As Frank D. McConnell points out in his introduction to Byron's "Manfred", Byron knew that in some sense the play was a failure, and therefore he "insisted, both in letters and in prefaces to his plays, that they were never intended for performance on the stage" (124). But could it have been intended for performance in some other medium? The text of "Manfred" is grand in its conception, a play with settings so enormous and visually demanding that they could never be accurately depicted within the confines of a theater stage.

But these settings could be reproduced on a sound stage; the visual demands of "Manfred's" settings and events could be done in the medium of film. I want to suggest that Byron was caught halfway between the traditional concept of drama and the modern version: the movie script, or screenplay. He is reaching for a drama that is bigger than the stage, a visual extravaganza that captures the majesty of his theme with settings in castles and mountains. But, because film has not even been invented yet, he cannot imagine how to structure and contain such a grand design. "Manfred" is a play that is reaching for the future form of the screenplay, but without the medium of film that makes a screenplay possible. He knew that his drama was not suitable for the stage, that if it were presented as a typical drama, it would lose its visual power. It was meant for something larger than the stage; the medium of film would have provided the perfect outlet for the expression of visual ideas that Byron attempted in "Manfred".

It is important that we remember that "Manfred" was not intended for a theater audience, both because of its grand visual conception and because of its lack of action (in the sense of physical movement). In his book "Cinematics", Paul Weiss says that "[a] script is written for a film and not for an audience" (36). A script is meant to present the bare ideas and visual images which will be transformed into something believable by the actors, sets and director of a film. Or as Weiss says, a screenplay is "[n]ot offered as a novel or play is, as something to be enjoyed in the reading [or viewing], [but instead] the script verbally expresses a visualized idea which is to be filmed as an interrelated set of incidents" (26). Like a script, "Manfred" is meant to convey ideas and images that will later be utilized in the making of film; it is not meant to be read or viewed by an audience except in the final film form. Despite the fact that Byron could not have even imagined the future world of film and movies, he still recognized that there was something missing from "Manfred". This missing piece was the final realization of the play's ideas, settings, and images in the form of a film; it is a screenplay in a world that does not know of movies.

"Manfred" shares many other traits with the screenplay. All the texts which attempted to define a screenplay placed heavy emphasis on the visual element, since, of course, the screenplay is meant for film, a visual medium. For example, Bernard F. Dick, in his "Anatomy of Film", says that "[m]aterial that ... could not be shown on stage can be visualized in film. Significant places mentioned in the dialogue can be shown" (191). This would be true of "Manfred" if it were seen as a screenplay instead of a theatrical drama. Manfred's castle, the mountain of Jungfrau, the cataract of II, ii, and the Hall of Arimanes—all of these could be pictured in their grandeur on film, which, of course, would add the grandeur to the play that its ideas demand. Whereas on stage, cheap sets and props could only attempt—and ultimately fail—to capture the visual power of the settings that Byron has purposefully used in "Manfred". This ability to capture images is one of the most powerful arguments for viewing "Manfred" as a screenplay before its time instead of a failed drama.

Some other arguments for seeing "Manfred" as a pre-filmic screenplay are some of the complex visual images and characters that Byron introduces in the play. Aside from the grand settings that would require the use of film, Byron also creates several characters and props that would be visually difficult to reproduce on the stage. One of these instances occurs when the spirits appear to Manfred in the first act. The spirits themselves would present staging problems; in a film, the director could utilize special effects to make the spirits seem as majestic and otherworldly as Byron obviously wants them to be. But on stage the best that a director could use would be costumes or puppets. This would weaken the intensity of the drama, for they would seem like exactly what they are: props.

Note, too, the stage directions for the spirits' entrance: "A star is seen at the darker end of the gallery: it is stationary; and a voice is heard singing" (126); the place and time of this scene is a "Gothic Gallery" at midnight. Although this could be staged, it would be far less effective that it would be on film. On stage the proper effect of a gothic gallery, with its dark corners and vaulted arches, would be difficult to achieve, especially since there would still have to be enough light so that the actor was visible to the audience. Likewise, the spirits' entrance as a light at the one end of the stage would be difficult to achieve on stage, especially considering the ethereal and otherworldly effect that Byron obviously intended. On film, however, all of these sets and effects could be arranged so that they are not only convincing, but also in keeping with the dramatic effect that Byron was attempting: the gallery could be made suitably dark, gothic, and eerie, and the spirits' entrance could be made appropriately otherworldly. In requiring such grand effects, Byron knows that he is reaching for something beyond what the theater has to offer—but he doesn't know exactly what he is attempting, because he cannot conceive of the medium of film. From the first scene on, however, we, the 20th century, post-cinematic audience can see how Byron's play would be more appropriate as a screenplay than as a traditional staged drama.

