Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.

STOPPARD, Tom.

Item Number: 86746

London: Faber & Faber, 1967.

First edition of the author’s masterpiece. Octavo, original cloth. Signed by Tom Stoppard on the title page. Fine in a near fine price-clipped dust jacket with light toning to the spine. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box made by The Harcourt Bindery.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is the fabulously inventive tale of Hamlet as told from the worm’s-eye view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare’s play. In Tom Stoppard’s best-known work, this Shakespearean Laurel and Hardy finally get a chance to take the lead role, but do so in a world where echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, where reality and illusion intermix, and where fate leads our two heroes to a tragic but inevitable end. "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead [is] verbally dazzlingthe most exciting, witty intellectual treat imaginable." (Edith Oliver, The New Yorker).