The plays in this collection reveal in combination the 'frivolous' and 'serious' aspects of Tom Stoppard's talent: his sense of fun, his sense of theatre, his sense of the absurd, and his gifts for parody and satire. The author rounds off his brief introduction, giving the genesis of each piece, with the comment: 'The role of the theatre is much debated (by almost nobody, of course), but the thing defines itself in practice first and foremost as a recreation. This seems satisfactory'. Leading off is The Real Inspector Hound, the ultimate country-house whodunnit; Dirty Linen moves a Whitehall farce to Parliament Square; Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth subverts Shakespeare; and After Magritte explains the inexplicable.

In Tom Stoppard’s Plays: Patterns of Plenitude and Parsimony Nigel Purse assesses the complete canon of Tom Stoppard’s works on a thematic basis. He explains that, amongst the plenitude of chaotic comedy, wordplay and intellectual ping-pong of Stoppard’s plays, the principle of parsimony that is Occam’s razor lies at the heart of his works. He identifies key patterns in theme – ethics and duality - and method – Stoppard’s stage debates and his dramatic vehicles - as well as in theatrical devices. Quoting extensively from all Stoppard’s published works, many of his interviews and also unpublished material Nigel Purse arrives at a comprehensive and unique appraisal of Stoppard’s plays.

A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK OF THE YEAR • One of our most brilliant biographers takes on one of our greatest living playwrights, drawing on a wealth of new materials and on many conversations with him. “An extraordinary record of a vital and evolving artistic life, replete with textured illuminations of the plays and their performances, and shaped by the arc of Stoppard’s exhilarating engagement with the world around him, and of his eventual awakening to his own past.” —Harper's Tom Stoppard is a towering and beloved literary figure. Known for his dizzying narrative inventiveness and intense attention to language, he deftly deploys art, science, history, politics, and philosophy in works that span a remarkable spectrum of literary genres: theater, radio, film, TV, journalism, and fiction. His most acclaimed creations—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Real Thing, Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Shakespeare in Love—remain as fresh and moving as when they entranced their first audiences. Born in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard escaped the Nazis with his mother and spent his early years in Singapore and India before arriving in England at age eight. Skipping university, he embarked on a brilliant career, becoming close friends over the years with an astonishing array of writers, actors, directors, musicians, and political figures, from Peter O'Toole, Harold Pinter, and Stephen Spielberg to Mick Jagger and Václav Havel. Having long described himself as a "bounced Czech," Stoppard only learned late in life of his mother's Jewish family and of the relatives he lost to the Holocaust. Lee's absorbing biography seamlessly weaves Stoppard's life and work together into a vivid, insightful, and always riveting portrait of a remarkable man.

The year 1956 marked a point when British drama and theater fell into the hands of a group of young playwrights who revolutionized the stage. During that time, playwrights such as Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter made the British theater as rich, varied, and vital as any national theater in history. This reference chronicles the history of British theater from 1956 to 1995 by providing detailed information about the playwrights of that period. Included are entries for some three dozen British playwrights active between 1956 and 1995. Entries are arranged alphabetically to facilitate use. Each entry supplies biographical information, the production history for particular plays, a survey of the playwright's critical reception, an assessment of the dramatist's work, and primary and secondary bibliographies. A selected, general bibliography at the end of the volume directs the reader to important sources of additional information about this period in theater history.

Publikace představuje specifický typ dramatické postavy, pojmenovaný „nový posel“, kterého lze chápat jako následovníka konvenčního typu postavy známé z tradičních dramat nejčastěji jako „posel“. Přítomnost posla v tradičním dramatu má určité funkce, které plní i nový posel. Toho však odlišuje fakt, že se nejedná o samostatnou postavu, ale jeho roli v současném anglicky psaném mainstreamovém dramatu přejímá některá z hlavních postav. Mezi takové postavy patří především rozliční novináři či reportéři, politici či jejich asistenti, vědci či učitelé, detektivové či policisté, historické postavy, filozofové a literární vědci atd. Publikace v konkrétních případech analyzuje dramata dvou britských dramatiků, Michaela Frayna a Toma Stopparda, a afroamerického dramatika Augusta Wilsona.

Tom Stoppard is justly famous for his innovative theatrical techniques. Daniel Jernigan argues that while much of Tom Stoppard's early work (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and The Real Inspector Hound, for instance) is postmodern, the remainder of his career essentially tracks backward from there--becoming "late modernist" in the 1970s (Travesties) and fully modernist in the 80s and 90s (The Real Thing and Arcadia). This pattern also makes sense of Stoppard's recent and uncharacteristic foray into dramatic realism with The Coast of Utopia (2002) and Rock 'n' Roll (2006), at which point the playwright seems to embrace the more straightforward rhetorical advantages of literary realism.

An engaging overview of one of the most dynamically entertaining and intellectually challenging British playwrights of the past fifty years.

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.

Focusing on major and emerging playwrights, institutions, and various theatre practices this Concise Companion examines the key issues in British and Irish theatre since 1979. Written by leading international scholars in the field, this collection offers new ways of thinking about the social, political, and cultural contexts within which specific aspects of British and Irish theatre have emerged and explores the relationship between these contexts and the works produced. It investigates why particular issues and practices have emerged as significant in the theatre of this period.