STUDY QUESTIONS - ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD
1. Briefly summarize the plot of the play.
2. Discuss the personal traits of the protagonists. Compare them.
3. Why do people keep mixing up Ross and Guil? How does Guil view Ross?
4. What is the Player´s relationship to the two main characters?
5. Discuss the meaning of the pretext (Shakespeare) for the development of the play and for the reader (INTERTEXTUAL LINKS).
6. Compare Hamlet in this play to Shakespeare´s Hamlet.
7. Comment on the function of language in this play?
8. What does death mean here? Interpret the characters´ disappearing at the end of the text.
9. Compare the end of the play to its beginning. What has changed?
10. Comment on the elements of absurdity in the play and compare it with Beckett´ s text. Waiting for Godot.
11. How do you, as a reader, regard Ross and Guil? Do they seem realistic to you?
