Guildenstern: ‘There must have been a moment, at the beginning, when we could have said no. But somehow we missed it.

In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a verbally scintillating and richly inventive play, Stoppard retells Hamlet through the eyes of two of its minor characters. Vaguely conscious that they are bit parts in a much bigger story of which they have no direct knowledge, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hilariously and poignantly inhabit a world completely beyond their grasp.

Are we humans, like these hapless protagonists, swept along by random events, or are we inescapably part of a script which has already been written?