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It is not so much that it is a matter of life and death, rather that death is the spectre for life. Consciousness of our own mortality haunts our lives. Shakespeare’s canonical work Hamlet, explores the fundamental aspects of Elizabethan society, shaping the approach to life and death. Stoppard’s 20th century transformation of Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, confronts responders with man’s powerlessness of his own fate in a world of uncertainty. Two pairs of corresponding film excerpts convey the different approaches to death.

The meaning of life and coincidently death is contemplated in both Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy and Ros and Guil’s corresponding “question game” scene.

In Hamlet’s scene, responders view a staircase spiralling upwards, the music building with the camera’s ascent. This is symbolic of Hamlet’s confusion and inner turmoil. Outside, on the desolate platform of the tower, the cloudy sky reflects Hamlet’s desire to escape the perils of life into a welcoming heaven above. This reflects the Christian-world view of Hamlet’s context. Elizabethan society did not doubt that an afterlife or God existed, it was an absolute.

A solemn, downcast Hamlet delicately reaches for his dagger and points it to his heart as he whispers “to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.” Hamlet questions whether “”to die, to sleep” in a flirtation with suicide. He then realises that the afterlife is “The undiscovered country from whose bourn, No traveller returns”. The sound of threatening, crashing waves below is heard throughout the entire scene. The idea of death is drowning Hamlet and consuming his thoughts. Nothing else matters.

Ros and Guil “play at questions” on a decrepit tennis court to portray the uncertainty and existentialist thinking of the 1960s. The non-sequential and repetitive banter that results exposes profound questions that connect to...