Another scene whose setting and props would be nearly impossible to convincingly stage is II, iv, where Manfred visits the Hall of Arimanes, the "ruler of evil and earthbound spirits in the mythology of Zoroastrianism" (126). The first difficulty in preparing this scene for the theater stage would, of course, be to create a suitably impressive Arimanes; this difficulty would be increased by the fact that the director would be limited to the use of an ordinary man to play his part. Remember that Arimanes is supposed to be a larger-than-life ruler of the spirit world, whose might and majesty—the "terror of his Glory" (145)—must be stressed in order to make Manfred's refusal to bow to him that much more meaningful and impressive. Another difficulty would be in staging the scene according to Byron's directions—he says that Arimanes is seated on his throne, which is "A Globe of Fire" (144). The difficulties implicit here are obvious—but as in the earlier description of the spirits and their entrance into Manfred's gallery, the special effects available to the filmmaker would eliminate any problems in staging. And in fact, due to the spectacular visual imagery required, "Manfred" would actually be ideal to the requirements of a good film—which, of course, needs strong images in order to be effective.

There are other examples of strong visual cues in "Manfred" that could be used to strengthen my position, but I think that you see the point. There are other ways to approach "Manfred" as a screenplay, however. For instance, Weiss says that "[a] script need not tell a story; its development need not be in consonance with any dramatic rules. But it must express a meaning, and its development must unite beginning and end so as to constitute a single whole of contrasts and unions, tensions and resolutions" (24). This description is in some ways very apt when applied to Byron's play. Though he was, of course, aware of theatrical and dramatic conventions, and though he did utilize some of them in "Manfred", he also disregards many of them, such as the unity of place and some of the basic rules of staging, which I have already discussed. In addition, Byron virtually ignores the traditional structures of dramatic action, preferring instead to focus on psychological and spiritual drama. But the theme of the play, the struggle of man to reach beyond the power of man and the exploration of the farthest limits of human experience and possibilities, is developed and examined throughout the play. The play, whatever other failings it might have, is "a single whole of contrasts and unions, tensions and resolutions"; in this was as well it fits the mold of a screenplay.

We see other examples of Byron's difficulties inn writing a screenplay that is unaware of the existence of film and its techniques in his characters' language. Dick says that, even though it is based on a script, in a film "the script recedes into the background as it changes from a verbal to a visual text, so that by the time the film has been completed, the words have been translated into images" (200). We see Byron attempting, through poetic language spoken by his characters, to translate words into images—except that he, without the benefit of film, is confined to use words only. Some of the speeches are spoken not because they are necessary to the movement of the play and its theme, but because the author want to describe an image that is either too large or too difficult to create on a theater stage. In other words, Byron has an image in his mind that goes along with the text, but that, due to the nature of conventional drama and its limitations, he finds impossible to actually show—so he must use his characters' words to create that image.

One example of this comes in I, ii, when Manfred is engaged in a soliloquy about his mortality:

To be thus—
Grey-haired with anguish, like these blasted pines,
Wrecks of a single winter, barkless, branchless,
A blighted trunk upon a cursed root.
(65-68)

On theater stage, where it would be impossible to show the expanse of trees that are the inspiration for Manfred's thoughts on his existence, Byron must rely on words to convey the images. And as poetic and descriptive as this speech is, it is still composed of words, which could never compare to the actual forest growing on the side of a mountain that was obviously Byron's influence for these images. But in a film, the camera could capture precisely what the words can only attempt to describe. The speech still might be used to provide insight into Manfred's mind, but they would achieve much greater power and meaning with an actual image to back them up—instead of the words simply substituting themselves for the image.

