Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

A new, beautiful updated edition of Tom Stoppard's best-loved play and one of Grove Atlantic's bestselling backlist titles, published with a new introduction by Tom Stoppard to coincide with the 50th anniversary of its debut

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is one of the most enduring and frequently performed plays of contemporary theater and has firmly established itself in the dramatic canon. Acclaimed as a modern masterpiece, it is the fabulously inventive tale of Hamlet as told from the worm's-eye view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare's play. In Tom Stoppard's best-known work, this Shakespearean Laurel and Hardy finally get a chance to take the lead role, but do so in a world where echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, where reality and illusion intermix, and where fate leads our two heroes to a tragic but inevitable end. Revised and reissued to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the play's first performance, this definitive edition includes a new introduction and previously unpublished ancillary material.

Tomás Straüssler was born in Zlin, Czechoslovakia, in 1937 and immigrated to England with his family in 1946. When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead premiered in London in 1967, he was instantly catapulted into the forefront of modern playwrights. He is the phenomenally celebrated author of The Real Inspector Hound, Enter a Free Man, Albert's Bridge, After Magritte, Travesties, Dirty Linen, Jumpers, New-Found-Land, Night and Day, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Artist et etc. He's also authored screenplays for films like The Romantic Englishwoman, Despair, and Brazil. He received the David Cohen Award for lifetime accomplishment in literature in 2017.