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-=TOM STOPPARD: BIOGRAPHY AND THREE PLAYS REVIEW=-

        Tom Stoppard represents an author of weight. His plays demostrates a high level of quality, and are full of complex conversations. In some cases his plays are serious, but in some other cases they are funny. Stoppard loves to write good plays, and in some of them he has writed about auto-biographic characters. The objective of this work is to make a research of some sources in the Internet that speak about the author, and join all the vital information as accuratelly sinteticed as posible. I am going to analyse some of Tom Stoppard's plays, and I will put in evidence the evolution and the changes that involves the author in his life as a writer. These plays are, If You're Glad I'll Be Frank (1966), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1967), and The Real Thing (1982). The time-hole between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and The Real Thing, will be analysed carefully, and I will try to talk about the evolution of the author in this fifteen years.

        Here is a little biography that I have found on the Internet. I have to give full credit to the Imagi-nation.com's webmaster because this biography is a work that he has made. Tom Stoppard biography, writed by Imagin-nation.com is shown on italics.

        "Tom Stoppard was born in Zlin, Czechoslovakia on July 3, 1937. His family moved to Singapore in 1939 to escape the Nazis. Then, shortly before the Japanese invasion of Singapore in 1941, young Tom fled to Darjeeling, India with his mother and brother. His father, however, Eugene Straussler, remained behind and was killed during the invasion. In 1946, the family emigrated to England after Tom's mother married Kenneth Stoppard, a major in the British army."

        Seems that Stoppard had a hard live when he was a child. Perhaps that, Stoppard seems that he is fine with that past. And for sure, that past could have determined the way he write his plays.

        "At the age of 17, after just his second year of highschool, Stoppard left school and began working as a journalist for the WESTERN DAILY PRESS (1954-58) and the BRISTOL EVENING WORLD (1958-60). He began to show a talent for dramatic criticism and served for a time as freelance drama critic for SCENE (1962-63), a British literary magazine, writing both under his own name and the pseudonym William Boot. He also started writing plays for radio and television and soon managed to secure himself a literary agent. Stoppard's first television play, A Walk on the Water (1963) would later be adapted for the stage as Enter a Free Man (1968). Over the next few years, he wrote various works for radio, television and the theatre including "M" is for Moon Among Other Things (1964), A Separate Peace (1966), and If You're Glad I'll Be Frank (1966). He also wrote 70 episodes of A Student's Diary: An Arab in London for the BBC World Service."

        Leaving school maybe was not the best way to follow a life, but it is possible that Stoppard had his good reasons. Despite that, Tom Stoppard had in mind the idea of become a writer. He worked for worth publications, where he showed his talent. More years later, Stoppard starts to write some works for radio, television and for the stage. Then is where his career has a writer starts. But it is when he wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead when his career was catapulted to the highs. The author of this Stoppard's biography talks about this:

        "His first major success came with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1967) which catapulted him into the front ranks of modern playwrights overnight when it opened in London in 1967. The play, which chronicles the tale of Hamlet as told from the worm's-eye view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare's play, was immediately hailed as a modern dramatic masterpiece."

        I found some positive critics that talk about Stoppard Plays. Clive Barnes, from The New York Times said about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: "This is a most remarkable and thrilling play. In one bound Mr. Stoppard is asking to be considered as among the finest English-speaking writers of our stage, for this is a work of fascinating distinction..." This is a positive critic. This demostrates that Stoppard aimed the fame with this play.

        "Over the next ten years, Stoppard wrote a number of successful plays, the most popular of which include Jumpers (1972) and Travesties (1974). He also translated a number of plays including those of Mrozek, Nestroy, Schnitzler and Havel, and was heavily influenced by the work of the Polish and Czech absurdists."

        "Then, in 1977, after visiting Russia with a member of Amnesty International, Stoppard became concerned with a number of human rights issues which have manifested themselves in his work. Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1977) was actually written at the request of André Previn and was inspired by a meeting with Russian exile Viktor Fainberg. And Professional Foul (1977), a television play, was Stoppard's contribution to Amnesty International's declaration of 1977 as Prisoner of Conscience Year. Other works such as Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth (1979) and Squaring the Circle (1984) are direct attacks on the oppressive old regimes of Eastern Europe. Not all of Stoppard's plays, however, are political. One of his most recent works, The Invention of Love (1997), examines the relationship between famous scholar and poet A.E. Housman and the man he loved his entire life, Moses Jackson--a handsome athlete who could not return his feelings. The play opened to rave reviews at the Royal National Theatre in 1997."

        The author do not mention The Real Thing (1982) in his biography. But talk about it is the objective of this work. In The Real Thing, Stoppard talks about the pains of love and marriage with rightful words and with a mesured languague. The comments that Frank Rich, from The New York Times spoke, are very positevily about this play: "...not only Stoppard's most moving play, but also the most bracing play that anyone has written about love and marriage in years."

        If You're Glad I'll Be Frank was one of his first works. The evolution of the author when he wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead several years later is big, because he gained fame. Stoppard, with his The Real Thing some years later, not only he determined his quality as a writer, but also, he reafirmed his position as one of the most brilliant writers of the world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
-STOPPARD, T. Rosencrantz and Guildersten are Dead. Londres, 1967
-STOPPARD, T. The Real Thing. Faber and Faber, Londres, 1982 Frank Rich
-STOPPARD, T. If You're Glad I'll Be Frank. Faber Paperbacks, 1966
-Biography extracted from: http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc46.html
-The critics' comments from: http://www.sff.net/people/mberry/real.htp

VOLVER

Academic year 2004/2005
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Jose Luis Soriano López
Universitat de València Press
joluiso@alumni.uv.es