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Guildenstern: My honoured lord!
Rosencrantz:  My most dear lord!
Hamlet:          My excellent good friends! How dost thou,
                       Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?
Rosencrantz:  As the indifferent children of the other.
Guildenstern: Happy, in that we are not over-happy;
                       On fortune's cap we are not the very button.
Hamlet:          Not the soles of her shoe?
Rosencrantz:  Neither, my lord.
Hamlet:          Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of 
                       her favours?
Guildenstern: 'Faith, her privates we.
Hamlet:          In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she
                       is a strumpet. What's the news?
Rosencrantz:  None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.
Hamlet:          Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true.
                       Let me question more in particular: what have you,
                       my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune,
                       that she sends you to prison hither?
Guildenstern: Prison, my lord!
Hamlet:          Denmark's a prison.
Rosencrantz:  Then is the world one.
Hamlet:          A goodly one; in which there are many confines,
                       wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.
Rosencrantz:  We think not so, my lord.
Hamlet:          Why then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing
                        either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me
                        it is a prison
Rosencrantz:  Why then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too
                        narrow for your mind.
Hamlet:           O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
                        myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
                        have bad dreams.
Guildenstern: Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very
                        substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
Hamlet:           A dream itself is but a shadow.
Rosencrantz:  Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a
                       quality that it is but a shadow's shadow.
Hamlet:          Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and
                       outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we
                       to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act II scene ii

One doesn't usually think of Shakespeare right off when discussing Existentialism, but there are elements of his tragedies that not only suggest Existential themes, but live them.  Hamlet is easily my favorite Shakespearean play.  In fact, I hate most of his comedies, and love several of his tragedies, but Hamlet just speaks to me in a way that good philosophical literature only can.  It was really this scene above -- Act II scene ii -- that got me to really look at the play as more than just a sad story about a prince in Denmark whose dad was murdered, and who could hardly do anything to act upon the revenge he desperately needed. Here, Hamlet -- distraught by his father's death and the plot he believes (and, rightly) to be the truth behind it -- meets with his two childhood friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who have been sent for by Hamlet's mother in an attempt to distract him enough to hopefully bring him out of his despair.  And yet, nothing seems to work -- his melancholy is just as obvious here as it is in his soliloquies and asides, albeit cryptic here.  He speaks of his home as a 'prison' but in the subjective way of Existentialism, as nothing is "either good or bad, but thinking makes it so," recognizing that it is his own mind which really produces that prison and not a product of actual physical experience ("... I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space").  Hamlet is plagued by an inability to get outside of his own head -- it paralyzes him to the point of inaction, and that inaction continues to pull him further into his own despair, and ultimately his own demise (and that of almost everyone else around him).  

Recognizing the existential quality of Hamlet, Tom Stoppard (in 1966) wrote his famous absurdist play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead turning the plot inside out and telling the story through the eyes of the secondary characters.  As seen in the selection above from Shakespeare's play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are barely distinguishable -- they speak the same, utter similar lines, and are generally place-holder characters simply there upon which Hamlet bounces his lines -- they have little utility in and of themselves.  Stoppard plays with this fact through out his play, as both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern struggle with identity, often forgetting which of the two each of them is, are often confused by other characters just as often as themselves, and who generally run as empty vessels of existential nonsense.  So often, they seem on the brink of an epiphany, be it personal, subjective, artistic, or scientific (the clay pots that almost act as "Newton's cradle" apparatus that is supposed to show momentum), only for it to fall apart tragic-comically at the last moment of expectation (because life is meaningless, and hope and expectation in any outcome is utterly pointless).  The play (turned to film in 1990 starring Gary Oldman -- who I still can't figure out how he hasn't won an Oscar -- and Tim Roth) is hilarious and thought-provokingly witty at each turn -- but, like any philosophical work, subtle and demanding of focused attention. For example, one of my absolute favorite scenes in the play, here both characters prepare for the discussion they will have with Hamlet, as shown in the above passage from Shakespeare's play (from the perspective of 'behind the scenes') -- it is absurdly hilarious when you realize the game the play is like tennis (hence the scores like "one-love"), in which the player stays in 'volley' by continuing to ask a question; keep reading through the scene for the establishment of rules:

Rosencrantz:  We could play at questions.

Guildenstern: What good would that do?

