I recently received a point of criticism from my wife who claims that I will lose touch with the modern world if I don't spend some time away from the ancient texts I love so much. As you may know, I am a medievalist and frequently take forays into the early modern world of Shakespeare, but rarely venture into literature more modern than that. Some of this may be due to the fact that, so often when I DO bravely decide to read something modern, I often end up bitterly disappointed and relapse into the safety of The Old (don't get me started on Beckett's Endgame). So, taking this criticism in hand, on the recommendation of a student from my recently ended Shakespeare class (this may explain my belated return to Blogging) I picked up Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. The play itself was interesting in that it expanded upon two of Shakespeare's very minor characters and even pushed the limits of theatrical performance and for that I commend Stoppard. But two things specifically that left me rather leery of this piece of modern theatre:
The first thing I noticed was a rather overbearing intrusion of the playwright. Now I know that, when reading a play, one must remember that performance is far different than simply reading. Maybe it is all the time I have spent reading Medieval and Renaissance drama, which is rarely self-conscious and is always open for reinterpretation due to its very minimal inclusion of stage directions and heavy reliance on the language of the characters to convey the scene. Stoppard, on the other hand, takes nearly as much time to describe the physical appearance and movements of his play as he does to write the characters' lines. This seems drastically limit the artistic possibilities of the play, essentially leaving room only for a performance as Stoppard envisioned it. It all seems rather heavy-handed and makes me think that, if Stoppard had any confidence in the significance of his dialogue, he wouldn't need to so strictly define describe his play. And I suppose I can see why he may have this concern, what with characters who rarely speak more than two lines of simplistic dialogue at a time. All of this is undoubtedly a criticism that could be knocked down by any number of experts in modern and post-modern theatre. Perhaps I am basing my standards on Shakespeare and his ilk. But then, isn't Stoppard?
The most worrisome thing that I noticed about this play is its rather heavy reliance upon canonical literature. Now, this may be overwhelmingly obvious since the play essentially expands upon some of Shakespeare's own characters, but bear with me. It seems to me that one of the tendencies of modern and post-modern literature is their inability to separate from canonical works. In rewriting aspects of Shakespeare's play Stoppard admits that his play, as an example of postmodern drama, cannot exist without Shakespeare (whom some believe to have defined the canon). While it may be interesting for Stoppard to provide us with this very interesting piece of drama, in making it defy the conventions of Shakespearean theatre Stoppard only proves his reliance upon Shakespeare's prefiguration of his own. Much like atheists cannot exist without a religion to deny, postmodern literature, as much as it tries to define it self by NOT being what came before, it is inextricably bound to its predecessors. Perhaps this is why I always gravitate toward things that are old. Writers like Shakespeare and Chaucer seem, to me, less conscious of their place in the canon and simply preferred to write good stories. Yet in seeking to do little else than to entertain their contemporaries have become immortal figures. Maybe this begs the question: do postmodernists simply try too hard?
As a hilarious sidenote: in Act III multiple times Rosencrantz (or Guildenstern) say "We're on a boat"; I couldn't shake the image of Andy Samberg...
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Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. New York: Grove Press, 1967.
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