Transformation from the Conventional to the Radical.
In reference to Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead, the Transformation from conventional to the radical is more a focus on the original Elizabethan style of Shakespeare's Hamlet and its conversion into the absurdist theatre of Tom Stoppard.
Hamlet was written by William Shakespeare in around 1590, and was set in the Elizabethan style of theatre. The British people of the time were undergoing vast changes as inflation and Population booms took affect. In conjunction with the economic problems that many commoners were forced to face, there was also a vast uneasiness and hesitation in the air in relation to England's throne.
Many of Britain's Esteemed members of society and Gentlemen were worried about the Monarch's future as Elizabeth I's health began to fail. And as the vast majority of William Shakespeare's Audience was indeed the members of society who were deemed important due to their social or economic status, we can see many transference from English society into many of Shakespeare's plays.
Hamlet itself deals with the handing over of a monarch to its successor, including all the love, death and betrayal in-between, set in what was considered to be a perfect society. Shakespeare Knew how to create anxiety and interest in his audience in real life, and as Elizabethan theatre was the projection of fictional events performed as real life, he was able to take the audience an a journey into their own fantasies and nightmares.
Far from the Elizabethan style of theatre was Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead. Set in roughly the same time period as Hamlet but written in 1967, Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead took two characters deemed too unimportant to feature in Shakespeare's Hamlet and centralizes them using an Absurdist mould.
Stoppard's Audience, mostly elitist intellectuals, was thrust upon them absurdist theatre.