Rosencrantz () and Guildenstern () are characters in William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. They are childhood friends of Hamlet, summoned by King Claudius to distract the prince from his apparent madness and if possible to ascertain the cause of it. The characters were revived in W. S. Gilbert's satire, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and as the alienated heroes of Tom Stoppard's absurdist play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which was adapted into a film.
Shakespeare's Hamlet
Names
Rosencrantz ("rose wreath") and Gyldenstjerne/Gyllenstierna ("golden star") were names of Scandinavian noble families of the 16th century; records of the Danish royal coronation of 1596 show that one tenth of the aristocrats participating bore one or the other name.
James Voelkel suggests that the characters were named after Frederik Rosenkrantz and Knud Gyldenstierne, cousins of Tycho Brahe who had visited England in 1592. When James VI and I visited Norway and Denmark in 1589, he met Tycho Brahe and Henrik Gyldenstierne, captain of Bohus. In a gift exchange, Gyldenstierne gave James VI a firearm and a sword, and James VI gave him a ring and a gold chain. When James VI was at Elsinore (Kronborg), a servant of Axel Gyldenstierne, captain of Akershus, was rewarded for bringing letters to the Scottish king.
The majority of characters in Hamlet have classical names, in contrast to the "particularly Danish" ones of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The names were common in the court of Frederick II and Christian IV, and also at the University of Wittenberg, an institution where Hamlet is mentioned as having studied (he refers to them as "my two schoolfellows").
Appearances
In Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern always appear as a pair, except in editions following the First Folio text, where Guildenstern enters four lines after Rosencrantz in Act IV, Scene 3.
See also
- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead
- Timon and Pumbaa