Exploring Marginalization in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
This blog post is written as thinking activity assigned by Barad Sir. In this blog post we have to analyze marginalization of two characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Shakespeare's play Hamlet with reference to cultural studies.
"questions of politics, power, indeed on all matters that deeply affect people's practical lives"
New Historicist approach within the cultural studies looks for power struggles in history. They analyze the literary text from Marxist perspective, about class struggles, power struggles, and power politics. This is evident in the play Hamlet. Where we can find such class conflict among elite class kings Hamlet and Claudius and lower class servants like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Marginalization of The Characters
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern both are minor characters from Hamlet. They are basically plot driven characters. They does speak significant dialogues in the play but now most us do not recall or forgot those dialogues since they are not prominent character like Hamlet, Claudius and even Polonius. Both the characters are students of the same university from which Hamlet have studies, and still we largely ignore these characters based on their class.
Both characters are merely pawns at the hands of powerful characters like Hamlet and Claudius. They are summoned by Claudius to spy on Hamlet, but their role remains superficial and expendable, as they lack any true influence or autonomy.
They try to please the king but are not smart enough to understand what's really going on. Hamlet sees them as just "sponges" that soak up the king's favor until they're no longer useful. In the end, they die because they were just pawns in a bigger game. Their story shows how powerful people use and throw away those below them.
Modern Parallels to Corporate Power
The fate of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet mirrors the displacement experienced by modern workers in times of corporate downsizing or globalization. There are several parallels between corporate employees and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are manipulated into betraying Hamlet, and ultimately discarded without a second thought when their usefulness has run out. The policies like "Hire and Fire" is similar to this, where employees are being exploited during their youth and company make profit on the work and value of these people. And when they are no longer in use for profit they will be fired from the job.
Most of the people who are working tirelessly more than twelve hours in such corporate firms. At the end they feel alienated from the family, and sometime from their life also. Like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, they are caught in the middle of larger power struggles, whether it’s global competition or corporate reorganization, without any real power to influence the outcome.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are used by both Hamlet and Claudius, without care for their individuality or humanity. This is very similar to how modern workers are often reduced to mere numbers in corporate world, where profits matter more than people's lives. Just like in "Hamlet", where they are treated as unimportant in the political struggle, workers can be seen as pawns in the system of global capitalism.
Existential Questions
Later in the 20th century Tom Stoppard re-writes these two characters in his play, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead". In this play, Stoppard further alienates these two characters and place them into postmodern context. This work was published in 1966, and it was the time when post War disillusionment and technological progress was it's peak. Writers like Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, and Herold Pinter writing about fragmented identity, human nature. and absurdism of postmodern world.
In the similar manner, Tom Stoppard had put these two characters in more absurd way then they were in Hamlet. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern represent typical human beings, stuck on a journey aboard "spaceship Earth," reflecting life in the 20th or 21st century. Their voyage has no clear destination, except for the inevitable end that is death, for individuals who are, in a way, already lifeless or lost. Corporate workers also are like same they just work constantly day and night with thinking about their self, family and friends, and still they seem marginalized in the eyes of corporate tycoons.
Cultural and Economical Power Structure
New Historicist study of the characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Shakespeare and in Tom Stoppard's play offers critical insight about their respective culture and power struggle within it. As Michel Foucault has said that history is always governed by dominant ideology and power struggles, and it is essentially history of oppression of marginalized people like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. At that time there was monarchy, and people were exploited by the kings and royalist.
In contrast with Shakespeare's time, in postmodern times the place of monarchy is filled by various multinational companies, who for their personal gain, exploit the working class people and their value. And such repetitive working displace human beings from themselves and from the society. Now the power is in the hand of multinational companies, and workers are mere objects for them who can make them profit.
Conclusion
After understanding the approach of New Historicism within the cultural studies, it gives a clear understanding of how every age within the history is revolves around it's power dynamics and elite ideology. This is very much true for contemporary time also, where the voice of people belonging to poor and peasant class are unheard by those who are in power.
Thank you.
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