When “Little People” Become Disposable:Marginalization, Power, and Identity in Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
From Shakespeare’s royal court to the modern workplace, what happens to people who are useful to power but invisible within it?
Introduction
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead are separated by almost four centuries, yet both plays raise an important question: What happens to people who exist within powerful systems but do not control those systems?
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In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor characters. They are Hamlet’s old acquaintances, but their importance comes mainly from their relationship with the royal court. Claudius and Gertrude use them to observe Hamlet and discover the reason for his strange behaviour. They become instruments of royal authority rather than independent individuals. Hamlet’s description of Rosencrantz as a “sponge” makes their position especially clear: they absorb the King’s favour, information, and authority, but can ultimately be squeezed dry and discarded.
Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead changes this perspective completely. Characters who are almost invisible in Shakespeare’s tragedy become the centre of the drama. Through their confusion, philosophical conversations, games, mistakes, and search for identity, Stoppard asks what it feels like to be a person whose role has already been decided by someone else.
The two plays therefore provide an interesting Cultural Studies perspective. Power does not operate only through kings, governments, or institutions. It also operates by deciding who matters, who speaks, who is heard, and who can be replaced. The marginalization of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can therefore be connected to modern experiences of organizational hierarchy, job insecurity, and the treatment of workers as replaceable “assets.”
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1. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: The “Little People” of Hamlet
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern occupy an unusual position in Hamlet. They are not completely powerless because they have access to the King and Queen. However, their access to power does not mean that they actually possess power.
They are summoned by Claudius and Gertrude because Hamlet has become unpredictable. Gertrude explains that Hamlet has spoken about them and that he has known them since childhood. Their personal connection with Hamlet is therefore turned into a political resource. They are expected to use their friendship to discover what is happening inside Hamlet’s mind.
This is an important example of marginalization through usefulness. They are included in the court when they are useful, but they do not determine the purpose of their inclusion.
“Take you me for a sponge, my lord? Ay, sir, that soaks up the King's countenance, his rewards, his authorities... when he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again.”
The metaphor is powerful because a sponge has no independent purpose in this context. It absorbs what surrounds it. Hamlet therefore recognizes something that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern themselves fail to fully understand: they are being used by the political system.
They believe they are serving the King, but the larger political structure determines their movements. They carry messages, observe Hamlet, and eventually accompany him to England. Their individual wishes become less important than the demands of the monarchy. Their fate demonstrates how people close to power can still remain powerless.
2. Power and the Making of Disposable People
The marginalization of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is not simply about being minor characters. It is about how a powerful system decides the value of individuals.
Claudius occupies the centre of the political structure. Hamlet, although troubled and uncertain, is also central because he is the prince and the main character of the tragedy. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern remain somewhere at the edge.
This difference can be understood through the Cultural Studies idea that institutions organize people into different positions. Some individuals receive authority, while others carry out decisions made by people above them. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are therefore important enough to be used but not important enough to control their own destiny.
Their eventual deaths make this especially disturbing. Claudius sends them to England carrying a letter ordering Hamlet's execution. Hamlet discovers the letter and changes it so that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern themselves are condemned instead. The irony is that they become victims of the same system they were serving. Their deaths demonstrate the consequences of participating in a power structure without understanding its full operation.
3. From Elsinore to the Modern Workplace
At first, Shakespeare's royal court and a modern corporation may seem completely different. One is a monarchy; the other is an economic organization. Yet the comparison becomes meaningful when we focus on hierarchy, control, and replaceability.
In a large organization, decisions about restructuring, relocation, or downsizing may be made at levels far removed from individual employees. A worker may have contributed significantly to an organization but still have limited influence over decisions affecting their position.
Deconstructing the Modern "Human Asset" Concept
This comparison helps us think about the difference between being valuable to a system and having power within that system. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are valuable because they can perform a task for the King. Once their usefulness disappears, their protection also disappears.
4. Stoppard Gives the Marginalized a Voice
Stoppard's greatest transformation is that he moves Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from the background to the foreground. In Shakespeare, Hamlet's story is central. In Stoppard, the audience follows the two minor characters when Hamlet's major plot is happening elsewhere.
Stoppard asks us to imagine what happens to Shakespeare's minor characters when the main characters leave the stage. What are they doing? What do they think? Do they understand why events are happening? Do they have any control over their lives?
“Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are... condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one—that is the meaning of order.”
