The two protagonists are portrayed as fools, ineptly stumbling through a world of intrigue which they are unable to understand even after clumsily debating various philosophical questions, with no conclusions. In the climax of the play, they attempt to deliver Hamlet to his death in England on Claudius' orders, but Hamlet escapes when their ship is seized by pirates and, as in Shakespeare's play, it is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who are killed by the English. In their final scene, some small insight into the nature of the universe at last dawns on them, but it is a rather stark realization: Their feeble attempts to control their own lives never had a chance of derailing their predetermined destinies.