In modern theatre, alienation also refers a technique used in many absurd dramas. Philosophically, alienation refers to a imminent sense of estrangement and exile, a concept clearly illustrated in Camus' Stranger. Even though they do not achieve any redeeming purpose, the audience can sympathize with the characters as they vacillate between awareness and understanding - never really achieving the latter. Stoppard humanizes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by imbuing them with a deep-seated universal desire: the need for meaning. In Stoppard's play, however, although they meet the same fate the journey that they take to get there is far different. In, they are dispensable, executed for no real reason and unable to garner much sympathy from the audience. Characters such as Claudius, Gertrude, and even Hamlet often call them by the wrong names in fact Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are often unable to distinguish themselves.

For all intents and purposes, the two are indistinguishable and dispensable. Yet Stoppard's genius lies in using their lack of depth and inability to sustain action as the very center of the events in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Stoppard lifts these characters from Shakespeare, but places them in the foreground, although together they lack the depth to sustain the action that Hamlet sustains alone.

Their primary purpose is to relieve the dramatic tension present within the rest of Hamlet. In Hamlet they are stock characters whose staccato dialogue and Elizabethan wit serve merely as comedic devices. In Shakespeare's work, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not given distinct personalities. Key characteristics of an existential work include the presence of anti-heroes, unstable knowledge of the past, and unstable identities. Many have examined plays such as Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Pirandello's Six Characters in Search for an Author, and Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead through an existential lens. Ultimately, the individual is responsible for his or her own actions despite the prevailing uncertainty about right or wrong.

Existentialism is the philosophical movement that focuses on the plight of the individual to seek meaning and purpose in a vast universe.

Rosencrantz and guildenstern book