Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead - Tom Stoppard

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two minor characters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Stoppard crafts an ingenious backstory for these characters, which becomes an exploration of the meaning of life (or death), woven into Shakespeare’s greatest play. The two collegiate friends find themselves traveling to Elsinore, encountering a roving band of actors, a prince (maybe mad), pirates, and never manage to get a grip on anything - even which of them is which. 

This classic midcentury masterpiece is one of the late Tom Stoppard's earliest plays but also likely his best known. A crazy comedy but also something deeper, the work shares substantially with Samuel Beckett’s absurdist style, notably Waiting for Godot.  A treat for all theater lovers whether you come for the laughs, or the philosophy, or even few excerpts from Shakespeare.