In this positive review o/Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which was originally published on October 17, 1967, Barnes praises playwright Stoppard's scholarship and intricate wordplay.

Barnes is a well-known theatrical critic best known for his reviews in the New York Times.

It is not only Hamlet who dies in Hamlet. They also serve who only stand and wait. Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which opened last night at the Alvin Theater, is a very funny play about death. Very funny, very brilliant, very chilling; it has the dust of thought about it and the particles glitter excitingly in the theatrical air.

Mr. Stoppard uses as the basis for his play a very simple yet telling proposition; namely that although to Hamlet those twin-stemmed courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are of slight importance, and that to an audience of Shakespeare's play they are little but functionaries lent...