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IN DEFENSE OF PLAY: A REASSESSMENT OF
TOM STOPPARD'S THEATERS
By
BARBARA JEAN STEPHENSON
A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
1985
for my husband, Matthew Furbush, who made this,
and so many other dreams, come true
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe sincere thanks to several friends for their help
on this project: to Ms. Cathy Griggers, for working so
closely with me in the early, theoretical stages; to Mr.
Scott Barnes, for proving a cheerful and able proof-reader
at the end; to Dr. David Shelton, who graciously joined my
committee at a late date, bringing with him an impressive
knowledge of the theater; to Dr. Robert Thomson, for sharing
his enthusiasm about Stoppard as well as his books; to Dr.
Jack Perlette, for his remarkably careful comments and sug
gestions and for introducing me to critical theory years
ago; to Dr. Brandon Kershner, who invariably proved more
than willing to share his immense knowledge and keen cri
tical insights, and whose special friendship made possible
many informal discussions which directly shaped large sec
tions of this dissertation. In particular, though, I am
deeply grateful to my director, Dr. Sidney Homan, for pro
viding time to complete this project, for arranging that
wonderful meeting with Stoppard, for sharing his insights,
but most of all, for teaching me to love the theater as
iii
he does.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii
ABSTRACT V
INTRODUCTION 1
Notes 43
ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD OR TOM STOPPARD
DOESN'T KNOW 50
Notes 124
TRAVESTIES OR TOM STOPPARD SORTS IT OUT 131
Notes 203
CONCLUSION OR THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING PLAYFUL 209
Notes 249
BIBLIOGRAPHY 253
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 258
IV
Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate
School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
IN DEFENSE OF PLAY: A REASSESSMENT OF
TOM STOPPARD'S THEATERS
by
Barbara Jean Stephenson
December 1985
Chairman: Sidney R. Homan
Major Department: English
Tom Stoppard's first major play, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead, ignited a divisive critical contro
versy that has persisted until the present. Though the play
enjoyed long initial runs and continues to be performed and
anthologized, it has faced bitter charges of theatrical
"parasitism" and political irrelevance. Only recently have
critics begun to develop an effective rebuttal to these
charges, but even as the hostile critical consensus began
to be replaced by more perceptive readings of Stoppard's
early, playful derivativeness, the author, apparently in
response to the attacks on his overt borrowing and perceived
irrelevance, started to write serious, "original," plays
directly addressing social and political issues.
I defend the early, playful works, especially Rosen
crantz arguing that their overt derivativeness and resis
tance to closure constitute a structural challenge to a
highly conservative model of authorship, a challenge
v
complemented by the content of the plays. After investi
gating the theological and exclusively masculine roots of
the traditional concept of the author, I argue that inasmuch
as this model works to preserve both patriarchal authority
and a theocentric world view, Stoppard's efforts to topple
itby defying "originality" and refusing to present
authorial Truthcan only be read as politically progressive.
The bulk of this study, however, is devoted to close
readings of Rosencrantz, Travesties, and The Real Thing.
I contend that the open-ended and boldly derivative Rosen
crantz is not only Stoppard's most theatrically effective
play, but his most profoundly political achievement as well.
I read Travesties as a transitional play, for while its
first half explicitly challenges "originality" in author
ship, the second half takes a regrettable turn toward Truth,
sacrificing both the play's critique of authorial authority
and its theatrical effectiveness. Although Stoppard attempts
in The Real Thing to revive the play of styles which graced
Rosencrantz, I find that the "realistic" controlling frame
reduces the potentially dislocating impact of these games,
so that the play unfortunately remains closer to the style
of Stoppard's later, socially "committed" plays than to the
delightfully derivative, playfully uncertain style of
Rosencrantz.
vi
INTRODUCTION
When the curtain rises on Tom Stoppard's Travesties,
James Joyce, Tristan Tzara, and Lenin are seated in a
Zurich library during World War I, writing. Tzara works
in the best Dadaist fashion by cutting paper, word by word
into a hat and reading the nonsense results. But Tzara's
nonsense poem, beginning "Eel ate enormous appletzara"^
happens to make sense as awkward French, "II est un homme,
2
s'appelle Tzara," more sense, it seems, than the phrases
Joyce dictates to his aide, Gwendolen, from the scraps of
paper he pulls not from a hat, but from his pockets:
"Morose delectation . Aquinas tunbelly . Frate
porcospino" (p. 19). Meanwhile, Lenin is searching for
material to use in his work on imperialism in the books
brought to him by Cecily, the librarian, when his wife,
Nadya, enters to announce a "revolutsia" (p. 19) in St.
Petersburg. Upon Nadya's reassurances that the news is
true--"Da, da, da!" (p. 20), she affirms in Russian, sound
ing, of course, like Tzara "explaining" Dadaism--Lenin
hurriedly gathers his papers so that he may rush to attend
to the revolution, dropping one of them in the process.
After Joyce picks up Lenin's dropped paper and reads it
-1-
-2-
aloud, the scene is taken over by Henry Carr, a British
consular officer, who begins orally "writing" his memoirs
of Zurich during the First World War. But in Carr's faulty
memory, which controls the play, his recollections of sharing
Zurich in the late 1910s with Joyce, Tzara, and Lenin are
dominated by his obsession with his own "personal triumph
in the demanding role of Ernest, not Ernest, the other one"
(p. 21), in fact, Algernon of The Importance of Being
Earnest, the play performed by members of the English speak
ing community in Zurich under the management of James Joyce.
