Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) is a play about the absurdity of life as seen through the eyes of the two minor courtiers in William Shakespeare's Hamlet. Like Arcadia, the work is noted for its ferocious wordplay and lofty ideas.
Also by Stoppard, Travesties (1974) is a comedy-drama that imagines three of history's quirkier characters—Vladimir Lenin, James Joyce, and Tristan Tzara—all living together in Zurich during World War I.
Other playwrights with a distinctively British flair for characters and comedy include Alan Ayckbourn, whose series The Norman Conquests: A Trilogy of Plays (1988) is an hilarious family farce packed with witty one-liners, and Alan Bennett, the author of The Madness of George III (1992), which became a popular film a year later (retitled as The Madness of King George), and Talking Heads (1993), a.....
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