court leading to Claudius's rise to the throne. They also periodically act out mimes for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, such as the duel scene at the end of the play, as a way of showing what is happening in Shakespeare's play simultaneously with Stoppard's.Both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are shallow characters who are bored and cannot seem to make their lives meaningful. They look to others to give their lives meaning, Rosencrantz turns to Guildenstern, and Guildenstern usually turns to whomever he meets on the street. To Rosencrantz, life is all about luck, or chaos. He never perceives any kind of order nor does he care about probability. It doesn't matter whether what happens to him is good or bad, just so long as it is something to comment upon. From the opening scene of the play, Stoppard is holding a mirror up to modern society through the lack of purpose for his two main characters.Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's question game was much less of a conversation than it was a way for Stoppard to point out the existence of chaos in that everything is questionable. An example of this is while they are waiting for Hamlet, Guildenstern asks Rosencrantz, "Are you deaf?" Ros: "Am I dead?" Guil: "Yes or no?" Ros "Is there a choice?" Guil: " Is there a God?" Ros: "Foul! No non sequiturs..." (Act I, pg. 33). To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, there are no certainties, just random occurrences of which they take no notice and just shrug off as "normal." These two hit on important topics death, choice, God but not with the intent of actually discussing these topics, only as a way to pass the time until Hamlet appears so that they can fulfill their duty to the king. These questions are not questions that would be asked by a character like the Player. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ask these questions because of their pure, blind acceptance of chaos. The fact that these two characters keep track of the score, as though it were a tennis match, for a...