Another instance of this sort occurs in II, ii, the scene in which Manfred summons the Witch of the Alps from the mountain cataract:

It is not noon—the Sunbow's rays still arch
The torrent with the many hues of heaven,
And roll the sheeted silver's waving column
O'er the crag's headlong perpendicular,
And flings its lines of foaming light along,
And to and fro, like the pale courser's tail
(1-6)

This is only an excerpt of Manfred's first speech from this scene, and yet already we see how descriptive the language is, how it is filled with images. The rest of the passage is similarly descriptive and visually oriented, especially the description of the Witch of the Alps. If this were a screenplay, however, most of it would probably be crossed out, and used merely as a guide for the stage designer and special effects person. As powerful and beautiful as the language is, it would be made even more effective were it to be translated into an actual image—which is, after all, what the language is attempting to create in the mind of the viewer or reader. Byron knows, like all good writers, that that which is shown is more powerful than that which is merely described; but, because these images are so integral to the whole of the story, and because he does not have the power to create images like those that can be captured on film, Byron must resort to descriptive passages that suggest the visions in his mind, when in fact he would like to show the audience something.

There are many other examples of descriptive language in the text that prove my point, but I trust that these will suffice. All of the aspects of the play that I have discussed so far show that "Manfred" is a middle, often overlooked step on drama's path from theater stage to movie set. It shares many elements with traditional forms of drama, but is at the same time so revolutionary that it is often perceived as a failure, as somehow incomplete, despite its wealth of descriptive language and its thorough exploration of a grand theme. But, as Dick points out, "a screenplay is prefilmic, [and] it may contain material that [will] never [reach] the screen" (176). Byron had to include what some critics consider to be too much description, for the images that are conveyed to the audience through the words of the characters are integral to the movement of the play. Had it been an actual screenplay, these descriptions would have been transformed into actual images, just as the settings, such as the mountains and the castle, would have been transformed into a real castle, and real mountains. Weiss says that "[a] written play is so much a part of an acted play that changes in the one usually involve changes in the other, whereas a considerable change can be made in a script without altering its thrust, value, or intent" (40). Due to its emphasis on imagined visualizations and ideas, we can see that "Manfred" falls into the category of script or screenplay more easily than it does drama; it, too, could be interpreted in any number of ways by any number of filmmakers without altering its true spirit. In fact, its essence is all but unstageable in a theater; Byron realized this, and that is why he did not want it ever to be performed.

In the end, the reader realizes that Byron's play is something different from the traditional drama; it is reaching for something much grander and much more visually oriented than a staged play. Looking back on it from the perspective of a 20th century audience which is at least as used to seeing drama and action on the silver screen as on the theatrical stage, we can see that "Manfred", with its focus on larger-than-life settings, otherworldly effects, and dialogue that asks us to visualize as much as it advances the theme, would be perfectly suited to a film adaptation. Francis Ford Coppola, one of the most powerful and visually challenging directors of our time, had this to say about screenplays: "A screenplay, of course, is not a finished piece of art; it's only the blueprint for a film" (qtd. in Weiss 23). If "Manfred" is a failure, then, it is only a failure because Byron could not have imagined the medium for which his vision was ideally made; it is a failure only because it was too far ahead of its time.


4 May 1993

Byron, George Gordon Noel Byron, Baron. "Byron's Poetry". Selected and edited by Frank D. McConnell. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978.

Dick, Bernard F. "Anatomy of Film". New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990.

Weiss, Paul. "Cinematics". Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois UP, 1975.

Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" is primarily a play of questions. The main characters (hereafter referred to as Ros and Guil) question everything: where they are, why they are where they are, what they are going to do next, what they are supposed to do next, and ultimately, who they are. Through the use of questions and questioning, Ros and Guil attempt to define "reality", understand the meaning of choice, and recognize their place in the scheme of things. The famous question "To be or not to be" that is at the heart of the original Shakespearean text is here transformed by Stoppard into the post-modern query, "What does it mean to be?"

We arrive at this one central question by way of other related questions. One that is brought up in this play from the first act on is the question of what is "real" and what is not. Stoppard chooses to bring up this question by creating a tension between the "real life" (life as it is experienced outside the context of the theater stage) and the life of a character who is condemned to say the lines that have been written for him. Interestingly enough, Stoppard chooses the life of the character as more "real", as if the theater's bounds are closer to the actual limitations of life than the limitations that we as humans set on ourselves. In other words, those characters (most notably the Player and his troupe) who are aware of their limitations as characters are actually freer to act than those characters who are not aware of their roles. Just as those people who are unable or unwilling to accept certain limitations to their actions because of their humanity and mortality are ultimately those who end up being the most limited, so Ros and Guil are destined to walk through their roles without ever truly reaching the self-conscious freedom of the Player, who, despite his supposed limitations, is perhaps the most liberated of all of Stoppard's characters.

