TIME OUT OF JOINT -- AS USUAL READING ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD AS A SATURNALIAN PLAY.

In this paper, I re-read Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead as a text indebted to ancient comedy, with special attention to possible Plautine elements. As its very title suggests, the most obvious intermediary between Stoppard and Plautus is Hamlet, but Shakespeare's text is not necessarily the only feasible route to understanding Stoppard's comic art. I argue that Stoppard's text, like Shakespeare's comedies, borrows from the ancient tradition of festive comedy, and that one of his most important achievements is the reintegration of the whole spectrum of Classical drama into the framework of a postwar absurdist play. This is what I wish to demonstrate by cataloguing motifs that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern shares with the comedies of Plautus. The main points I raise are the Saturnalian time management of Stoppard's play; its likewise Saturnalian protagonists; the parallel behaviour of these texts towards their generic and intertextual frames and their strong meta-dramatic nature; some shared cultural, social, and philosophical themes; and, finally, despite their focus on low-prestige, unheroic characters, the tragic qualities that they likewise share. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]