The Invention of Love - Softcover

Stoppard, Tom

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571192718 ISBN 13: 9780571192717

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 1997

Synopsis

Tom Stoppard's new play is centered around A.E.Housman, poet and Classics scholar, whose most famous poem was A Shropshire Lad. This new play premiered at the Royal National Theatre in 1997, directed by Richard Eyre.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

It is 1936 and A. E. Housman is being ferried across the river Styx, glad to be dead at last. His memories are dramatically alive. The river that flows through Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love connects Hades with the Oxford of Housman's youth: High Victorian morality is under siege from the Aesthetic movement, and an Irish student called Wilde is preparing to burst onto the London scene.

On his journey the scholar and poet who is now the elder Housman confronts his younger self, and the memories of the man he loved his entire life, Moses Jackson-the handsome athlete who could not return his feelings. As if a dream, The Invention of Love inhabits Housman's imagination, illuminating both the pain of hopeless love and passion displaced into poetry and the study of classical texts. The author of A Shropshire Lad lived almost invisibly in the shadow of the flamboyant Oscar Wilde, and died old and venerated-but whose passion was truly the fatal one?

"Vintage Stoppard in its intelligence and wit."-Matt Wolf, Variety

"Tom Stoppard at his best; manipulative, inquisitive, irresistible . . . a master at work."-Sunday Times (London)

"So beautifully constructed that the playwright seems to be discovering his play only one jump ahead of the audience. It has that sense of surprise and wonder."-Vincent Canby, The New York Times

"A magical memory play which meanders like an elaborate dream . . . Stoppard has been inspired to write the most emotionally powerful and enthralling play of his career. Never before has he written with such exciting eloquence."-Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard

"Some of the finest, most passionate, and most disarmingly brilliant dramatic writing that he has given us."-Alastair Macaulay, The Financial Times

Tom Stoppard is the author of such seminal works as Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Arcadia, The Real Thing, Travesties, Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, and The Real Inspector Hound.

About the Author:

Tom Stoppard's work includes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Real Inspector Hound, Jumpers, Travesties, Night and Day, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, After Magritte, Dirty Linen, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Arcadia, Indian Ink, The Invention of Love, the trilogy The Coast of Utopia and Rock 'n' Roll. His radio plays include If You're Glad I'll Be Frank, Albert's Bridge, Where Are They Now?, Artist Descending a Staircase, The Dog It Was That Died, In the Native State and Darkside (incorporating Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon). Television work includes Professional Foul, Squaring the Circle and Parade's End. His film credits include Empire of the Sun, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which he also directed, Shakespeare in Love, Enigma and Anna Karenina.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0571192718
• ISBN 13: 9780571192717
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112