Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (play) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (play) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, A Tragic Episode, in Three Tabloids is a short comic play by W. S. Gilbert, a parody of "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare. The main characters in Gilbert's play are King Claudius and Queen Gertrude of Denmark, their son Prince Hamlet, the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Ophelia. Gilbert's play first appeared in "Fun" magazine in 1874 after having been rejected for production by several theatre companies. The first performance of the work was not until June 1891, a benefit matinée at the Vaudeville Theatre in London. The play finally ran at the Court
Characters of Shakespear's Plays is the predominant feeling of the mind." A focal point of Hazlitt's account of "Troilus and Cressida" is a comparison of the characterisation in this play and that in Chaucer's poem "Troilus and Criseyde" (one of Shakespeare's sources). Chaucer's characters are full and well developed; but Chaucer unfolded each character in itself, one at a time. Shakespeare displayed characters as they see themselves as well as how others see them, and showed the effects each has on the others. Shakespeare's characters were so distinctive that it is as if each were expressed by a distinct "faculty" of his mind; and,