Tom Stoppard

Considered one of the most intellectually dazzling of modern dramatists, British playwright Tom Stoppard is best known for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Travesties, Jumpers, The Real Inspector Hound, and Night and Day. Here Thomas Whitaker analyzes the form and content of Stoppard's stage, radio and television plays, focusing on his playful wit and on his concern with modern esthetic and ethical values. Professor Whitaker traces the lines of development leading from the parodic theatricalism of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead through the ethical probing of Jumpers and the dialectical interrogation of art and politics in Travesties, to the simpler styles and the explicit commitment to freedom of expression that emerge in some of his recent plays like Professional Foul, Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, and On the Razzle. Exploring the playwright's statement that plays are events rather than texts, Whitaker shows how Stoppard invites his spectators to play the roles they see with sympathetic and detached imagination, thereby recognizing the self-deceptions and confusions into which our culture has tempted us.