Ros and Guil, on the other hand, represent two aspect of what is most stagnant and repressed about the modern man. Ros has given up trying to understand the world around him and his place in it due to the overwhelmingly bewildering complexity of the universe and its workings; he would prefer to be buffeted about by fate, drifting from one place to another without any clear goal in mind. This is shown in his constant linguistic drifts (he often forgets Guil's questions by the time he gets around to answering them), and in his inability to distinguish himself from Guil (a confusion of identity due to his own lack of self-will). His attitude toward life is stated plainly in his speech on the boat:

I'm very fond of boats myself. I like the way they're—contained. You don't have to worry about which way to go, or whether to go at all—the question doesn't arise, because you're on a boat, aren't you? Boats are safe areas in the game of tag … players will hold their positions until the music starts.… I think I'll spend most of my life on boats. (101-102)

All he wants out of life is "safe area" where he doesn't have to "worry about which way to go, or whether to go at all"—forgetting, of course, that in a boat, just as in life, action is required to keep from being dashed on the rocks.

Guildenstern, on the other hand, thinks too much about himself and his relation to the world around him—so much that he is prevented from realizing his own power of choice and free will. He wants to be sure that he is doing the "right" thing—he must be totally sure of all the possible repercussions of his actions before he commits them. Of course, this leads to total inaction on his part, because part of taking action is taking a risk—which Guil is unwilling to do. Like the Nazi death-camp overseers who insist that they were "just following orders", Guil prefers to let those with temporal power make all his decisions for him, for fear of making the wrong one himself:

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 kings. All in all, I think we'd be well advised to leave well alone. (110)

Despite his philosophical attempts to understand his role in the universe, when it comes down to it, Guil is as indifferent as Ros. They are "little men" indeed—not because of fate, but because they are unwilling to take action. Their fate is decided for them not because of who they are, but because of who they choose not to be. Elie Wiesel said that the opposite of love was not hate, but rather indifference. Ros and Guil take different approaches to understanding the events that they find themselves involved in, but the end result is the same: indifference. Indifference to events, to others, and finally to themselves. Together Ros and Guil are the epitome of the modern man who is unable to act on his own; two sides of the same coin, or, as the Player might say, "the same side of two coins" (23).

Stoppard starts us thinking about the tension between freedom and limitation in "real life" and on the stage from the very first conversation. The play begins with Ros and Guil tossing coins. "Heads", calls Ros every time Guil spins a coin, and heads appears over ninety times until Guil's bag is empty. Stoppard makes a point in his notes to say that the pair is "passing the time in a place without any visible character" (11). They are in a nowhere, a non-place where the laws of probability have been suspended. They exist out of time, space and physics—until the Player and his troupe show up. The law of probability returns—the coin comes up tails—only after the Player begins to give a play. In other words, the world of the stage is meta-fictionally presented as a "real" world, one that has the same appearance to the characters who inhabit it as our reality does to us.

Stoppard's intent in setting up the world that exists on the stage as an alternate reality that is just as important, just as "real" as the reality that we experience, is two-fold. The first is to give the Shakespearean maxim "All the world's a stage" a post-modern twist—the stage is a world itself. The second is to remind us that we, just as the characters in a play, are subject to certain limitations in life; there are more parallels between our own lives and actions and those of the characters up on stage than we might at first think.

These parallels are pointed out in many of the conversations between the Player, who, as a meta-conscious character, is freed to act according to his free will, despite his scripted lines, and Ros and Guil, who, as representatives of the overly-introspective modern man, spend the whole play talking instead of taking action. "But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!" (66) questions Guil desperately. "Relax. Respond," answers the Player. "That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn" (66). Which is true: if we, like Guil, went through life always wondering if our actions were absolutely right and necessary, then we would never be able to act at all. Or if, like Ros, we decided not to act because we relied so heavily on fate that we saw no need to ever do anything, then of course our indifference would lead to someone else always taking action for us—just as Hamlet takes action to change his imminent death at the end of this play. Ros and Guil let their limitations as characters (not acting because they cannot understand their condition fully despite constant questioning, or, conversely, knowing that they will never know and therefore simply not caring) limit their actions.

