The Little People of Power Marginalization in Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
The Little People of Power: Marginalization in Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
From Shakespeare’s Court to the Modern Corporate World
Introduction: Looking Beyond Hamlet
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is usually remembered as the tragedy of Prince Hamlet—the prince who struggles with revenge, morality, madness, identity, and death. However, a Cultural Studies approach encourages us to look beyond the central character and examine those figures who remain at the margins of the narrative. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are two such characters.
They are not the rulers of Denmark. They are not the central agents of revenge. They do not control the political machinery of Elsinore. Instead, they occupy an uncertain position between friendship and political service. They are summoned by King Claudius to discover what is happening to Hamlet, and they become instruments within a larger power structure.
The worksheet for this activity asks us to examine how their marginalization reflects larger systems of power and to connect their situation with the experience of modern workers in corporate organizations.
This perspective changes the way we read Hamlet. The question is no longer simply, “Why do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern die?” It becomes:
What happens to people who become expendable within a system controlled by powerful institutions?
Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead takes this question even further. By moving these minor Shakespearean characters to the centre of the stage, Stoppard transforms their marginalization into an existential problem. Their confusion, lack of direction, and inability to control their destiny can remind a contemporary reader of people who work inside systems where decisions are made above them and their individual identities can easily be reduced to their roles.
1. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: The “Little People” of Hamlet
In Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter the story because Claudius needs information about Hamlet. They were once Hamlet's friends, but their friendship is transformed by political power.
Claudius effectively recruits them to monitor Hamlet. They become intermediaries between the king and the prince. Their individual identities matter less than their usefulness to the king.
This is particularly visible in Hamlet’s famous description of Rosencrantz as a “sponge.”
Hamlet explains that the “sponge” absorbs:
“the King’s countenance, his rewards, his authorities.”
The metaphor is powerful because a sponge absorbs whatever is given to it, but it can also be squeezed dry. Hamlet therefore recognizes that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not truly powerful despite their access to the king. Their apparent privilege is dependent upon the institution that employs them.
They receive the king’s “rewards” and “authorities,” but they do not possess independent power.
This is precisely what makes them marginal figures.
They are close to power without actually possessing power.
They are used by power without controlling power.
They participate in political action without determining its direction.
Their fate demonstrates an important Cultural Studies idea: position within a hierarchy does not necessarily mean possession of agency.
2. The “Sponge” and the Idea of Expendability
The metaphor of the sponge can also be connected to modern organizational culture.
A sponge absorbs. It collects information. It performs a function. But once its usefulness is exhausted, it can be squeezed and discarded.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern occupy a similar position.
Claudius needs them when they are useful. He does not appear to regard them as autonomous individuals whose personal relationship with Hamlet should matter. Their value comes from their function.
This makes Hamlet’s insult more significant than a simple joke.
The word “sponge” exposes the relationship between individual identity and institutional power.
The king possesses authority.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern receive delegated authority.
Hamlet recognizes the difference.
The characters therefore represent what the worksheet calls the “little people” within a larger system of power.
Their tragedy is not simply that they make the wrong choices. Their tragedy is that they exist inside a system where their choices are already heavily constrained.
3. From Elsinore to the Corporate Office
The comparison between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and modern corporate workers is particularly interesting.
A multinational company may make decisions about restructuring, relocation, downsizing, automation, or outsourcing at the level of senior management. The employee who loses a job may have had no role in making that decision.
The individual experiences the consequence, but does not control the cause.
This creates a parallel with Shakespeare’s characters.
Claudius operates at the level of political power. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern operate at a lower level of the hierarchy. The king makes the decision; they perform the task.
Similarly, in a corporate hierarchy, executives and boards may make strategic decisions while employees experience the consequences.
The comparison should not be taken literally: a corporate restructuring is obviously not identical to a royal conspiracy. However, the Cultural Studies connection is useful because both situations raise questions about institutional power, hierarchy, agency, and expendability.
A worker can be highly skilled, loyal, and productive and still become vulnerable when the larger structure changes.
The same structural vulnerability is visible in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Their personal qualities cannot protect them from the political machinery surrounding them.
4. Globalization and the Displaced Worker
The worksheet specifically asks us to consider the relationship between the fate of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and workers affected by multinational companies relocating or downsizing.
Globalization creates connections between people, markets, companies, and nations, but it also means that decisions made in one location can affect people somewhere else.
For example, a company may decide that a particular branch is no longer economically efficient. The decision may be based on global competition, costs, technology, or corporate strategy. Employees who have no control over these larger economic forces may nevertheless lose their employment.
