Tom Stoppard: The Moral Vision of the Major Plays [Paperback]

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.Preface - Acknowledgements - Art as a Moral Matrix - Through a Glass Darkly: Mortality and the Outer Mystery in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - The Flesh and the Word in Jumpers - Mortal Flesh in a Moral Matrix of Words: The Temporal and the Timeless in Travesties - The Word Made Flesh: Moral Action in the Body Politic (Professional Foul, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Night and Day, Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth) - 'Not of the Flesh but Through the Flesh': Knowing and Being Known in The Real Thing - Particle Physics and Particular Persons: The Join of Happenstance and Goodness in Hapgood - Moral Absolutes and Moral Contexts - Notes - Bibliography - Index

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

'Erudite, thoroughly researched and vigorously written, it demands alC$