1. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
By Tom Stoppard

2. Tom Stoppard, early years
Born Tomas Straussler on July 3, 1937, in Zlín, Czechoslovakia
Family fled to Singapore in 1939 to escape the Nazis
World War II, he went with his mother and younger brother to India to escape the invading Japanese

3. Tom Stoppard His father, a doctor, stayed behind in Singapore
He died on his way to join his wife and sons
In India, his mother met and married Kenneth Stoppard, a major in the British army
In 1946, the family moved to Bristol, England, just as India declared its independence from Britain
Tom embraced British life
English literature
English word plays

4. Writing Stoppard left school at age 17
Journalist writing play reviews for Scene magazine in London
Also began writing plays
wrote a one-act play in 1964 called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear
Rewrote, expanded into three acts, and retitled
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead

5. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Stoppard’s most famous play
Premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1966
The National Theatre in London in 1967
Debuted on Broadway in the United States later that year
Stoppard went on to win the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright in 1967
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead earned the Plays and Players Best Play Award in 1967
Tony Award for Best Play in 1968

6. Career 1980s he began working in the movies
wrote the script for Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun (1987)
rewrite on Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
To secure financing for a movie version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Stoppard decided to write the screenplay and direct the film himself (1990)
The movie, which stars Gary Oldman and Tim Roth, earned the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival in 1990
His other screenplay credits include: 
Billy Bathgate (1991)
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
Bond 22 (2007)
Screenplay for Shakespeare in Love (1998) earned Stoppard and his co- writer, Marc Norman, an Oscar and a Golden Globe for Best Screenplay
This movie imagines a young William Shakespeare, poor and suffering from writer’s block, entering into a passionate but doomed love affair

7. Hamlet
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead borrows heavily from Hamlet
The title is taken directly from the final scene of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

8. Title
Prince Hamlet, having been exiled to England by the treacherous King of Denmark (his uncle, who murdered Hamlet's father to obtain the throne) discovers en route a letter from the King carried by his old but now untrusted friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
The letter commands Hamlet's death upon his arrival in England
Hamlet rewrites the letter to command Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's death and escapes back to Denmark
By the end of Shakespeare's play, PrinceHamlet, Laertes, Ophelia, Polonius, King Claudius and Gertrude all lie dead
An ambassador from England arrives to bluntly report "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead" (Hamlet. Act V, Scene II, line 411)
and so they join all the stabbed, poisoned, and drowned key characters. By the end of Hamlet, Horatio is the only main figure left alive

9. After Rosencrantz and Guildenstern…
Became politically active
Wrote several scripts about political prisoners and the fall of communism in the Czech Republic
Stoppard is considered to be a potential candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature