What is the significance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in this play? why have both of them, won't one do? why are they so interchangeable?

-- jacob gray (jsgray@stthomas.edu), October 27, 2003

Answers

I think Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are significant to the play because they are a part of Hamlet's realization that he has few alies and how corruption spreads from the top down (King to people). Although they are his friends from school or childhood they are courtiers and allies to the king. I am not sure why there are always together and so much alike. Maybe they are lovers? There was something in the text about them smiling when Hamlet said something like "man does not please me nor woman".

-- Kristina M. Phillips (phillipsk@earthlink.net), November 17, 2003.

In defence of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, I might say that these two young men receive a commission from the King which, whatever the King's secret intentions may be, is entirely honourable. Guildenstern's words show that the two young men understand their work in an irreproachable way:

"Heaven make our presence and our practices Pleasant and helpful to him."

They are not, in any way that I can understand, "corrupted".

-- Patrick Walker (the_right_hand_of_doom@msn.com), November 17, 2003.

It depends how you read bits like III.iii.1-26.

-- catherine england (catherine_england@hotmail.com), November 19, 2003.

You've gotta watch or read "Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are dead". Its insightful... and hilarious. In making the two of them interchangeable, neither of them have a personality or a motive, so they are pawns that help guide the story along

-- 80 T (taylor80_@hotmail.com), November 26, 2003.