Stoppard, Tom. (b. 1937).

L i f e

- born Tomáš Straussler in Czechoslovakia, accepted his step-father’s surname Stoppard on his mother’s remarriage, and settled in Britain

W o r k

- playwright both for the theatre and radio, screenwright, and drama critic

- frequently uses plays by other playwrights as launching pads for his own

- appeals to the pragmatic and speculative alike: delights in parallels, coincidences, and convergences

x but: his carefully plotted, symmetrical, and logical plays systematically found their ends in their beginnings

If You’re Glad I’ll be Frank (1966):

- a short radio play of exuberant fantasy: a bemused husband desperately tries to reclaim his wife subsumed into a speaking clock

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966):

< playfully rereads Shakespeare’s Hamlet according to Einsteinian laws, Eliotic negatives, and Beckettian principles

< influenced by Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot x but: Beckett focuses on hopelessness x Stoppard celebrates the gaiety and perverse vitality generated from despair

- marginalises the Prince x makes the two attendant lords take on the weight of a tragedy they neither understand nor dignify

- their tragedy lies in their awareness of the inescapable pattern of Hamlet

The Real Inspector Hound (1968):

< rereads Agatha Christie’s play The Mousetrap into a hilarious parody on the classic country house murder-mystery play

- satirises the pomposity of theatre critics whose lives become entangled with those of the characters in the play they are supposedly reviewing

Jumpers (1972):

- a moral philosopher prepares a lecture on the existence of God and the problem of the objectivity of good x evil, is confronted by the murder of an acrobat in his own home, and forced to make mental and moral jumps

Travesties (1974):

< shapes the play around echoes, parodies, and inversions of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest

- analyses political and literary history in a complex and speculative way

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1977):

- a political anti-Communist script for actors and symphony orchestra

Professional Foul (1978):

- a political TV play on the persecution of intellectuals by Communism

Arcadia (1993):

- a subtle and allusive fusion of complementary oppositions: on nature, literary history, truth and time, and the disruptive influence of sex