Exploring Marginalization in Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: A Cultural Studies Perspective

 Exploring Marginalization in Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: A Cultural Studies Perspective

               

This blog examines the theme of marginalization in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead through the framework of Cultural Studies. It explores how both playwrights reveal the subordination of minor characters within dominant systems of power, and how these dynamics resonate with modern realities such as corporate hierarchies, globalization, and existential alienation. The discussion aims to highlight how literature not only mirrors the social and political structures of its time but also continues to illuminate contemporary experiences of disempowerment.

In this blog, I explore how Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead give voice to those pushed to the margins characters who exist on the edges of power. Using ideas from Cultural Studies, I connect their struggles to the modern world, where people often face similar hierarchies in workplaces, economies, and social systems. My goal is to show how these timeless stories still speak to our experience of invisibility and uncertainty today.Click here.

🧩 Introduction: Power, Margins, and Meaning

Marginalization is the quiet force that defines who speaks and who is silenced. Through the lens of Cultural Studies, it represents how societies (and their stories) push certain people to the periphery denying them identity, voice, and agency.

In Hamlet (1600) and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), we see this dynamic unfold across centuries. Shakespeare presents the Renaissance court, a world of visible political power, while Stoppard reimagines it through existential absurdism. Both playwrights expose systems that use and discard “little people” in the name of order or meaning.

🎭 Marginalization in Hamlet

        

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter the stage not as individuals, but as functions “friends” summoned to spy, flatter, and report. Their personalities blur, their motives dissolve. They exist to serve the machinery of the court.

Hamlet himself captures their condition in one striking metaphor:

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

They are sponges absorbing the king’s favor until squeezed dry.

Their deaths, casually narrated (“They are not near my conscience”), show how power consumes and discards. In this, Shakespeare reveals how monarchy functions like a system that values obedience over being.

💼 From Elsinore to the Corporate World

In today’s terms, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern resemble corporate employees caught in a system that treats people as data points.

In Hamlet In Modern Workplaces

Serve Claudius’ political goals Serve corporate profit goals

Lack agency and full information Lack transparency in decisions

Expendable after use Disposable during layoffs

Obedience equals survival Compliance equals job security

Like “small annexments” of a “massy wheel,” they move when the larger mechanism turns whether that mechanism is the state or a multinational company. Their tragedy lies in being necessary but not valued.

⚙️ Stoppard’s Reimagining: From Political to Existential Marginalization

In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Stoppard turns the spotlight on these forgotten men but instead of empowering them, he magnifies their existential emptiness.

They do not know who they are, where they are, or why they are here. Their every attempt to find purpose leads only to absurdity. In this modern world:

Meaning is scripted. They recite lines without context.

Agency is illusion. Their deaths are prewritten.

Existence is uncertain. Are they real, or only roles in someone else’s play?

Stoppard’s world echoes the alienation of modern life where people feel like replaceable actors in systems too vast to comprehend.

🧠 Cultural and Existential Power Structures

Shakespeare’s Hamlet Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Power Type: Monarchical, personal Power Type: Systemic, existential

Focus: Court politics, obedience Focus: Identity, absurdity

Marginalization: Social and political Marginalization: Philosophical and ontological

Critique: The powerful manipulate and discard Critique: The system erases individuality and meaning

Stoppard extends Shakespeare’s critique. Where Hamlet exposes visible tyranny, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead exposes invisible control the quiet erosion of identity under bureaucracy, capitalism, and modern alienation.

🧍‍♂️ Personal Reflection

Reading both plays through Cultural Studies made me realize that marginalization is not confined to royal courts. It thrives wherever systems value function over feeling from workplaces to classrooms to nations.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not merely tragic; they are uncomfortably familiar. They remind us how easily people can be reduced to tools, titles, or statistics in the name of “efficiency.”

🎬 Creative Engagement

Monologue: “Notice of Reassignment  Guildenstern Speaks”

 Ladies and gentlemen of Denmark Inc.,

Thank you for your commitment. Please be advised that your positions will be reassigned. We appreciate your loyalty. Please pack personal items and report to Docking Bay A.

We were told we were important once. “Come home,” they said. “Help us watch our mad prince.”

We came, briefcases open, dignity folded.

We asked small questions; we smiled the correct smiles.

Now there is a memo. It calls us “personnel adjustments.”

It calls us “cost centres.”

It calls us everything but human.

If there is a moral here, it is this:

Never mistake utility for love.

The kingdom that hires you will also erase you when the ledger says so.

We were not heroes. We were line items.

Be warned, employees of the world:

The wheel is big, and you are only an annexment.

Conclusion

From Hamlet’s court to Stoppard’s absurdist stage, marginalization evolves but never disappears.

Shakespeare revealed how individuals become pawns of political power; Stoppard revealed how modern existence itself can erase meaning.

Through the lens of Cultural Studies, both plays invite us to see literature as a mirror of power reminding us that being seen, heard, and valued is not a given, but a struggle repeated across time.

References :

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Project Gutenberg, 1999, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1524. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.

“Thinking Activity: Exploring Marginalization in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/385301805_Thinking_Activity_Exploring_Marginalization_in_Shakespeare’s_Hamlet_and_Stoppard’s_Rosencrantz_and_Guildenstern_Are_Dead. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.

Thank you...!!! 

Be learners.