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Pathos
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
Despite its inspiration from Shakespeare’s famed 17th-century play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead makes only minimal reference to setting. The work offers a new spin on Denmark’s Elsinore Castle, but it relies almost entirely upon the audience’s understanding of the Shakesperean classic to ground itself. Stoppard provides few other stage props or cues, leaving the characters to wander through stretches of negative space. Apart from descriptions of the ship’s upper and lower decks, the play leaves it up to the reader to construct its world. Guildenstern and Rosencrantz flip coins, banter, and speak with the Tragedians almost entirely against an unspecified stage background.
This near absence of placemaking contributes to the story’s fleeting, impressionistic sense of reality. Characters drift in and out, scenes change with the turn of a page—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern get transported to Elsinore Castle at the bolt of lightning—and the acts close with little forewarning. Stoppard’s emphasis on dialogue and action over context works to often disorienting, fractured effect. It embodies the absurdity of the work’s existentialist theme. Without setting, the plot bears little logical coherence; Hamlet’s two childhood friends simply find themselves transported from street to castle to ship, unable to process or influence the world around them. The haphazard sequence of events makes it no less difficult for the reader to follow along. The play’s avoidance of setting makes for a story that is almost entirely unmoored from both time and place.
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