This is a character essay I am writing to study Guildenstern through Rosencrantz's eyes. It is semi-loosely based upon the wonderful movie "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead," and is set in basically the movies format except with the story playing out through Rosencrantz's eyes.

Disclaimer: I am not trying to steal Tom Stoppard's (or Shakespeare's) work. I just wanted to explore these two characters because they are my favorite from "Hamlet" and the Tom Stoppard movie is so great.

The beginning is a little slow, but please tell me what you think. Thanks!

Rated Teen just for safety.

My friend Guildenstern is a thoughtful fellow. He can talk constantly about things, which would never occur to the normal man. Sometimes I have practically no idea what he is even talking about. "Rosencrantz, have you ever thought about why the sun rises in the east, but sets in the west?"

I would look down at him for he was about two and a half inches shorter then I, but yet I would always feel small next to him.

"Well?" He would say raising his already arched eyebrows and looking at me, fixing me with his beetle like eyes.

"No?" I would reply in this particular moment in space seating myself and polishing my belt, which had grown dusty.

I heard a sigh and looked up. Guildenstern looked down at me with a resigned, almost condescending glance and then sat next to me.

"You don't think much, my friend," He said, matter-of-factly staring into the fire.

I shrugged noncommittally as I was absorbed in the obsessive polishing of my belt. Guildenstern looked towards the sky, as he was wont to do when he found my answers far too simple to be satisfying.

We were sitting in the dirt in the woods with a small fire nearby and our restless horses tied to strong boughs a bit away from us. It was rather late in the afternoon and growing cold so we were both glad of the warm fire and because Denmark was known to be rough in some places, to be with each other.

"Is it not strange though that the sun does not set in the same place it rose?"

I shrugged again. I had never really paid much attention to it.

"I mean for it to set in another position the sun must be moving around the earth in a circle." Guildenstern said fingering his single gold earring.

I glanced at him quickly.

Guildenstern sat with a single leg drawn up and mossy, murky, brown eyes staring vaguely up at the sky with an abstract look to them. His wayward short hair was of a reddish bark brown color and had the look that said someone was constantly running their fingers through it. The dust had heightened the gaunt look to his face and he seemed a strange figure sitting there in his dirty well worn traveling clothes.

"Maybe the earth moves around the sun." I said looking at him.

He gave me a look of disgust. "My dear Rosencrantz, that is rather unlikely."

I shrugged again. I thought I heard Guildenstern groan.

"But then perhaps if the earth revolved itself that would help explain the sun." He murmured.

I smiled at him. Guildenstern started picking up sticks and feeding the fire. I dragged a stick in the dirt. A shadow fell across the dirt. I looked towards the sky. The sun was high above overhead. I placed a stone on the top of the shadow and watched it.

"What are you doing?" Guildenstern asked.

I looked up at him. "I am tracking the sun's shadows." I said simply.

Guildenstern crossed his arms. "Really." His tone was coated with disbelief.

I nodded smiling. He grunted with contempt. "Right. While you play with the shadows I am going to go check on the horses."

I glanced at him and watched him march off knowing my mechanical curiosity annoyed him.

He returned forty minutes later with an armful of logs. I had placed another stone on the shadow, which had moved a bit. Guildenstern started feeding the fire with larger logs, for it was starting to die. He looked towards me. "You know the sundial has already been invented?"

I blinked benignly at him. "I know."

Guildenstern raised his eyes to the sky with a long painful, drawn out sigh before settling before the fire.

Suddenly there was a large crack. Guildenstern sprang up and landed on my shadow watch, scattering the stick and stones. I felt my face fall.

"What was that?" Guildenstern asked.

I stood rather stiffly. "I don't know, Rosencrantz."

Guildenstern looked at me. I inwardly groaned and cursed my lack of self.

"Guildenstern." I said quickly correcting myself.

Guildenstern looked around slowly. After a couple of minutes he settled himself again. I sat as well.

"What is the purpose of life?" Guildenstern asked abstractly after a few minutes had passed slowly by.

"Good food?" I offered.

"Saints save us." Guildenstern muttered.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Don't you even know?" Guildenstern asked with contempt.

I shook my head. He regarded me with amazed and skeptical eyes.

"Rosencrantz you really don't know?"

I eyed him curiously. "Should I?" I asked.

He frowned. "Well, yes actually you should."

I started arranging the stones in front of me in a pentagram, an interesting shape. Guildenstern watched me. "We are going to meet Hamlet at his royal step-fathers palace and do good king Claudius his dirty jobs." I thought I heard disgust in his voice as he spoke. "You do remember who Hamlet is don't you?"

I stared at him. The look on his face clearly told me he felt I would have absolutely no idea, I who could not even remember my own name.

"Yes." I replied.

Hamlet was a school companion of Guildenstern's and mine.

We had never been close, but we had been friends. It was indirectly through Hamlet that I had met Guildenstern. It had been at the funeral for Hamlet's grandfather to which all, even the peasants had been invited.

It was there we had first met each other.

I had been walking down one of the stairways on my way to the funeral end where you gave your condolences when quite suddenly I pitched face forward and sprawled in the turf.

"How did it feel my excellent fellow!"

I had sat up spitting out grass and turned to see a young man wearing black as required for a funeral, but a smile that belied the clothes sad aspect.

His smile was the one thing that kept me in full admiration of him for all our later years together and it kept me from being angry with him then, when we first met. He seldom shows a smile now. That is not to say he is an unfriendly fellow though he can be a judgmental man, but more that he lives in an idealistic world of his very own and often seems to be to much encompassed in this world to give much attention to man.

Needless to say for you have probably already figured it out, Guildenstern had accidentally I like to think and to this day believe, tripped me and then upon seeing this wanted immediately to know how it felt. Such was his personality. He was ever curious about why's and how's and feelings like being tripped and falling in the turf.

Sarcastic, mildly aloof and maybe even arrogant in his superiority one thing my friend would never, could never be was cruel. Thoughtless maybe, but never intentionally cruel. I like to think that we got on so well after that first meeting because we recognized the lack we each possessed and recognized how together we filled it. I never take to heart his brooding, disgusted looks to me when I have forgotten something as a stranger might. I know that is merely his irritation at being interrupted when he could be thinking. Likewise he tolerates my need to fiddle with things and rarely if ever sneers at them as folly as many others might.

Together, with my social graces and his quick and altogether far to ready wit we made the perfect pair to be put to spying on Hamlet. If I have caught you by surprise you are to be commended on your trust in us. But we are not self-sacrificing enough to refuse to do such an unpleasant assignment as to get our heads chopped off. Though their majesties may seem tolerant, disobedience is an insult and to be martyrs our lives would be forfeit in processes.

All the same I seemed more concerned about it then Guildenstern. Indeed I was not as clueless as he assumed. Though I had forgotten where we were headed, as soon as he had said the palace I had remembered the rather unsavory assignment waiting for us and understood the disgust I had heard in Guildenstern's voice. That Guildenstern could show such a strong dislike of the assignment was a signal that he remembered well the school days with Hamlet and even the knowledge that if we did not do the job our lives would be forfeit could not color his dislike of the assignment.

Guildenstern brought me back to the present when he said, "Rosencrantz perhaps we should move on. I keep feeling like someone is watching us."

That Guildenstern had managed to pull his mind out of his thoughts to sense that someone was watching us made me guess it was true and so I obediently if a bit reluctantly stood and started pulling our things together into a neat pile.

I put out the fire as Guildenstern packed up our belongings onto our horses and then we were off.