Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Found

Five Seconds of Laurence Olivier's Film of Hamlet

Authors

Michael P. Jensen

Abstract

There is an often-repeated legend that Laurence Olivier and co-screenwriter Alan Dent left Rosencrantz and Guildenstern out of their 1948 film version of Hamlet. While this is true for most intents and purposes, in fact two unnamed characters with no lines take their place in one scene of the film, a fact that has not been previously noticed. This note establishes why so many have claimed that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are absent from the film, presents evidence that either they, or nameless substitutes for them, do appear in the persons of these two characters, and suggests that the claim that the characters were cut needs to be qualified.

Author Biography

Michael P. Jensen

Michael P. Jensen is an independent scholar with roughly 300 publications, seventy-five of which are about Shakespeare and the writers of his era. These have been published in The Ben Jonson Journal, Shakespeare Bulletin, and other journals and in popular publications such as Filmfax, and have been heard on KJAZ-FM. He is a contributing editor to Shakespeare Newsletter, where he created the "Talking Books" column. His article, "Macbeth Meets Alley Oop, and William Shakespeare Meets V. T. Hamlin and Tom Stoppard" appeared in Borrowers and Lenders 2.1 (2006).