Stoppard, Tom (Vol. 15) - Introduction

Stoppard, Tom 1937–

Stoppard, a Czech-born British playwright for stage, radio, television, and screen, and the author of one novel, has won both Tony and New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards. The premise for much of his work is the Beckettian notion that man is a minor character in a drama he cannot understand. C.W.E. Bigsby has written that the central concern of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and several other plays is that wrenching object from setting and event from context "results not merely in a revealing absurdity but in a perception of the contingent nature of truth." (See also CLC, Vols. 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, and Contemporary Authors, Vols. 81-84.)