ThAct: CS - Hamlet

 Blog task assigned by Prof. Dilip Barad sir.

In this blog, I analyze how William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead examine the theme of marginalization through the fate of two minor characters. Viewed through a Cultural Studies lens, both works critique systems of power that reduce individuals to instruments of authority. By connecting the Elizabethan monarchy with modern forms of capitalist and bureaucratic control, this study reveals how disempowerment, alienation, and loss of agency remain central to the human experience across centuries.

1. Marginalization within the World of Hamlet

In Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern occupy a precarious social position. Once intimate friends of the prince, they are summoned by King Claudius to act as spies — tools of surveillance under royal command. Hamlet’s description of them as “sponges” encapsulates their subservience:

“He keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to be last swallowed.”

This biting metaphor exposes their role as disposable extensions of political power — absorbed when useful and discarded when not. Their marginalization is not only social but existential; they are caught in the machinery of court politics, unable to assert individuality. Shakespeare, thus, paints a world where personal loyalty collapses under political necessity — an early portrayal of how systems consume the powerless.

2. Corporate Echoes in the Modern World

The plight of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern mirrors the predicament of contemporary employees in global capitalism. In the modern workplace, workers often serve as replaceable “human resources” whose value is determined by profitability rather than humanity. Downsizing, outsourcing, and corporate restructuring replicate the same patterns of disposability that defined the royal court in Hamlet.

This parallel reveals that although social forms have evolved, the essence of hierarchical control endures. Both systems — the monarchic and the corporate — rely on maintaining power through dependency, using individuals as functional cogs in larger structures. The “little people,” whether courtiers or clerks, remain expendable under institutional demands.

3. Stoppard’s Existential Reimagining

Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead reclaims Shakespeare’s marginal figures and places them at the center, yet their predicament remains unchanged. The characters wander through an absurd landscape, aware of their fate but powerless to alter it. Their repetitive questioning and circular dialogue underscore their confusion in a world stripped of meaning.

Stoppard’s reinterpretation transforms political marginalization into existential alienation. Like modern individuals lost within bureaucratic or digital systems, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern embody the disorientation of life under impersonal authority. Their tragicomic struggle reflects the modern crisis of identity — where individuals search for purpose in a reality that renders them insignificant.

4. Power, Ideology, and Cultural Critique

Both Shakespeare and Stoppard use their respective historical moments to critique structures of domination. In Hamlet, monarchy and court intrigue symbolize rigid hierarchies that use individuals as instruments of political order. In Stoppard’s postmodern context, the same condition becomes metaphysical — a commentary on the futility of existence under abstract systems of power.

Cultural theorists help unpack these dynamics. Michel Foucault reveals how power operates through subtle networks of surveillance and control. Louis Althusser’s concept of Ideological State Apparatuses explains how people unconsciously accept their subordinate roles. Meanwhile, Antonio Gramsci’s idea of cultural hegemony illustrates how dominance becomes normalized through culture and belief.

Through this theoretical frame, both plays expose how individuals internalize subjugation, mistaking constraint for order. Stoppard’s work, especially, resonates with the modern experience of economic precarity and existential dislocation — where human identity is shaped and constrained by invisible systems.

5. Personal Reflection

The experiences of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern evoke the modern struggle of being reduced to a replaceable “asset.” Their marginalization represents not just a dramatic motif but a mirror of our own social reality. In a profit-driven world, countless individuals experience similar invisibility — valued only for their productivity and discarded once deemed unnecessary.

This comparative study deepened my understanding of Cultural Studies as a tool for unveiling hidden power relations within literature. Both Shakespeare and Stoppard reveal how authority operates through exclusion, and how marginal voices reflect the silent suffering that sustains hierarchical order. These texts compel readers to recognize their complicity in sustaining such systems and to seek resistance through awareness.

Conclusion

By juxtaposing Hamlet with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, we uncover a timeless narrative of human marginalization. Shakespeare depicts the origins of systemic hierarchy in the political order, while Stoppard translates it into an existential condition of the modern world. Both dramatists remind us that beneath changing contexts — from monarchy to modern capitalism — the mechanisms of control and exclusion persist.

Ultimately, these plays challenge us to question the structures that define our worth and to reimagine spaces where agency and meaning can be reclaimed from systems that seek to erase them.