as in the conclusion itself. The play’s dramatic irony highlights the pair’s fallibility and blindness—a failure to recognize their fate, even as it plays out straight before them.
Related Themes:
Act 3
Explanation and Analysis—Death Comes to All:
Any reader of Shakespeare’s Hamlet will know that Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are destined to die; in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the characters themselves do not. This lack of knowledge often makes for painful moments of irony. While transporting their charge towards England, Rosencrantz opens the sealed letter and reads aloud Hamlet’s death sentence. When he raises the prospect of sparing their childhood friend, Guildenstern waves it off:
Guil: Well, yes, and then again no. (Airily). Let us keep things in proportion. Assume, if you like, that they’re going to kill him. Well, he is a man, he is mortal, death comes to us all, etcetera, and consequently he would have died anyway, sooner or later. Or to look at it from the social point of view—he’s just one man from among many, the loss would be well within reason and convenience. And then again, what is so terrible about death? As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don’t know what death is, it is illogical to fear it. It might be…very nice. Certainly it is a release from the burden of life, and, for the godly, a haven and a reward. Or to look at it another way—we are little men, we don’t know the ins and outs of the matter, there are wheels within wheels, etcetera—it would be presumptuous of us to interfere with the designs of fate or even of kings. All in all, I think we’d be well advised to leave well alone. Tie up the letter—there—neatly—like that.—They won’t notice the broken seal, assuming you were in character.
Guildenstern dismisses any need to help Hamlet, appealing to “proportion” and Socrates. He even praises death as a potential “release from the burden of life,” a “haven and a reward.” Above all, his reasoning relies upon the assumption of humankind’s insignificance amid life’s grander designs. As victim, Hamlet is just “one man from among many,” so his death makes little difference. But as bystanders, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are equally powerless—they are “little men” who “don’t know the ins and outs of the matter,” and whose ignorance conveniently enables their complacency.
Guildenstern’s lengthy digression about fate is rich with irony. For the reader, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz’s execution is all but a certainty. That Guildenstern cites the “design of fate or even of kings” while destined to die himself makes his reasoning doubly devastating. If anything, supporting the same treatment that he is about to suffer merely makes Guildenstern appear all the more pathetic. His belittling lack of agency comes back to bite him when the tables turn on them. When Rosencrantz unseals the swapped letter and finds their execution orders instead, his companion cries out in anguish this time: “but why? Was it all for this? Who are we that so much should converge on our little deaths?”
In his overreliance on human fallibility, Guildenstern’s reaction contains an emphasis on his mortal limitations that also lends itself to a critique of passivity. Stoppard’s protagonists are indeed helpless in the face of an arbitrary and unjustified universe. But their reluctance to “interfere” in anything—compassion and friendship included—also costs them their lives.
Related Themes:
