Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.

STOPPARD, Tom.

$7,500.00

Item Number: 141432

London: Faber & Faber, 1967.

First edition of the author’s masterpiece. Octavo, original cloth. Signed twice by Tom Stoppard, once  on the title page and again on a bookplate with the Union Jack flag to the front free endpaper. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box made by the Harcourt Bindery. An exceptional example.

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).