Indian Ink | Propriety and Possession

Hamilton is an English teacher at Cary Academy, an innovative private school in Cary, North Carolina. In this essay, she explores the interwoven themes of propriety and possession as they are expressed in Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink.

In a 1995 interview with Mel Gussow, Tom Stoppard called his play Indian Ink ‘‘a very cosy play’’ but perhaps ‘‘worryingly cosy sometimes.’’ His comment refers primarily to the play’s setting in which characters interact over tea, or while having portraits made. Stoppard also implies that the seriousness of the play might be lost in coziness. Personal and political conflicts in Indian Ink are brought up obliquely, politely, and without being resolved. However, by interweaving three separate but related scenarios that span a critical juncture in the...

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