Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead-the mood

MOOD There is very little emotion in this play--even at the end, when the main characters disappear (seemingly dying); the audience does not exactly feel bad for them. This is perhaps because the audience is so muddled by the play's events that they find it difficult to align themselves with any particular character. Comedy is interspersed with tragedy in such a way as to make the viewer unsure of just how to react. Thus, the …

…Stoppard does not allow us to forget that all of their ineffectual humorous rambling actually has consequences: by the end of the play, it has killed them. This is hard to swallow for an audience who must feel fairly similar to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: unsure of what they're witnessing, and unsure what to do about it. This sort of confusion is surely designed, at times, to make the audience uncomfortable--but never far from a laugh.