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 another. As actors rehearse a play, six fictional characters from an unfinished play mount the stage and demand to have their story represented and resolved.

The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), by Oscar Wilde, is the classic example of the epigrammatic verbal wit that Stoppard is renowned for and which he first displayed so brilliantly in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

On Death and Dying (1969) by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross is a classic investigation into the human attitudes toward death. She describes five stages of dying that move from denial, anger, bargaining, and depression to acceptance.

Sigmund Freud was a provocative commentator on human attitudes toward death, and though nearly every educated person is familiar with Freud's basic ideas, few have actually read him. A very short and readable essay of astounding sensitivity called "On Transcience" (1916) is perhaps a good place to start in reading Freud.