The Player, on the other hand, seems to be liberated from the bonds that prevent Ros and Guil from taking any action of their own precisely because of his awareness of his limitations as an actor and a character. Commenting on one of Guil's many self-doubting questions about he and Ros's purpose (at Elsinore and in the broader, philosophical sense), the Player responds:

For all anyone knows, nothing is [true]. Everything has to be taken on trust; trust is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions. What do you assume? (67)

This question is one of the Player's many attempts to raise Ros and Guil's consciousness about themselves and their limitations. By asking them what they assume, he is asking them to look inside themselves and define reality as they know it, define it subjectively and on their own terms, in order that Ros and Guil might better understand themselves by better understanding the way in which they perceive the world around them. Typically, however, Ros responds with someone else's words ("Hamlet is not himself"), and Guil spins the conversation off into a pointless attempt to define precisely what it means to not be oneself. Despite the Player's continued interventions in the conversation, Ros and Guil once again manage to avoid answering truly important questions and concentrate instead on the meaningless, Laurel and Hardy-esque misunderstandings of language that characterize so many of their conversations.

In fact, the only time that the Player truly seems at a loss for words is when Ros and Guil, who asked for a play from the Player and his company, betray the trust which the Player speaks so reverently of. Ros and Guil are somehow transported to Elsinore as soon as the play being given by the Player and his company begins, and therefore miss the play that is being staged expressly for their benefit off in the non-descript shadow land where we found them at the beginning of the play. When the Player shows up at Elsinore to fulfill his role in "Hamlet", he is angry, almost out of control, and yet strangely vulnerable, almost helpless in the face of Ros and Guil's abandonment of the play: "You don't' understand the humiliation of it—to be tricked out of the single assumption which makes our existence viable—that somebody is watching" (63). The lack of an audience creates a rupture in the faith that holds together the universe as he knows it. He realizes the importance of an audience to his existence, and is shocked that Ros and Guil could so casually abandon him and his company to the oblivion of an empty theater.

Whisking Ros and Guil off to Elsinore at the start of the Player's play serves another purpose as well. When Ophelia first enters, signifying the entrance of "Hamlet" into Stoppard's text, we are not sure whether the events on stage should be considered "real" (i.e., real to Ros and Guil's point of view) or whether they are part of the play being given by the Player and his company—or both. This sudden, unannounced transition effectively blurs the line between the Player's play within a play, Shakespeare's text, and Stoppard's play, a device which Stoppard uses throughout "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" to remind the audience of the lack of clearly defined boundaries between the events on stage and reality.

Another way in which Stoppard tries to convince us that the world of the stage is at least as real as the world as we experience it is by physically confining Ros and Guil to the stage. Although we are never sure if they are quite conscious of the fact that they cannot leave the stage (a physical representation of their inability to accept or understand their limitations as characters), there are times when, if they would only pay attention, they would be able to figure it out. For instance, at one point (page 86), they are ordered by Claudius to go and find Hamlet. They decide to split up, but each time they approach the edge of the stage, they do not exit, but rather retreat back to the middle. This could be read in two ways: one, the author is preventing them from leaving; or two, they are unable to leave because off stage, and without an audience, they do not exist. Either way, they remain blindly unaware of their physical limitations.

Their imprisonment bears some allegorical parallels to our own condition as humans, however. They are never able to leave the stage, just as we are unable to escape from this mode of existence into some other (until death, anyway). Ros and Guil are ever in each other's company, which can be seen as a parallel of our inability to escape from our consciousness, the inner "I", the voice with which we have our conversations about ourselves. This parallel is further strengthened by the fact that Ros and Guil function as foils for one another—neither would seem complete without the other to compliment him.