The metaphor of wheels suggests a system that is already moving before they understand it. They can move within the system, but they cannot easily determine its direction.
5. Existentialism: Who Am I When My Role Is Already Written?
One of the deepest questions in Stoppard's play is identity. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern frequently confuse themselves and each other. Their uncertainty about identity becomes symbolic of their larger problem: they do not fully understand their place in the world.
The audience knows something that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not know: their story is already moving toward a predetermined ending. The Player makes this idea explicit when he explains that the tragedians follow directions and that there is “no choice involved.”
A person enters an organization with a job title, responsibilities, targets, and expectations. The organization provides a role, but the role can also restrict identity. Stoppard turns these marginal characters into symbols of a universal human experience: the struggle to understand whether we are choosing our lives or simply performing roles scripted for us.
6. “We Cross Our Bridges”: The Feeling of Having No Control
“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern constantly react to events instead of creating them. Something happens, and they respond. Someone gives them instructions, and they follow. They arrive somewhere without knowing exactly why.
This is where Stoppard's absurdist comedy becomes serious. The audience laughs at their confusion, but underneath the humour is a disturbing question: How much control does an individual really possess? Employees may receive instructions from managers, managers from senior leadership, and decisions may originate in distant executive boardrooms. The individual at the bottom experiences the consequences without understanding the process that produced them.
7. Shakespeare and Stoppard: Two Different Views of Power
Shakespeare's Hamlet presents power primarily through the structures of monarchy, family, and political authority. Stoppard retains this political world but shifts attention toward the people who do not control it.
| Shakespeare’s Hamlet | Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead |
|---|---|
| Focuses on Hamlet and the royal crisis | Focuses on two marginal characters |
| Power is visible through the monarchy | Power is experienced as fate, language, and structure |
| Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have minor roles | They become the central characters |
| Their usefulness is connected with Claudius's authority | Their uncertainty reveals the limits of individual agency |
| Their deaths occur offstage within Hamlet's tragic plot | Their deaths become an existential philosophical problem |
| The audience understands more than the two courtiers | Stoppard makes the audience conscious of theatrical control |
A recent scholarly discussion similarly describes Stoppard's play as shifting attention from Shakespeare's protagonist toward two minor characters, utilizing that displacement to interrogate traditional ideas of dramatic authority and heroism.
8. Cultural and Economic Power Structures
Cultural Studies encourages us to look beyond individual characters and examine the systems surrounding them. Claudius represents a political structure in which information, loyalty, and authority are unequally distributed.
Theoretical Lenses: Foucault, Gramsci, and Althusser
9. The “Asset” and the Human Being
An asset is something considered valuable because it contributes to an external system. But a human being is fundamentally more than their economic usefulness.
Claudius does not need them because of who they are; he needs them because of what they can do. Hamlet recognizes this before they do. Stoppard takes the idea further by showing their inner confusion. Behind the political function are two people asking questions about memory, identity, language, choice, and death. Their humanity becomes visible precisely because they are no longer treated simply as tools.
10. Personal Reflection: Re-evaluating Marginality
Before studying this comparison, I mostly understood marginalization as something connected with people who are clearly excluded from society. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern made me think about a different form of marginalization: being present but not being central; being useful but not being powerful; being included but not being heard.
A person does not have to be completely outside a system to experience marginalization. Sometimes a person can be inside the institution and still have very little control over what happens to them. The “sponge” metaphor particularly illustrates this: access to the court is not the same as authority. Closeness to power does not protect you from power.
In academic and professional environments, people can quickly become identified solely by marks, positions, roles, or productivity metrics. Literature helps us examine who receives power, who performs power, who benefits from power, and who becomes invisible within it.
Conclusion: Who Gets to Matter?
Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead ultimately ask us to reconsider the relationship between power and visibility.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not completely powerless. They have access to the court and are trusted with important tasks. Yet their position remains dependent on a system controlled by others. Hamlet's “sponge” metaphor exposes their expendability, while Stoppard's reinterpretation gives them the voice that Shakespeare's tragedy largely denies them.
The most important lesson is therefore not simply that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are “little people.” It is that systems make people feel little by deciding whose voice matters, whose work is valuable, and whose presence can be replaced.
By moving these two characters from the margins to the centre, Stoppard teaches us something important about reading itself: sometimes we understand power better when we stop looking only at the powerful and start listening to the people standing at the edge of the system.
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