The (possibly?) gay couple that Hamlet is friends with in the play of the same name.
They are duped by
Claudius into escorting Hamlet to England to be killed, but Hamlet escapes.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern then unwittingly meet the English King, and and hand him a letter instructing him to kill them both. They die. Nobody cares.
In the play, they always appear together, and seem to be entirely
co-dependent. They have no real individual traits.
Despite the fact that they are fairly minor characters, they have a sort of cult status. Tom Stoppard wrote a famous play called "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead", which tells the story of Hamlet from their perspective.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet...
GUILDENSTERN
Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambition is merely the shadow of a dream.
HAMLET
A dream itself is like a shadow.
ROSENCRANTZ
Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow.
