Alice Did Not Like Shaking Hands With Either Of Them First, For Fear Of Hurting The Other Ones Feelings;

“Alice did not like shaking hands with either of them first, for fear of hurting the other one’s feelings; so, as the best way out of the difficulty, she took hold of both hands at once: the next moment they were dancing round in a ring. This seemed quite natural (she remembered afterwards), and she was not even surprised to hear music playing: it seemed to come from the tree under which they were dancing,”

— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Samuel Barnett, Jamie Parker and Jack Hawkins in "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" (2011)

i want an adaptation of hamlet where everything is exactly the same except rosencrantz and guildenstern’s names get increasingly mispronounced and they go from like like “crosenrantz and stuildengern” to “happenstance and gertrude stein”

Jamie Parker and Sam Barnett in rehearsal for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  More pictures here.  Thanks faeriequeen for the link!

Jack Hawkins as Hamlet and Katherine Press as Ophelia in Trevor Nunn's production of Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead (2011)

The really clever thing is the unexpected casting of a highly strung Rosencrantz and a dogged, steady Guildenstern; it’s usually the other way round, but Barnett and Parker reverse expectations all the way through, retaining character while seeming to be interchangeable, as others think of them anyway. “Consistency is all I ask,” says one; "Immortality is all I seek,“ the other. Impossible requests, both.

(Full review at The Independent)