This gives us a useful metaphor:
Claudius is the decision-making centre.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the functionaries.
The political structure is the institution.
Their death is the ultimate form of disposability.
Of course, this is an interpretive analogy rather than an equation between monarchy and modern capitalism.
The important Cultural Studies question is:
Who possesses the power to make decisions, and who is forced to live with their consequences?
5. Stoppard: Giving the Marginal Characters a Voice
Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead radically changes our perspective.
Shakespeare places Hamlet at the centre.
Stoppard places Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at the centre.
This simple shift has major cultural significance.
In Shakespeare's play, their lives appear from the perspective of the main narrative. In Stoppard’s play, their confusion becomes the narrative itself.
They are no longer merely background characters.
They become the protagonists of their own uncertainty.
Stoppard explores their questions about identity, memory, language, direction, death, and free will. Their conversations frequently become circular and absurd. They do not fully understand why they are where they are or why events continue to happen around them.
Guildenstern's desire for “some direction” is particularly significant. He feels that they have been summoned into a situation without being given meaningful control over what follows.
This is where Stoppard's play moves from political marginalization toward existential marginalization.
The characters do not merely lack political power.
They lack certainty about the meaning of their own existence.
6. “We Are Entitled to Some Direction”
One of the most revealing ideas in Stoppard’s play is the characters’ desire for direction.
They expect that if they have been selected for a purpose, someone should tell them what that purpose is.
This can be read as a metaphor for contemporary working life.
An employee may receive:
- a job title,
- targets,
- performance indicators,
- deadlines,
- organizational policies,
- instructions from management,
but still wonder:
Why am I doing this?
Who decided this?
Where is this organization going?
What happens if the organization changes direction?
This is why Stoppard's existential comedy can resonate with modern corporate life.
The worker may have a clearly defined role but still experience uncertainty about purpose.
The corporate system may know what it wants from the employee without necessarily explaining the larger meaning of the employee’s labour.
Thus, Stoppard transforms the “little people” of Hamlet into representatives of a broader human condition: individuals trying to understand themselves inside systems larger than themselves.
7. Power, Knowledge and Surveillance
The relationship between Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Claudius, and Hamlet can also be examined through Michel Foucault’s concept of power.
Power does not operate only through direct physical force. It can operate through institutions, surveillance, information, discipline, and relationships.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sent to obtain information about Hamlet.
Knowledge becomes a resource of power.
Claudius wants to know what Hamlet is thinking because knowledge will help him control the situation.
The characters therefore participate in a system where information moves upward toward authority.
This creates a significant Cultural Studies connection:
Who has the right to observe, and who is being observed?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern believe they are serving the king, but they themselves are also being used by the king.
They are both participants in and victims of the system.
This demonstrates that power does not always operate in a simple “powerful versus powerless” division. Individuals can possess limited authority while simultaneously remaining subordinate to a larger institution.
8. Ideology and Institutional Loyalty
Louis Althusser’s concept of ideology can also help us understand the characters.
Institutions teach individuals how to behave within particular social structures. People often accept roles because those roles appear normal, legitimate, or necessary.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern accept the king’s command.
Why?
Because the king is the king.
His authority is treated as legitimate.
Their obedience therefore illustrates how individuals can participate in systems of power without constantly questioning the structure itself.
Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony provides another useful perspective. Power becomes stronger when people accept its norms as natural.
The characters do not begin by openly challenging the political structure of Denmark.
Instead, they enter the structure and perform their assigned roles.
Their tragedy therefore lies partly in their inability to imagine an effective alternative.
9. Shakespeare versus Stoppard
The contrast between Shakespeare and Stoppard is central to this activity.
| Shakespeare’s Hamlet | Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead |
|---|---|
| Hamlet remains the central figure. | Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become central. |
| The two characters are marginal. | Their marginalization becomes the main subject. |
| Their political function is important. | Their existential confusion becomes important. |
| They serve Claudius. | They question purpose and direction. |
| Their deaths occur within Hamlet’s tragedy. | Their deaths become a philosophical problem. |
| Power is strongly political. | Power is political, existential, and theatrical. |
Shakespeare shows us what happens to minor characters inside a political tragedy.
Stoppard asks us what it feels like to be one of those minor characters.
That difference is crucial.
Stoppard gives psychological and philosophical space to characters whom Shakespeare deliberately keeps at the margins.