Stoppard brings up these themes for several reasons. First, he wants us to understand that the limitations placed on characters can be seen as close parallels of some of the limitations placed on us as humans. And he does this to remind the audience that, like the actors who require both the faith and belief of an audience in order to exist, so we too require each other's faith that there is some purpose to our actions. Without the context of human society to respond and react to our actions as individuals, everything would soon seem pointless. Without the possibility of our actions and words communicating something to someone else, we would no longer believe that there was any meaning behind our actions, since without a society to react to them, our actions (or inactions) would seem to have no consequences, and therefore no real purpose. Without the faith of a community in which to explore ourselves through our actions and words, we would become like actors without an audience—lost and meaningless without a context for our actions.

Language and its uses and meanings is another theme that Stoppard explores in the play. Like the characters, language is the means by which we explore ourselves and our role in the scheme of things, as well as the way that we communicate with others and establish the faith that sets the context for actions. Like the characters on the stage, language is our only "way of knowing reality", a tool that allows us "to pass from the stage of implicit, often blind beliefs [the trust between the actors and the audience that is so cherished by the Player] to an awareness and acceptance of degrees of probability from which we can choose and act" (Makay and Brown, qtd. in Zivanovic 47). But language can only achieve these ends if properly utilized—and it is this utility that Ros and Guil have such trouble with.

Their use of language is often self-defeating, or at least stagnant; they seldom end up knowing any more about themselves or their situation at the end of a conversation than they do at the beginning, even when they are being prodded by a meta-conscious character like the Player, who is trying to raise Ros and Guil's own self-awareness by bringing them to a greater understanding of language and its role in the formation of human community and trust. As Zivanovic points out:

Their favorite means of "communication" is the most doomed to failure: it does not ask questions and give answers about meanings, it does not give answers at all, it simply requires questions. In this game of circular dialectic, questions are met with questions: whoever answers with a statement, repetition, non sequitor, or with a rhetorical question loses. The prohibition of the rhetorical question provides a good deal of irony and insight into the futility of this game in any effort towards awareness. (51)

In other words, they actually enjoy circular dialogue which leads them nowhere but back into the dead end of themselves and their lack of understanding. Or as Zivanovic says: "Inherent in the rules [of both the game and the way that Ros and Guil look at the world] is the inability to gain answers" (51).

William E. Gruber also comments on Ros and Guil's constant misinterpretation of other people's language as well as their own. He realizes that in some ways it is a comic device, a post-modern, confused twisting of the artful wit of Shakespeare's characters (who, incidentally, remain linguistically superior to Ros and Guil throughout the play). But there is something deeper and more sinister about their inability to use language as a tool for instead of a barrier to communication:

the courtiers' inept mishandling of language does not long remain a comic malapropism, but bends … with a crookedness that is straight. Both twisted syntax and twisted logic are appallingly true: wherever they are—on boats, on the road, within a court—it is the fate of Ros and Guil never to be. (298)

This analysis brings us to another of the play's questions: "grappling with the concept of death as a state of negative existence" (Gruber 298). As Zivanovic points out, "the title informs us from the moment we read it … the [Ros and Guil] are dead" (55). this fact point not only to their eventual "deaths" at the end of the play, but also to their constant state of non-being during the play due to their unwillingness to choose, to take action. As Gruber points out, they are like the souls in the Vestibule of Hell in Dante's "Inferno"—"desperately pursuing .. [anything] that might ultimately give them human shape, human meaning" (300). They "have eschewed choice and action so their lives have no meaning" (Zivanovic 55-56); their inability to choose put them outside of the context of human understanding, exiles them from the human community that is build on trust. Like Dante's lost souls who are not even allowed to enter Hell proper, but must remain forever outside of it, Ros and Guil are not even granted proper theatrical deaths; they merely fade from view at the close of the play.

This all brings us back to the original question—"To be or not to be"—and Stoppard's post-modern counterpart: "What does it mean to be—or not to be?" The post-holocaust opposite of hate—indifference—can also be read as inaction, both of which are demonstrated by Ros and Guil at the crucial moment in the text when they have their last chance to make a difference through meaningful action and truly enter into a state of being. This moment occurs when they open the sealed letter and discover that they are taking Hamlet to England to meet with his doom. Instead of taking action to insure that Hamlet is not killed, instead of doing something to prevent his unwarranted demise, the two merely rationalize away their responsibility toward his (as both friends and in the broader sense that respects Hamlet's humanity). Their excuses are eerily like those of the Nazi soldiers who killed the Jews during the Holocaust and of the onlookers in Poland and France who allowed the Nazis to commit their actions. Guil takes the soldiers' position, rationalizing that he is "just following orders", and therefore his personal responsibility toward Hamlet is removed and transferred to "fate" and "kings" (110). Ros, on the other hand, takes a typically non-interventionist stance, saying that it must be "for his own good" (111), a defense that was used by many of the villagers whose towns were transformed by the Nazis into death factories.

