The Cambridge Introduction to Tom Stoppard

Demastes, William W.

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139135108

2012

DOI: 10.1017/cbo9781139135108

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The Cambridge Introduction to Tom Stoppard

William W. Demastes

Abstract: Tom Stoppard is widely considered to be one of the most important dramatists of contemporary theatre. In this Introduction, William Demastes provides an accessible overview of Stoppard's life and work, exploring all the complexity and variety that makes his drama so unique. Illustrated with images from a diverse range of Stoppard productions, the book provides clear evaluations of his major works, including Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Travesties, Arcadia and The Coast of Utopia, to provide the most … Show more

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Cited by 3 publications

References 14 publications

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“Oh to Be Twenty-one, Reading Greats at Oxford!”: What Happens in Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love

Cotterill¹

2022

East-West Cultural Passage

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Tom Stoppard’s play The Invention of Love stages the classical scholar and poet A.E. Housman at the point of death, as, in the role “AEH,” he recalls his younger self, “Housman.” “Housman” is seen as an Oxford undergraduate; he is a brilliant classicist, driven by ambition to purge ancient texts from corrupt readings; he is also fired by love for a male fellow-student, Jackson, and by a vision of Classical studies as fostering an awareness of ancient virtue shown in athletic prowess and comradely self-sacrifice. His Oxford milieu offers ambiguous support for this combination of ideals; as a clerical worker in London, he fulfils his academic ambitions but forces upon himself and Jackson the recognition that his love is not reciprocated, and, in any case, could not safely be given public expression or acknowledgement. “AEH,” driven by a sense of nostalgia which is also a quest to recover and resurrect his former self, is increasingly led to confront love, in his own life and in the poetic texts upon which he has worked, as an invention – a precarious and perhaps unsustainable balance between coherence and breakdown, between a stoical embrace of modernity and a passionately modern turn to a receding past.

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“Oh to Be Twenty-one, Reading Greats at Oxford!”: What Happens in Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love

Cotterill¹

2022

East-West Cultural Passage

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“Who the Hell Are You?”

Erdem Ayyıldız

2023

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Tom Stoppard is an outstanding playwright, embellishing his plays with scientific and philosophical approaches and presenting complicated, mysterious plots to the reader. He bases the plot of his postmodern play, Hapgood (1988), on quantum theory and draws an analogy between Werner Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminism, termed “The Uncertainty Principle”, and international espionage. Thus, he constructs the complicated relationship between the particle and the whole throughout the play to depict the relativistic and deceptive relationship between sex and gender. Focusing on the title character of the play, the present study proposes that the play represents the fluid and indeterminate nature of gender and identity within the context of espionage and indeterminism. Hapgood, who is a mother, a lover and a successful master agent in a man-dominated British secret service, navigates between “masculinity” and “femininity” during a day. Moreover, she metamorphoses into her twin, who is entirely different from her, except for their identical faces, to entrap the mole in the office. The study consults Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and fluidity to indicate the unpredictable and uncertain nature of ‘gender identity’, which formulates itself through performances in social relations and trespasses the heterosexual matrix. It juxtaposes the Butlerian approach with the Uncertainty Principle in quantum theory pertaining to the confusing relationship between gender, the body and identity. The Butlerian analysis of the play reveals that particularly the modern way of life makes women transgress the Cartesian dichotomies of sex/gender, masculine/feminine and man/woman through the fluidity of their roles even during a single day and makes it difficult to find out who is really who.

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Tom Stoppard’s Science Plays: Metaphor and Experiment

Kačer

2021

Świat I Słowo

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The science play is a well-established genre of dramatic writing in the Englishspeaking theatrical tradition. This paper discusses three full-length science plays by the prominent British playwright Tom Stoppard. These are Hapgood, Arcadia, and The Hard Problem. The plays are based on popular science sources and offer their audience an access to science. After providing a brief history of the science play and the science show, the paper shows that Stoppard develops the dramatic and theatrical traditions by involving science on the textual (giving popularised scientific knowledge in the form of dialogised lectures) and performative levels (demonstrating or illustrating science on stage), primarily to turn it into a metaphor of human behaviour. Hapgood and Arcadia further engage with science on the structural level, thus becoming thought experiments reflecting upon science. The most recent play, The Hard Problem, develops textual and performative strategies related to science but ceases to experiment with the form, leaving more space for the audience to draw ethical conclusions.

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The Cambridge Introduction to Tom Stoppard

Cited by 3 publications

References 14 publications

“Oh to Be Twenty-one, Reading Greats at Oxford!”: What Happens in Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love

“Oh to Be Twenty-one, Reading Greats at Oxford!”: What Happens in Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love

“Who the Hell Are You?”

Tom Stoppard’s Science Plays: Metaphor and Experiment

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