10. “There Must Have Been a Moment…”
Stoppard’s most haunting idea is the possibility that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern could have refused their fate.
Guildenstern eventually reflects that:
“There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said no.”
This sentence introduces the question of agency.
Was there really a choice?
Could they have refused Claudius?
Could they have escaped the system?
Could they have resisted?
Or were they already trapped by the structure surrounding them?
These questions are equally relevant to contemporary organizational life.
An employee might technically have the freedom to resign, but economic responsibilities, family obligations, debt, professional identity, and limited alternatives can make “choice” complicated.
Therefore, Cultural Studies encourages us to distinguish between formal freedom and meaningful agency.
Someone may theoretically possess a choice while structurally lacking the conditions necessary to exercise it.
11. The “Dispensable Asset” in Contemporary Culture
The modern workplace often uses economic and managerial vocabulary such as:
human resources, assets, productivity, efficiency, performance, targets, restructuring, optimization, and downsizing.
These terms can sometimes make human labour appear primarily as an economic resource.
This is where Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become surprisingly contemporary.
They are valued because they perform a function.
When their function changes, their value disappears.
Their individual identities become secondary to the system.
The comparison makes us question the language through which institutions describe people.
Are people merely “resources”?
Can human identity be reduced to productivity?
What happens when a person is valuable only while they are useful?
These questions make the Cultural Studies reading of Hamlet relevant beyond Shakespearean drama.
12. A Cultural Studies Reading: From Text to Society
Cultural Studies teaches us to examine literature not as an isolated artistic object but as something connected with social structures, ideology, institutions, economics, history, and power.
This worksheet demonstrates that approach clearly. The activity connects Shakespeare and Stoppard with theorists such as Althusser, Foucault, Gramsci, Greenblatt, Said, Raymond Williams, and other Cultural Studies scholars.
Through this framework, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become more than comic or minor characters.
They become a way of thinking about:
- institutional power,
- surveillance,
- political hierarchy,
- ideological control,
- economic dependency,
- job insecurity,
- corporate restructuring,
- individual agency,
- identity,
- and existential uncertainty.
Literature therefore becomes a cultural text through which we can examine our own world.
13. Personal Reflection: Am I More Than My Role?
The most interesting question I take from this activity is:
What happens when a person becomes more important to an institution as a function than as an individual?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern make me think about the modern experience of being evaluated through a role.
A person may be described as an employee, manager, intern, teacher, student, worker, performer, or “asset.” These labels are useful, but they can also become limiting when they replace the complexity of individual identity.
The story makes me think about how easily people can become invisible inside large systems.
The person who receives an order may not have created the policy.
The employee who implements a decision may not have made the decision.
The worker who loses a job may not have caused the economic problem.
The individual who suffers the consequence may be far removed from the centre where the decision was made.
This is why Rosencrantz and Guildenstern remain relevant.
Their tragedy is not only that they die.
Their tragedy is that they are never fully allowed to become the authors of their own story.
14. Why the “Little People” Matter
The Cultural Studies perspective teaches us to pay attention to people who are often ignored.
History frequently remembers kings, presidents, CEOs, generals, heroes, and famous leaders.
But institutions also depend upon countless ordinary people.
They carry messages.
They follow orders.
They maintain systems.
They perform labour.
They transmit information.
They make institutions function.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern remind us that the “minor” characters of history may reveal the structure of power more clearly than the powerful themselves.
When we examine the margins, we begin to see the centre differently.
Conclusion: Who Controls the Story?
Hamlet presents Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as minor figures caught in the political machinery of Elsinore. Stoppard turns them into central characters and asks us to experience their uncertainty from the inside.
Their story can therefore be read on two interconnected levels.
At the first level, it is a story about political power.
At the second level, it is a story about human beings trying to understand their place inside systems that are larger than themselves.
The image of the “sponge” becomes particularly powerful because it captures the condition of the expendable individual: useful when needed, squeezed when necessary, and ultimately discarded.
In the modern corporate world, the circumstances are different, but the Cultural Studies question remains relevant:
Who has the power to make decisions, who performs those decisions, and who bears their consequences?
Reading Hamlet alongside Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead therefore changes the meaning of “minor character.” They may be minor within the original narrative, but they are not minor when we use literature to understand power.
Perhaps the most important lesson is that the people at the margins can reveal the structure at the centre.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern may not control the story, but by studying their powerlessness, we begin to understand who does.
Creative Engagement: A Contemporary Corporate Monologue
“Your Position Has Been Eliminated”
Rosencrantz, imagined as a modern corporate employee, sits before a laptop.