However, their inaction does not lead to Hamlet's demise, but rather their own. Hamlet takes action to keep himself alive and replaces the letter ordering his death with one that orders Ros and Guil's. By choosing not to save Hamlet, they have actually chosen not to save themselves. The Golden Rule also receives a post-modern twist: Ros and Guil are done unto exactly as they have done unto others. Even at the end, when they read the new letter and realize that they are the ones to be put to death, Ros and Guil do not protest, but merely continue in their state of non-being and inaction until their "deaths", in which they simply fade from our sight. Finally we realize that Ros and Guil were "so tied to inaction and orders, [that] they ultimately accept their last [order] commissioning their own death" (Zivanovic 54). It is the opposite of suicide: self-annihilation through lack of choice and action.

So what is Stoppard trying to tell us about post-modern existence through the lives and words of his characters? I have already pointed out how I think he goes to great lengths to show how the limitations placed on characters in a play are not all that different from those that are placed on the audiences by virtue of being human, or at least how the distinctions between what happens on the stage and what happens in "reality" are often not all that far apart. And this comparison is given even more credibility in light of the philosophical discussions on blame and responsibility that were triggered by the Holocaust, especially when we consider that a Holocaust-like triptych is established in the last scene: Ros and Guil are equivalent to the soldiers and onlookers who, even if they did not directly cause the deaths of the Jews, also did nothing to prevent it; and Hamlet in the role of innocent victim who is ordered killed by a powerful leader.

Stoppard is trying to tell us that our uncertainty about what is "right" and what is "wrong" is the normal human condition, and that it should not prevent us from deciding what we think is right and taking action to keep bad things from happening. Ros and Guil broke the trust of the human community when they refused to save Hamlet, or at least give him the information that would allow him to save himself. In order for the members of the audience to keep from repeating their mistake, Stoppard shows the personal consequences of inaction by having Hamlet take action against Ros and Guil because of their inaction on his behalf. In so doing, Stoppard "assert[s] a view of human activity that stresses men's ultimate responsibility—whether prince or actor or lackey—for what they do, and so for who they are" (Gruber 308). As the Player says, "[u]ncertainty is a normal state" (66). But it should not prevent action on behalf of a fellow human, and, reflexively, oneself.


2 May 1993

Gruber, William E. "'Wheels within wheels, etcetera': Artistic Design in 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead'". "Comparative Drama" 15 (1981-1982): 291-310

Stoppard, Tom. " Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead". New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1967.

Zivanovic, Judith. "Meeting Death Already There: The Failure to Choose in Stoppard's ' Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead'". "Liberal and Fine Arts Review" 1 (1981): 44-56.

If someone makes a webpage and gives the wrong URL, does it really exist?

I thought that was pretty amusing, so I hit the refresh button to see if there were any others. Turns out, there were at least 30. Here are some of the other good ones:

If you're reading this, it means this page is no more. It's probably not your fault.

Apparently, this page is not compatible with any browsers.

We didn't do it.

Your lucky numbers for today: 4, 0, 4.

If at first you don't succeed, type, type again.

If you had a nickel for each time you hit an incorrect URL, you'd be 5 cents richer right now.

You're disappointed? Mom wanted us to be a doctor.

'I remember when the internet only had a few pages, and they all worked' - 'Sure, Grampa...'

If true happiness can only be achieved through a state of nothingness, you're going down the right path.

It doesn't seem like that big a deal, but when I find little things like this, especially on a site from a big company like Angelfire, it makes me feel a little more optimistic about the future of the internet, because it reminds me of the early days when everything on the web was handmade by a single person, and there were funny little things like this on almost every site (not error pages necessarily, but hidden nuggets that you almost invariably discovered by accident while exploring a site). Since the corporate takeover of the web, quirky little bits of personality have been increasingly hard to find on sites, even on the sites of companies that wouldn't exist without the internet. I see something like this and I know that somewhere behind all the servers and high speed pipelines and oppressive policies, there is a person just like me who probably worked unpaid overtime for a few nights so he could add a human touch, his own personal mark, to his company's site. Whoever you are, I just want you to know that we appreciate it.

