Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (play) death. Ophelia suggests that instead of killing the prince, the King should banish him to "Engle-land", where "dwell a cultured race." Claudius assents, commenting, "They're welcome to his philosophic brain." Hamlet is banished, and Rosencrantz embraces Ophelia. 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
Antony and Cleopatra inappropriate as a description, as the scene changes are often very fluid, almost montage-like. The large number of scenes is necessary because the action frequently switches between Alexandria, Italy, Messina in Sicily, Syria, Athens, and other parts of Egypt and the Roman Republic. The play contains thirty-four speaking characters, fairly typical for a Shakespeare play on such an epic scale. Many critics have noted the strong influence of Virgil's first-century Roman epic poem, the "Aeneid", on Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra". Such influence should be expected, given the prevalence of allusions to Virgil in the Renaissance culture in which Shakespeare was