Biography EssayTom Stoppard, a leading figure of the British theater since the mid 1960s, ranks as a dramatist of brilliant and original comic genius. His first major success established him as a mast...
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One of England's most important playwrights, Tom Stoppard (born 1937) gained a wide international audience. His two great stage successes were Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and The Real Thing,...
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Tom Stoppard achieved almost overnight success in 1967 with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which was commissioned for the National Theatre at the Old Vic, following the initial run of a shorte...
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[This entry was updated by Anne Wright (University of Sunderland) from her entry in the Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, volume 8, pp. 366-388.]Tom Stoppard, a leading figure of the B...
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Critical Essay by Brendan Gill
["Night and Day"] surprises us by not surprising us. For the first time in his career, [Tom Stoppard] has written a conventionally straightforward melodram...
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Critical Essay by June Schlueter
Along with Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard is probably the most important playwright on the contemporary British scene. His plays, like those of Pinter, are informed with ...
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Critical Essay by Robert Brustein
W. B. Yeats once called Ibsen the chosen author of very clever journalists. How much more appropriate this is as a description of Tom Stoppard. He has insinuated hims...
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Critical Essay by Clive James
[Stoppard] is at his strongest when one precise meaning is transformed into another precise meaning with the context full-blown in each case. It is an elementary point to...
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Critical Essay by Joan Fitzpatrick Dean
The canon of Stoppard's work up to 1980 shares much with post-World War II art and literature in general and with contemporary British drama in particula...
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Critical Essay by Victor L. Cahn
Tom Stoppard's playwrighting career may be said to parallel the progress of twentieth-century theater. His first play, Enter a Free Man, is a realistic comedy-d...
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Critical Essay by Gerald M. Berkowitz
Tom Stoppard's career can be divided into two unequal parts. From Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in 1967 to Dirty Linen in 1976 he proved himself to...
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Critical Essay by Enoch Brater
Stoppard is that peculiar anomaly—a serious comic writer born in an age of tragicomedy and a renewed interest in theatrical realism. Such deviation from dramatic ...
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In this conversation, which was conducted in June 1974, Stoppard discusses his methods of composition, maintaining that the best writing is largely a "lucky accident."
[Hayman]: Some peo...
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In this essay, Zeifman focuses on Hapgood to uncover a note of optimism which distinguishes Stoppard's plays from works by Samuel Beckett and other writers of absurdist drama.
In a 1974 intervi...
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Attempting to assess Stoppard's view of drama, Roberts notes the playwright's ambiguous pronouncements about his own work.
Tom Stoppard's writing career is a remarkable one. Since...
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In the following essay, Kennedy discusses Stoppard's moral and political satire in Jumpers, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, and Professional Foul.
To thy own self be true One and one is always...
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The following was first presented at a 1982 conference. Feeney contends that the seeming spontaneity of Stoppard's imagination obscures the careful craftsmanship of his plays, which, he claims,...
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Dean explores the interrelation of politics and playwriting throughout much of Stopparci's work.
Throughout Stoppard's plays questions concerning the artist, his responsibilities, and hi...
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In the essay below, Doll provides an overview of Stoppard's drama, noting the use of paradox, ambiguity, and humor, which characterize his work as "post-Absurdist. "
It should com...
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Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" modernizes the renowned tragedy "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare. Told from two of Claudius's accomplices, the novel creates humor and absurdity t...
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Thomas Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
