ROS: It could go on for ever. Well, not for ever, I suppose. (Pause.) Do you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it?
GUIL: No.
ROS: Nor do I, really.... It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean one thinks of it like being alive in a box, one keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead ... which should make a difference ... shouldn't it? I mean, you'd never know you were in a box, would you? It would be just like being asleep in a box. Not that I'd like to sleep in a box, mind you, not without any air - you'd wake up dead, for a start and then where would you be? Apart from inside a box. That's the bit I don't like, frankly. That's why I don't think of it....
(GUIL stirs restlessly, pulling his cloak round him.)
Because you'd be helpless, wouldn't you? Stuffed in a box like that, I mean you'd be in there for ever. Even taking into account the fact that you're dead, really ... ask yourself, if I asked you straight off - I'm going to stuff you in this box now, would you rather be alive or dead? Naturally, you'd prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all. I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking - well, at least I'm not dead! In a minute someone's going to bang on the lid and tell me to come out. (Banging on the floor with his fists.) "Hey you, whatsyername! Come out of there!"
GUIL (jumps up savagely): You don't have to flog it to death!
In comparing these two texts, a newer existentialist context has changed attititudes to, and values of, death. In Elizabethan/Jacobean times, the society was deeply religious. Only the members of high society, stereotypically, had the necessary intelligence and sensibility to be able to comprehend the mystrerious, noble and grand concept of death - a topic which demanded the utmost reverence and respect.
"Life in a box" is Rosencrantz's view of death. It is his concept of it, and it makes it appear very plain and ignoble as compared to Hamlet's personal soliloquies and shared reflections - like the well-known "to be or not to be".
Guildenstern, who is more intellectual than Rosencrantz, has a different concept of death. He uses theatrical terms to describe it and strips it of its significance.
GUIL: No, no, no... you've got it all wrong... you can't act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen - it's not gasps and blood and falling about - that isn't what makes it death. It's just a man failing to reappear, that's all - now you see him, now you don't that's the only thing that's real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back - an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death.
He reduces the concept of death and uses colloquial and unpoetic language and diction. This creates a sense of morbidity and indifference.
You can compare and contrast themes and values/attitudesin your response and death is one of them.
Just make sure you use plenty of techniques and thorough analysis.
