Books, Arts & Manners: The Loss of Privacy

Is Hamlet dead? Probably, and flights of angels sing him to his rest. He may be well off, at least for the moment. The stage is held by Rosencrantz and Guildernstern and by a host of other protagonists, each playing Great Dane and each posturing and soliloquizing about himself. We have a lot of private revelatory truth onstage these days. Most of it is a bore.

The anti-heroes of Rosencrantz and Guildernstern Are Dead are supposed to be bores; that is their raison d’être and that is what makes them funny. But most of their compatriots aren’t supposed to be bores. They just are. Like the heroes of Tiny Alice and A Patriot for Me. Both Brother Julian and Major Redl are quintessential Sixties characters, caught in impossible dilemmas and almost smothered by the plays from which they seek to emerge.

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Richmond Crinkley

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Is Hamlet dead? Probably, and flights of angels sing him to his rest. He may be well off, at least for the moment. The stage is held by Rosencrantz and Guildernstern and by a host of other protagonists, each playing Great Dane and each posturing and soliloquizing about himself. We have a lot of private revelatory truth onstage these days. Most of it is a bore.

The anti-heroes of Rosencrantz and Guildernstern Are Dead are supposed to be bores; that is their raison d’être and that is what makes them funny. But most of their compatriots aren’t supposed to be bores. They just are. Like the heroes of Tiny Alice and A Patriot for Me. Both Brother Julian and Major Redl are quintessential Sixties characters, caught in impossible dilemmas and almost smothered by the plays from which they seek to emerge.