Stoppard, Tom (Vol. 1) - Stoppard, Tom 1937–
Stoppard, Tom 1937–
A Czechoslovakian playwright and novelist, now living in England, Stoppard is the author of the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and the novel Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon.
My only objection is that without the exhilarating stylistic device of the play-beneath-the-play, the play [Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead] proper would be very much second-hand Beckett. Much of its cross-talk is facile wordmanship that benefits accidentally from ambiguity. The play's originality, however, does not lie in its thought, but in its craft. Stoppard displays a remarkable skill in juggling the donnees of existential philosophy. His masterstroke comes when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, discovering the switched letter which dooms them to death, accept their fate—in exactly the same way they have accepted every nudge of circumstance that has preceded. Suddenly, the play becomes a blinding metaphor about the...
[The entire page is 1228 words long]
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