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A lithograph of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the flute scene from Hamlet

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor fictional characters from William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. They are also major characters in Tom Stoppard's Waiting for Godot/Hamlet pastiche, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.

In Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern attempt to place themselves in the confidence of the title character, their childhood friend. In reality, however, they are serving as informants for the corrupt King Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, who usurped the throne and constantly attempts to check his nephew.

As the protagonists of Stoppard's play and film, they are confused by the events of Hamlet and seem unaware of their role in the larger drama. The play is primarily a comedy, but they often stumble upon deep philosophical truths through their nonsensical ramblings. In the movie, Rosencrantz invents the hamburger, and re-discovers gravity and volume displacement, among other things. The characters depart from their epiphanies as quickly as they come to them. At times, one appears to be more enlightened than the other; however this light is traded off throughout the course of the drama. Stoppard also littered his play with jokes referring to the common thespian tendency to swap Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the midst of the play, because the characters are basically identical. He does this by making Rosencrantz and Guildenstern unsure of who is who, as well as having the other players (Claudius, Hamlet, Gertrude) refer to them frequently by the wrong names. Because of Dead's similarity to Waiting for Godot, Rosencrantz is sometimes compared with Estragon (one of the tramps who was "waiting" for Godot), who shares his dim perception of reality, while Guildenstern parallels Vladimir, who shares his analytical perception.

These names were present in Shakespeare's era (late 16th century and early 17th century) in the court and nobility of Denmark-Norway, and the author of Hamlet placed them several centuries into the past, into Hamlet's time. King Frederick I of Denmark had decreed that all nobles shall have surnames, and most of them had then taken theirs from the figures in their escutcheon. Noble families Rosenkrantz (escutcheon: garland of roses / rosary) and Gyldenstierne (escutcheon: golden star) were originally Jutlander armiger families, not among the highest nor the noblest of Scandinavia, which happened to become very numerous in early modern centuries, and were surnames of plenty of courtiers and officers of the Dano-Norwegian king in Shakespeare's lifetime. Those names were thus familiar as "Danish" ones to Englishmen having some contact with Denmark-Norway. Because in Shakespeare's era there existed a number of gentlemen named Gyldenstierne and a number of gentlemen named Rosenkrantz, it cannot be said whether Hamlet's author desired to refer to any real individual, or just to make an implication to contemporary Denmark. The probably most famous Gyldenstierne ever was Christina Gyllenstierna, wife and widow of Sten Sture the Younger, Sweden's regent.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are often assumed to be Jewish by many Americans due to their names, which in the United States, whose citizens are generally more familiar with Jewish names than with Danish ones, appear to conform most closely to the names of Ashkenazi Jews.

On the other hand, "rosary" and "golden star" may also be references to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Given the undeniable fact that Shakespeare drew on Catholic imagery and references (abundant in Hamlet), and the growing scholarly conviction that he himself was a Catholic, this aspect of the names ought not to be lightly dismissed.^[1]

• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is also the name of a play by W. S. Gilbert first published in Fun magazine in 1874 and first performed at the Vaudeville Theatre in London in 1891.
• In the CBS and CTV TV show, Due South, two troublesome FBI agents are referred to as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by one of the characters.
• A character named Guildenstern in the Onimusha games as a mad genma/demon scientist. Rosencrantz from the same series appears as a giant Genma fly scientist.
• Both names are also used as characters in video-games such as Vagrant Story, where Guildenstern is the primary villain.
• "Rosencrantz Guildenstern" is the name of a fictional theatre critic mentioned by Shakespearean actor Edwin Blackgaard in an episode of Adventures in Odyssey.
• In The Simpsons episode Tales from the Public Domain, the characters Carl and Lenny have their names altered to Rosencarl and Guildenlenny as part of a Hamlet pastiche.
• The characters Rosenberg and Goldstein in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle are a reference to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. This was done with the intent to create an alternate film with these characters that takes place in the same time period much like the way that the play "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead" takes place in the same time period as "Hamlet"^{[citation needed]}.
• In the 1981 movie Cutter's Way, starring Jeff Bridges and John Heard, Heard's character (Alex Cutter) introduces (to Bridges' character) two people he meets in a bar as "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern".
• The Spin Doctors song "How Could You Want Him (When You Know You Could Have Me?)" begins with the lines "I'm quite contented to take my Chances / against the Guildensterns and Rosencrantzes".
• In She-Hulk comics Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the names of two goldfish owned by the main character Jennifer Walters. First mentioned in She-Hulk #9, both die in She-Hulk #11 due to Titania destroying Jennifer Walters' apartment.
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern serve as the inspiration for the Tag and Bink comic series set in the Star Wars universe.
• In the video game The Curse of Monkey Island, Slappy Cromwell, a character that re-wrote Shakespeare (as Speare), reveals one of his lines in Act IV Scene 8 to be 'Join me Rosencrantz! I am your FATHER!'. In itself this also references Star Wars.
• The characters of Royce and Aldo in the Doctor Who serial Warriors' Gate are based on Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.^{[citation needed]}
• In Princess Diaries 2, Mia's friend Lilly refers to the maids as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
• Specialty food store: Trader Joe's sells a form of Poppycock (popcorn and nuts) called "Rosencrunch and Guildenpop"

1. ^ Herbert Thurston, “The Religion of Shakespeare,” in The Catholic Encylcopedia, Volume XIII, Robert Appleton Company, 1912, available online at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13748c.htm; Beauregard, David N., Catholic Theology in Shakespeare's Plays, University of Delaware Press, 2007; Enos, Carol Curt, Shakespeare and the Catholic Religion, Dorrance Pub Co, 2000; Rees, James, Was Shakespeare A Roman Catholic? Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2006.

v • d • e A series on Shakespeare's Hamlet
Characters	Hamlet • Claudius • Gertrude • Ghost • Polonius • Laertes • Ophelia • Horatio • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern • Fortinbras • Yorick • Full character list
Speeches	"To be, or not to be" • "What a piece of work is a man" • "Speak the speech"
Sources & Criticism	Legend of Hamlet • The Spanish Tragedy • Ur-Hamlet • Critical approaches to Hamlet
References	Phrases from Hamlet in common English • References to Hamlet • References to Ophelia
Performances	Hamlet in performance • Moscow Arts Theatre (1911)
Adaptations	The Lion King • Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead • Hamletmachine • Hamlet (opera) • Strange Brew
Hamlet on screen	Hamlet (1920 film) • Hamlet (1948 film) • Hamlet (1964 film) • Hamlet (1969 film) • Hamlet (1990 film) • Hamlet (1996 film) • Hamlet (2000 film)