Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“The sun came up about as often as it went down, in the long run, and a coin showed heads about as often as it showed tails. Then a messenger arrived. We had been sent for. Nothing else happened. Ninety-two coins spun consecutively have come down heads ninety-two consecutive times…and for the last three minutes on the wind of a windless day, I have heard the sound of drums and flute.”

Guildenstern acknowledges the absurd elements he experiences as he travels to Elsinore and wonders if something has changed to make existence more absurd. He remembers a time when he was certain of the law of probability and notes that, somehow, the order and harmony within the universe became suspended once the messenger summoned them. This quote exemplifies Guildenstern’s inquisitive nature and the birth of the angst that marks him throughout the play.

“They’re hardly divisible, sir—well, I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can’t do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory—they’re all blood, you see.”

The Player explains the Tragedians’ specialties as practitioners of the “blood, love, and rhetoric school” (28). He establishes blood as the chief focus of their repertoire and claims that the other focuses—love and rhetoric—actually stem from blood. At first glance, one might think the Player means that the Tragedians put on tragedies with gory deaths when he states that their plays deal with blood. This is true, but “blood” indicates life force as well as violence. The Tragedians’ plays are concerned with humanity and universal feelings, all of which are part of being alive. Since love and rhetoric stem from humanity and liveliness, they can be considered part of blood and inseparable from it.