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
Shakespeare apocrypha style". Nonetheless, some of them have been cautiously accepted by mainstream scholarship. The dream of discovering a new Shakespeare play has also resulted in the creation of at least one hoax. In 1796 William Henry Ireland claimed to have found a lost play of Shakespeare entitled "Vortigern and Rowena". Ireland had previously released other documents he claimed were by Shakespeare, but "Vortigern" was the first play he attempted. (He later produced another pseudo-Shakespearean play, "Henry II".) The play was initially accepted by the literary community – albeit not on sight – as genuine. The play was eventually presented at Drury