Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (play)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, A Tragic Episode, in Three Tabloids is a short play by W. S. Gilbert that parodies William Shakespeare's Hamlet.
The main characters in Gilbert's play are King Claudius and Queen Gertrude of Denmark, their son Prince Hamlet, the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Ophelia.
[3] The play finally ran at the Court Theatre from 27 April 1892 to 15 July, about 77 performances,[4] with Decima Moore as Ophelia, Brandon Thomas as Claudius and Weedon Grossmith as Hamlet.
[7] Gilbert again played Claudius at a charity performance in 1904 at the Garrick Theatre (also featuring Clo Graves, Francis Burnand, Edward Rose, Paul Rubens, Lady Colin Campbell, Madeleine Lucette Ryley, Col. Newnham Davis, Alfred Sutro, Alicia Ramsey, Edward Rose and Capt.
[11] A televised performance of the play was given in 1938 with Grahame Clifford as Claudius, Erik Chitty as Guildenstern, Leonard Sachs as Rosencrantz, and Peter Ridgeway as Hamlet.
He illustrated The Piccadilly Annual; supervised a revival of Pygmalion and Galatea; and, besides Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he wrote Charity; a play about the redemption of a fallen woman; a dramatisation of Ought We to Visit Her?
"[16] In blank verse, King Claudius of Denmark confesses to his wife, Queen Gertrude, a secret crime of his youth: not that of killing anyone; rather, he was guilty of writing a five-act tragedy.
The queen counsels Claudius to forget about it and steers the conversation to the problem at hand: Prince Hamlet, a philosopher whose sanity is in doubt ("Opinion is divided....
She joins in their plan to break her unwanted engagement to the mercurial prince: Guildenstern and Rosencrantz will trick Hamlet into playing Claudius' tragedy before the king and thereby incur death.
They tell him that it is too long and all the parts are insignificant except his own – "A mad Archbishop who becomes a Jew to spite his diocese" and is forced to murder and soliloquise throughout the work.
Before the play begins, Hamlet instructs his players on his (and W. S. Gilbert's) theory of comic acting: "I hold that there is no such antick fellow as your bombastical hero who doth so earnestly spout forth his folly as to make his hearers believe that he is unconscious of all incongruity".
A reviewer of the 1891 performance in The Times wrote: "Lines of the familiar topsy-turvey description abound in the dialogue, and the 'business' of the actors, which has also been devised by Mr. Gilbert, is hardly less amusing.
