steepholm

The vexing textual question, of course, is whether the Rat is the model for good Guildenstern or gentle Rosencrantz-- he must be one of them, for the other is the rat who comes from the South to urge the escape from Denmark to more congenial climes-- a dream like a nostalgic sickness, swaying Ratty to urge his young Mole-Hamlet to return to happy student days at Wittenberg. The occasional problem people have (including myself) in distinguishing Rosencrantz from Guildenstern is due to their similarity in species, and indeed Shakespeare's source material shows us plainly why R&G stand by Hamlet and yet might wish him elsewhere-- our clever Will has combined and intermingled Grahame's separately motivated rats into two men of self-contradictory, complex motivations.

On a completely unrelated note, do you happen to have read The Pooh Perplex?