“They told me I was important.
Not personally, of course.
Professionally.
My designation was important.
My employee ID was important.
My quarterly targets were important.I attended meetings.
I prepared reports.
I answered emails marked ‘urgent.’
I worked late when the company needed me.Then one morning there was another meeting.
‘We are restructuring.’
Restructuring.
Such a beautiful word.
It does not say ‘you are being removed.’
It does not say ‘your salary will stop.’
It does not say ‘we no longer need you.’It says restructuring.
They said the decision was strategic.
I asked who made the decision.
Nobody answered.
I asked whether I had done something wrong.
They said no.
I asked whether my work had been valuable.
They said yes.
Then why am I leaving?
There was silence.
I suddenly understood Hamlet’s sponge.
Perhaps I had been absorbing everything:
instructions,
targets,
policies,
pressure,
expectations.And now someone had squeezed me dry.
My laptop still works.
My password probably works.
My chair is still there.But my name has disappeared from the system.
Perhaps that is what it means to be a little person in a large organization.
You are visible when the system needs you.
Invisible when it does not.”
Suggested Multimedia for the Blog
To satisfy the worksheet’s multimedia criterion, the blog can include:
Image 1 — Shakespeare and the Court of Elsinore
Place after the introduction to visually establish the political hierarchy of Hamlet.
Image 2 — Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with Claudius
Place after the discussion of their recruitment by Claudius.
Image 3 — The “Sponge” Metaphor
A conceptual image showing a sponge absorbing “Power,” “Information,” “Authority,” and “Rewards,” followed by “Expendability.”
Image 4 — Shakespeare → Stoppard
A split visual showing Hamlet on one side and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead on the other.
Image 5 — Corporate Hierarchy
A pyramid showing CEO/Management → Managers → Employees → “Expendable Workers,” connected to the Cultural Studies concept of institutional power.
Image 6 — The Individual and the System
A single employee surrounded by corporate symbols, surveillance screens, performance graphs, and organizational structures.
These visuals directly support the worksheet’s requirement that multimedia should enhance rather than merely decorate the argument.
MLA 9 Works Cited — with Accessible Links
-
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Project Gutenberg, 1998.
Read *Hamlet* online – Project Gutenberg
This is especially useful for the “sponge” passage, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s role, Claudius’s orders, and their eventual fate. -
Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Grove Press, 1967.
Open Library – *Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead*
The Open Library record provides bibliographic information and an Internet Archive borrowing option for the 1967 Grove Press edition. -
Williams, Raymond. “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory.” New Left Review, no. 82, 1973, pp. 3–16.
Read the complete article – New Left Review
This is an excellent free scholarly source for your discussion of culture, economic structures, social relations, and power. -
Williams, Raymond. “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory.” New Left Review. PDF version.
Open the PDF – New Left Review
Use this version if you want a downloadable academic PDF for your notes or NotebookLM. -
Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.”
Read Althusser’s essay online – Université du Québec à Montréal
This provides the text of Althusser’s influential essay and downloadable versions, including PDF. It is useful for your discussion of ideology, institutions, obedience, and social structures.
Additional Sources from Your Worksheet
Your worksheet itself recommends these theoretical sources: Althusser, Foucault, Gramsci, Greenblatt, Said, Storey, Veeser, and Williams, along with Shakespeare and Stoppard.
For your particular blog, I would especially use:
- Shakespeare → primary text and “sponge” passage
- Stoppard → reinterpretation of the marginal characters
- Foucault → power, surveillance, knowledge
- Althusser → ideology and institutional structures
- Gramsci → hegemony and consent
- Williams → culture, society, and economic structures
- Greenblatt → literature, history, and power
- Said → culture and power
Slide-ready MLA 9 version
You can paste this directly into the end of your Blogger post:
Works Cited
Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, translated by Ben Brewster, Monthly Review Press, 1971, pp. 127–186.
Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Edited by Colin Gordon, Pantheon, 1980.
Gramsci, Antonio. “The Intellectuals.” Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, International Publishers, 1971, pp. 5–23.
Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. University of Chicago Press, 1980.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Project Gutenberg, 1998, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1524.
Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Grove Press, 1967. Open Library record
Storey, John. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Routledge, 2018.
Veeser, H. Aram, editor. The New Historicism. Routledge, 1989.
Williams, Raymond. “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory.” New Left Review, no. 82, 1973, pp. 3–16. New Left Review – Full Text
Comments
Post a Comment