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WorksheetsRosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead Act I
Total questions: 16
Worksheet time: 10mins
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are characters from which Shakespearean play?
As You Like It
Hamlet
King Lear
Romeo & Juliet
As the play opens, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are traveling because
They were hungry
They wanted to see a play
They needed more coins to flip
They were sent for
The play is set in the early
1300s
1400s
1500s
1600s
Who is the author of the play?
Tom Stoppard
William Shakespeare
Laura Hillenbrand
Upton Sinclair
What description does Tom Stoppard provide of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's dress, and what does it reveal about their characters?`
They are well dressed with "hats, cloaks. sticks and all." and a large money bag. This reveals that they are well off and wealthy.
They are in robes with slippers meaning that they are poor.
They are dressed in togas, meaning that they have Greek heritage
Both men are wearing fancy polo shirts, meaning that they are professional golfers
When the Players meet Rosencrantz & Guildenstern on the road, why does the Player say that they had met "in just time"?
The Players had just left Hamlet, so they tell R and G where to find them
The Players were out of practice, and they needed an audience to perform for before they forgot everything and started improvising
The Players had heard that a military troop was marching on a nearby road, and they were able to prevent R & G from going in that direction
The Players needed someone to give them directions to the Court and R & G were able to lead them there
What side did the coins always land on?
Heads
Tails
False, they levitated
False, they were flipping bricks
Does Guildenstern trust Rosencrantz? How do you know?
Yes. G never looks at the coins when R says they are heads and takes the coins.
No, G begins to argue with R since he is losing a lot of money
The law of diminishing returns is an economic concept that says, in simplified terms, that a key amount of input yields the greatest amount of output. At a certain point, any additional input would actually yield less output. How does Rosencrantz conclude that the law of diminishing returns is not affecting the coin toss?
R knows the coin is going to keep being heads, so it is useless/boring to keep flipping it
R argues that he just needs to use up even more coins
In existential terms, what is the greatest difference between the two courtiers?
R wants to find a logical explanation for everything, while G just accepts the world as absurd
G wants to find a logical explanation for everything, while R just accepts the world as absurd
What are other reasons Guildenstern suggests for the coins' all turning up heads? What existential concept do his hypotheses emphasize?
They are simply living in a paradox in which logic and probability do not apply
Thanos
-G is willing it deep down
-Time has stopped and the first coin toss is just repeating itself
-Divine intervention
What is ironic about the basic concept of the play?
R and G are lively characters, a contradiction to the title of the book
R and G cannot recognize themselves; they are going to die (a lot of foreshadowing); Their fate is fixed, even though they exist in an unpredictable world.
How does Rosencrantz's response to Guildenstern's question about the first thing he remembers demonstrate that he does not understand what memory is?
They have no memory of even this morning, so R thinks it is the first thing that pops into his head
R remembers his morning in extreme detail, he even recalls the exact time that he woke up
What in Rosencrantz's statement about beards growing after death allows Guildenstern to misinterpret his meaning?
He didn't say they still grow or start to grow after death, so G thought you had to be dead before they would grow
G thought that only dead men are able to grow beards
Based upon what Rosencrantz and Guildenstern recollect, what happened earlier that morning?
They were fishing in the port early in the morning, due to their love for fishing
A foreigner banged on the shutters and shouted their names to wake them up. They were summoned by Claudius
A landlord came to collect their monthly rent.
What "ism" is explored in the book?
Existentialism
Socialism
Communism
Liberalism
Nationalism
