Tom Stoppard's playwrighting career may be said to parallel the progress of twentieth-century theater. His first play, Enter a Free Man, is a realistic comedy-drama. He then moves into the world of absurdity, which is dramatized in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, in his fiction, and in several shorter plays. Yet at the same time, he extends the limits of absurdity by dramatizing the outside world concretely, as a part of a recognizable social system. And in his latest plays he creates characters who are not resigned to absurdity but are determined to battle against such a vision of the world—first through philosophical argument in Jumpers, and then through artistic and political revolution in Artist Descending a Staircase, Travesties, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, and Professional Foul. (p. 153)

In most of Tom Stoppard's plays his characters are struggling, not surrendering. They are aware of absurdity, yet they are unwilling to resign themselves to it…. In Stoppard's latest plays his protagonists have sought specific channels through which to pursue meaning and to find significance for themselves. They seek faith in rationality. They seek faith in human emotions. They seek faith in relationships with other people. They seek faith in their humanity. Their battles are not necessarily successful. But the very struggle brings a dignity to life and aids in that drive to reach beyond absurdity. (p. 155)

Stoppard has not been content to leave man in the absurdist void. True, his works always have elements of absurdity, manifested generally in his protagonists, who are nonentities swept into the action of a world they cannot understand. And Stoppard almost always displays their predicaments comically. However, he also develops undertones of seriousness, emphasizing the need for some action other than surrender to counteract absurdity. He explores man coping with the artistic world in such plays as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Artist Descending a Staircase, The Real Inspector Hound, and Travesties. He explores man coping with political systems in If You're Glad I'll be Frank, Travesties, and Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. He explores man coping in society in such plays as Enter a Free Man, Albert's Bridge, Where Are They Now, and Professional Foul. He explores man and his faith, both religious and secular, in such plays as Jumpers and Travesties. Of course, in none of these works does any single theme long dominate, and the four areas are usually interlocked.

If one may single out any unifying element in Stoppard's works, it is his faith in man's mind. He rejects the irrational, the reliance on emotion instead of intellect, the retreat from independent thought. And this commitment is the foundation for his theatrical techniques.

First, he makes free use of form: linear movement, flashbacks, plots within plots, and innumerable references to other literary works. Yet amid all the clutter and episodic action, a structure emerges, a tribute to the organizing powers of the playwright's rationality and his expectations of the audience's ability to grasp that structure.

Second, his emphasis on variety of language, in terms of brisk pace, literary allusions, and double and triple meanings, reaffirms his own belief in man's ability to communicate. He manages at the same time to make his language amusing, yet richly woven with ideas.

Third, he maintains a concern for people, demonstrated more than ever in his latest plays. Even though his characters may be isolated, lost figures, they are never turned into the one-dimensional figures of standard absurd drama. Always Stoppard insists on their dealing with ideas, questions, and their own responsibilities as human beings. Ultimately, his plays may be understood as an affirmation of man's humanity in the face of all obstacles. (pp. 156-57)