Rosencrantz:  Practice!

Guildenstern: Statement! One-love.

Rosencrantz:  Cheating!

Guildenstern: How?

Rosencrantz:  I hadn't started yet.

Guildenstern: Statement. Two-love.

Rosencrantz:  Are you counting that?

Guildenstern: What?

Rosencrantz:  Are you counting that?

Guildenstern: Foul! No repetitions. Three-love. First game to...

Rosencrantz:  I'm not going to play if you're going to be like that.

Guildenstern: Whose serve?

Rosencrantz:  Hah?

Guildenstern: Foul! No grunts. Love-one.

Rosencrantz: Whose go?

Guildenstern: Why?

Rosencrantz: Why not?

Guildenstern: What for?

Rosencrantz:  Foul! No synonyms! One-all.

Guildenstern: What in God's name is going all?

Rosencrantz:  Foul! No rhetoric. Two-one.

Guildenstern: What does it all add up to?

Rosencrantz:  Can't you guess?

Guildenstern: Were you addressing me?

Rosencrantz:  Is there anyone else?

Guildenstern: Who?

Rosencrantz:  How would I know?

Guildenstern: Why do you ask?

Rosencrantz:  Are you serious?

Guildenstern: Was that rhetoric?

Rosencrantz:  No.

Guildenstern: Statement! Two-all. Game point.

Rosencrantz:  What's the matter with you today?

Guildenstern: When?

Rosencrantz: What?

Guildenstern: Are you deaf?

Rosencrantz:  Am I dead?

Guildenstern: Yes or no?

Rosencrantz:  Is there a choice?

Guildenstern: Is there a God?

Rosencrantz: Foul! No non sequiturs, three-two, one game all.

Guildenstern (seriously): What's your name?

Rosencrantz: What's yours?

Guildenstern: I asked you first.

Rosencrantz:  Statement. One-love.

Guildenstern: What's your name when you're at home?

Rosencrantz:  What's yours?

Guildenstern: When I'm at home?

Rosencrantz:  Is it different at home?

Guildenstern: What home?

Rosencrantz:  Haven't you got one?

Guildenstern: Why do you ask?

Rosencrantz: What are you driving at?

Guildenstern (with emphasis): What's your name?!

Rosencrantz:  Repetition. Two-love. Match point to me.

Guildenstern (seizing him violently): WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Rosencrantz:  Rhetoric! Game and match! (Pause.) Where's it going to end?

Guildenstern: That's the question.

Rosencrantz:  It's all questions.

Guildenstern: Do you think it matters?

Rosencrantz:  Doesn't it matter to you?

Guildenstern: Why should it matter?

Rosencrantz: What does it matter why?

Guildenstern (teasing gently): Doesn't it matter why it matters?

Rosencrantz (rounding on him): What's the matter with you?

(Pause.)

Guildenstern: It doesn't matter.

Rosencrantz (voice in the wilderness): ... What's the game?

Guildenstern: What are the rules?

-- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Act I

I geek-out so hardcore when I read this play -- there are so many crazy little intricacies.  Of course, it's meant to be absurd; the game they're playing reminds me so much of the old episodes of the comedy show, Who's Line is it Anyway, where the comedians did this exact same game -- two would play, and all they could do is ask questions. If they couldn't answer in a question, or couldn't think of how to respond, they'd rotate out to the next player -- great improv activity. Yet here, it isn't just about the game; it's not about simply coming up with a question, but the questions themselves are SO existential in nature: "What is your name?" "Why should it matter?" "Am I dead?" "Is there a God?" "What are you driving at?" And the best part of it all, is that there are no answers -- another existential point.  There are never any answers, simply a random juxtaposition of constant questions which all have meaning in and of themselves, but no satisfaction in a definitive statement.  The rules are fascinating too.  

So here is a small snippet of both pieces -- I would love to continue this conversation with anyone, but obviously you have to watch/read the pieces beforehand (I've given the links in this post to the text, it would be good to have the text in front of you while you watch too, so you can refer to specific lines in each).  For the extra-credit experience, comment on this post -- tell me what you like about either or both plays, and connect to the existentialism we've been covering as of late.  Also, bring it up in the Socratic Seminar and any conversations we'll be having in class -- I'll be impressed (and count that, somewhat, as well!)