Confessions of a Theatre Snob

Friday, March 28, 2008

Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are not only dead, but spinning in their graves

I do a pub quiz most Sundays. We do pretty well, though we're rubbish at any sports questions, and I usually have to rely on others for current affairs, unless it's been on the Radio 2 news headlines. I tend to be pretty good on random stuff, such as naming the year in which certain films were released.

There tends to be a shortage of literary questions, so imagine my smugness when the following came up this week:
'In which Shakespeare play do the characters Rozencrantz and Guildenstern appear?'
The landlady had difficulty pronouncing the names.

I started to listen to the debate on the next table. There were at least six of them.
'They sound German!'
'Which was the one about the feuding families? It'll be them.'
'Well, it's bound to be something well known, like Hamlet or Macbeth, it's not going to be something obscure like As You Like It!'
'Which was the Shakespeare play set in Liverpool?'
'Yes, Ronnie Rozencrantz, he played on the wing!'

Suffice to say, there were groans when the answer was announced.

Did I mention we won this week?

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1 Comments:

At 3:29 PM, Blogger Corinne said...

Can I just say - your title, even before I'd read the piece, really made me giggle.

The AYLI being obscure made me die a little. Timon is obscure. Pericles is obscure. King John is obscure. AYLI?? No. No. No. I might have had to shout at them.

 

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