Tom Stoppard

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Art as a Moral Matrix

   • Paul Delaney

   Pages 1-13

3. Through a Glass Darkly: Mortality and the Outer Mystery in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

   • Paul Delaney

   Pages 14-35

4. The Flesh and the Word in Jumpers

   • Paul Delaney

   Pages 36-57

5. Mortal Flesh in a Moral Matrix of Words: The Temporal and the Timeless in Travesties

   • Paul Delaney

   Pages 58-81

6. The Word Made Flesh: Moral Action in the Body Politic

   • Paul Delaney

   Pages 82-104

7. ‘Not of the Flesh but Through the Flesh’: Knowing and Being Known in The Real Thing

   • Paul Delaney

   Pages 105-124

8. Particle Physics and Particular Persons: the Join Between Happenstance and Goodness in Hapgood

   • Paul Delaney

   Pages 125-148

9. Moral Absolutes and Mortal Contexts

   • Paul Delaney

   Pages 149-158

10. Back Matter

    Pages 159-202

    PDF

Every four or five years Britain's most prominent dramatist pulls out all the stops and writes a major stage play of his own. Between plays, Stoppard the craftsman does translations, screenplays, light entertainments, and work for hire. Delaney's book is the first to focus on the major plays. Spanning Stoppard's career from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1967) to Hapgood (1988), this study shows the figure which Stoppard from the first has been weaving in his theatrical tapestry. That there is development in Stoppard is clear but - as Delaney demonstrates - the development is from moral affirmation to moral application, from the assertion of moral principles to the enactment of moral practice. Such development from precept to praxis demonstrates organic growth rather than radical metamorphosis. Using Stoppard's words in a number of little-known interviews as a starting-point, Delaney shows how the major plays bear out Stoppard's contention that he 'tries to be consistent about morality'. The volume contains the most extensive bibliography and discography of Stoppard interviews (over 200 including print and broadcast sources) ever compiled.

• drama
• dramatist
• Great Britain
• Hamlet
• Macbeth
• Tom Stoppard
• British and Irish Literature

'...readers may find themselves swept away...' - American Theatre

'Erudite, thoroughly researched and vigorously written, it demands a reader's undivided concentration, rewarding it generously.' - Markland Taylor, Variety

• Westmont College, Santa Barbara, USA

  Paul Delaney

Policies and ethics