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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is Guildenstern's observation about their strange situation?

2. How many times does Rosencrantz say he has won the game?

3. Who are the well-dressed Elizabethan gentlemen at the opening of the play?

4. What does Rosencrantz say he remembers about questions in the past?

5. What are the instruments the musicians play?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as the play opens.

2. Why do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern speak differently to Claudius and Gertrude?

3. How does Guildenstern take advantage of the Player?

4. How does Guildenstern attempt to change the subject away from the coins?

5. What is Claudius' request of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?

6. Why are Guildenstern and Rosencrantz on this road and what has Guildenstern been expecting?

7. What rather unusual encounter do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern then have in the undisclosed location?

8. Guildenstern asks Rosencrantz if he appears to be contradicting himself. What is Rosencrantz's odd reply?

9. Describe the somewhat bizarre entrance of Hamlet and Ophelia.

10. What is the feeling the audience gets from the strange coin spinning game Guildenstern and Rosencrantz play?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write a paper on madness. Using Hamlet as an example, write about the different ways he appears as mad in the play. Describe the moments in the play when Hamlet seems lucid and behaves like a normal person. Give your opinion about whether Hamlet was acting from madness when he wrote the additional scene to The Murder of Gonzalo.

Essay Topic 2

Write a paper describing the characters of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and the Player as you see them? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How well do you like them? Can you recall people from real life that are similar?

Essay Topic 3

Write a paper on the importance of dialogue in a play. Describe how the dialogue in Stoppard's play sounds real as opposed to being contrived. What does an audience get from the dialogueue? How is dialog in a play like telling a story?

(see the answer keys)

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