Stoppard's The Real Thing (1982) is a more conventional play about love and marriage. It was very popular and convinced critics that Stoppard could write with more emotional impact and with less reliance on clever, verbal pyrotechnics.

Shakespeare's Hamlet (1601), the obvious source for Stoppard's play, is a nearly inexhaustible resource for comparisons with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Stoppard clearly acknowledged Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1952) as a major influence on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Beckett's classic play is about two men "passing the time" as they wait for someone who never arrives. There are many similarities as well as differences between the two plays.

Luigi Pirandello's play, Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), is another example of "a play within a play" and the most famous literary investigation into how fictional life and real life relate to one...