IF YOU ARE GLAD, I'LL BE FRANK
Author: Tom Stoppard
Title and subtitle: If you're glad, I'll be frank
Editorial and year / place of publication: Faber and Faber, 1969, London
“Dramatis personae”: In this play there are many characters but only two are important. Gladis: Gladis is voice. Voice that Frank falls in love with it. This voice is the same that her wife had (because her wife is dead). It works as a clock. Frank: he is a man about middle age. He works as a bus driver. The rest of the characters are: 1st Porter, Myrtle Trelawney, Mr. Mortimer, Mr. Courtenay-Smith, Sir John, Lord Coot, Beryl Bligh, Operator, Ivy and 2nd Porter.
Plot: At first, this play was written to radio. It is very short. There are fourteen scenes that they are also short. The play starts when Frank heard Gladys (her wife dead). At first, he was not sure if she was Gladis or not, but finally he was absolutely sure. So he went where she works to look for, he wanted that she came back. Gladis was a clock, she was tied of work as it. He went twice times, but only in the second he got to enter in the place where she works. But finally, he discovered that she was a machine, a machine capable of think and feel.
Space and time: The action takes place in many places such as, in a bus, in where Gladis works, so we can say that the space is not single but it is closed. The playwright says nothing about the time. We can suppose that the action happens in one day.
The language that he used in his play is colloquial. There are short sentences like “Good morning my Lord” page 9, and unfinished sentences “Ah, Thompson…” and also some monologue, an example can be pages 11, 12, 13 : “ The point is beginning to be/lost on me./ Or rather it is becoming a/ different point (…) The spirit goes first, followed/ by the mind./ And if you can’t look away/you go mad.” The lexicon is not very simple and easy.
In my opinion, I think that Tom Stoppard is showing us the importance and the value that have for us the time.