Oh, and by the way, if you haven't watched Aqua Teen Hunger Force yet, you really should. One of the funniest cartoons I've ever seen. And the theme song from Schoolly D is quite possibly the best theme song ever (although the ones from Sealab 2021 and Mission Hill are pretty good, too).

Really liked "lines"—the ironic thing about "My White Devil" is that Ian cribbed the opening lines of the song from a paper his then-girlfriend had written for a class on Webster.

Very meta...

Interesting. I'm beginning to believe that I am either not as smart as or much smarter than I think I am, and that, either way, Doug is a genius whose pop culture knowledge continues to oustrip my own.

Paul Auster's "Moon Palace" investigates the differences between art and reality by exploring the limits of several types of artistic media. One of Auster's main themes, which recurs in this work, is the question of what happens to the writer when he runs out of ink and paper, or to the painter when she runs out of colors. This novel includes a painter, a writer, and a literary critic who use their vocations to explore the nature of existence and to provide some sort of organization for their own personal experiences. But each of these men reach a point where they have to deal with some unknown about themselves, so that the question each of them must ask themselves is: which is more important for understanding the world around them, art and artifice or the facts of reality?

The dilemmas inherent in this question are further complicated by the fact that the three main characters are a grandfather-father-son trio who do not know that they are related when they first meet. Much of each of their work focuses on searching for the lost father figure, or at least trying to understand the world from the point of view of the fatherless child. In addition, the work of all three is inn some way an attempt to understand what it means to be an American, so that in the end their work is not only a search for literal biological fathers, but for the mythical forefathers of our nation as well.

The main character and narrator, Marco Stanley Fogg, sets up many of the archetypes and themes that will be explored in "Moon Palace" when he describes his childhood and young adulthood in the beginning of the novel. One of Auster's most important themes is that of the journey or quest, which in this novel is also a metaphor for one's art and one's life as a journey into the self, both historical and personal. Uncle Victor, Fogg's mother's brother who takes over his care after Fogg's mother is hit by a bus while he is still a boy, is a substitute father figure and is responsible for many of Fogg's views on the world. He likes "to concoct elaborate nonsensical theories about things" (Auster 6), which usually involves punning on a word to produce an alternate meaning; it is a game of finding the hidden inner meanings to the symbols of outer reality. For example, he says of Fogg's name that "it proved that travel was in [his] blood" (Auster 6) because it is composed of the names of three famous explorers or travelers: Marco is from Marco Polo, Stanley is after the explorer who found Dr. Livingstone, and Fogg is after Phileas Fogg, the main character from Jules Verne's "Around the World in 80 Days".

Uncle Victor's interpretation of Fogg's name serves several purposes. First, it stresses the theme of the journey which will become more and more prevalent as the book progresses. It also sets up the context from which Fogg will view the world, that is, as a place where things and words are symbols for something deeper. Fogg is always attempting to discover all of the alternate meanings of words, just as Uncle Victor did, in order to reach the deeper truth or truths that lurk behind the outer reality of the word. This in turn leads to the idea that books and films are the keepers of words and, though they are works of art, can and should form part of the structuring and re-structuring that goes on when one remembers one's life. In fact, the legacy that Fogg inherits from Victor is composed entirely of books, both as physical objects and transmitters of ephemeral ideas. There is an almost endless list of books that Fogg mentions in his narrative, which therefore leads us to believe that they are important to him; many of these, not coincidentally, are travel accounts or fictional books about traveling.

The most important idea that Victor passes down to his nephew, however, would have to be the idea that he puts forward when he puns on Fogg's first two initials, "M.S." This is an abbreviation for manuscript, about which Victor says: "'Every man is the author of his own life…. The book you are writing is not yet finished. Therefore, it's a manuscript. What could be more appropriate than that?'" (Auster 7). This idea that each man's life is his ultimate work of art is one that colors the way that Fogg sees the world, and as such influences not only the events that happen in "real time" in the novel (i.e., it influenced him while the events in the book were taking place), but also taints the recollections which form the narrative of "Moon Palac