Rosencrantz
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern together function as instruments of royal surveillance and emblems of the court's corruption. They are not villains — they are ordinary men of ordinary ambition, willing to do whatever is asked of them if the rewards are sufficient.
Appears In
Biography
Rosencrantz is a minor courtier and former fellow student of Hamlet at the University of Wittenberg. He and Guildenstern are so inseparable in their dramatic function that Hamlet can never quite recall which is which.
Summoned to Elsinore by Claudius and Gertrude, Rosencrantz has been tasked with probing Hamlet's troubled mind and reporting back to the crown — a transaction he appears to undertake without significant moral difficulty.
His role in Act III Scene I is brief: he confirms, with Guildenstern, that they have failed to discover the source of Hamlet's distraction. Their later compliance with Claudius's plan to have Hamlet killed in England makes them unwitting instruments of a design far darker than they knew.
Motivation
Rosencrantz is motivated by the desire to please those in power and to advance his position at court. There is no active malice — only the quiet willingness to do whatever is asked, which in the world of this play turns out to be enough to get a man killed.
Personality
Rosencrantz is pleasant company without moral backbone. He and Guildenstern represent the ordinary corruption of courtly ambition — not villainy, but the comfortable readiness to serve power without asking what power serves. Their interchangeability is Shakespeare's sharpest point about them.