Tom Stoppard: Open to the Public

Abstract

At first sight the above could come from an early Tom Stoppard play — The Real Inspector Hound perhaps — with its familiar introduction of a pompous official mouthing the language of his trade. It is only as we read on, or as we have the extract in its proper context, that the comic inspector turns into a truly menacing figure — able not only to stop the show, but to imprison the actors. The familiar Stoppardian interrogation of a settled text (for Hamlet read Macbeth) is no longer a part of an elaborate, if serious, joke.

Hostess: I’m afraid the performance is not open to the public.

Insepector: I should hope not indeed. That would be acting without authority — acting without authority! — you’d never believe I make it up as I go along … Now listen, you stupid bastard, you’d better get rid of the idea that there’s a special Macbeth which you do when I’m not around, and some other Macbeth for when I am around. Because I’m giving the party and there ain’t no other. It’s what we call a one-party system … So let’s have a little of the old trouper spirit, because if I walk out of this show I take it with me.

(Cahoot’s Macbeth, 1979)