Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-nxk7g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-19T19:23:46.487Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Prologue: Setting – and unsettling – the stage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2011

Kristen Poole
Kristen Poole
Affiliation:
University of Delaware
Get access

Summary

Guildenstern: The scientific approach to the examination of phenomena is a defence against the pure emotion of fear.

Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have come to visit. In a moment that is as raw for the emotions expressed as for the witness of false friendship, Hamlet attempts to describe his melancholy:

. . . indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

(Hamlet 2.2.263–9)
Type
Chapter
Information
Supernatural Environments in Shakespeare's England
Spaces of Demonism, Divinity, and Drama
 , pp. 1 - 5
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×