Political revolution, artistic revolution, art assembled
from scraps of papereven before this brief opening scene
is over, Travesties has introduced many of the issues which
have become central to Stoppard criticism. What is the
proper relationship between art and politics? Can writing
produced by pulling scraps of paper from a hat properly be
called art? Or is such derivative writing inferior to
"original" art which stems solely from the creative genius
of the artist? Is there a connection between pulling art
out of a hat and fostering political revolution? In
Travesties, only Tzara sees such a connection, for Dadaists
contend that political revolution requires a smashing of
the great traditions of art, performed by cutting master
pieces into scraps. Joyce finds art politically neutral,
yet he produces his writing by pulling scraps of paper from
his pockets, assembling the already written Odyssey and the
-3-
Dublin Street Directory for 1904 into Ulysses, just as
Tzara produces his writing by pulling scraps of paper from
his hat, reassembling the already written Shakespearean
sonnets into his nonsense poems, which, in Stoppard's hands,
sometimes turn out to make sense after all. Not only does
art come out of a hat, Travesties indicates, but so does
all writing, for Lenin makes his book on imperialism by
gathering existing writing on economics and placing it in
a new context. And no doubt Carr's attempts to write a
history of Zurich during World War I illustrate Tzara's
contention that "history comes out of a hat too" (p. 83).
If Travesties does not provide the final word on the
relationship between art and politics, it does point un
equivocally to the inevitable derivativeness of all writing.
Not only does Stoppard make this point repeatedly and
emphatically within the playscissors, hats, and pockets
form a recurring motif, and characters discuss copyrights
and the relative merits of pockets and hats as sources of
art--but Stoppard's own construction of Travesties also-
underscores the point yet again: Travesties itself comes
out of a hat, for the play is a collage of The Importance
of Being Earnest, excerpts from Lenin's Collected Writings,
snippets from Ellmann's biography of Joyce, bits from Eliot
and Shakespeare, segments of songs, and numerous other
sources. What is true of Travesties is true of other major
Stoppard plays as well. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
-4-
Dead likewise comes out of a hat, a hat containing most
notably Hamlet, and, unmistakably, Waiting for Godot. And
like Travesties, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead ex
plores the concept of authorship within the play as well.
Even The Real Thing, one of Stoppard's most "realistic"
plays, incorporates Strindberg's Miss Julie and Ford's 'Tis
Pity She's a Whore into the play's larger exploration of
authorship and the validity of "political" art.
All writing may be derivative, but few writers call
more attention to the derivativeness of their writing than
Stoppard, for he does not just quietly borrow as so many
writers before him did: Stoppard flaunts his borrowing,
making it a central issue in his plays, borrowing even title
characters from Hamlet, easily the most well-known play in
English. In choosing such a strategy, Stoppard challenges
the traditional model of the God-like Author who creates
his original masterpiece out of nothing, for the model
cannot peacefully coexist with such foregrounding of the
derivativeness of art. Furthermore, the model of author
ship Stoppard challenges is, as we shall see, inherently
conservative, for it is both an exclusively masculine model,
tightly linked to male procreation, and an essentially
theological model, inasmuch as the mythic account of God
creating the universe out of nothing heavily shapes and
structures it.
-5-
Given his intense focus on derivativeness as a central
fact of writing, and given the conservative political affili
ations of the model of authorship challenged by this focus
on derivativeness, the critical response to Stoppard seems
particularly ironic. Critics attack Stoppard precisely for
his derivativeness, condemning him as a "parasite" who
borrows from other, more "original" writers to make his
derivative, hence inferior, plays. Then, apparently over
looking the political implications of his challenge to the
traditional model of authorship, they complain that his plays
are apolitical or politically conservative and should,
therefore, be devalued. These complaints, remarkable in
themselves, are even more remarkable for their unusual
vehemence and characteristic tone of moral indignation, for
we are accustomed to thinking, albeit wrongly, of critical
judgments, and the critical tools employed in making such
judgments, as morally and politically neutral, and thus
unlikely to incite passion.
The tone of the debate surrounding Stoppard's worth as
a playwright has been so passionate, in fact, that David
Bratt resorted to battlefield imagery in his excellent
scholarly review of Stoppard criticism, depicting supporters
and detractors as members of two warring camps trading heated
blows. Centering his overview on the issue of derivative
ness, Bratt explained that the anti-Stoppard camp rallies
3
around the "charge that Stoppard lacks a voice of his own"
-6-
and is therefore reduced to "borrowing more or less ir-
4
responsibly from his betters." Robert Brustein set the
tone for the debate in 1967 when he derided Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead as a "theatrical parasite, feeding off
Hamlet, Waiting for Godot, and Six Characters in Search of
and Author.He condemned the play as "derivative"^ and
asserted, "Stoppard does not fight hard enough for his in
sightsthey all seem to come to him, prefabricated, from
other plays.Lurking behind Brustein's complaint is the
Romantic notion that an author must suffer miserably, "fall
upon the thorns of life," so to speak, if his writing is
to enjoy any authority. Christopher Nichols responded to
Rosencrantz with a subdued version of Brustein's complaint,
stating that "despite the ballyhoo, I found no deep search,
9
no stinging innovation" in the play. Art must not only be
a deep search, he apparently assumed, but it must also
sting if we are to embrace it as authentic.
The most outraged response to Stoppard's borrowing in
Rosencrantz was to come in 1970 when C.O. Gardner, writing
in response to R.H. Lee's critical analysis of the play,
"The Circle and Its Tangent,"^ argued that Lee's article
was misguided because "it takes seriously, not to say
solemnly, a play which does not merit serious critical
attention."^ "The thing is in fact a swill," he asserted,
"composed of second-hand Beckett, third-hand Kafka, and the
12 .
goon show," so the only proper critical response is to
-7-
ignore this "thing" completely in the hope that it will
disappear. Again, of course, we see a Romantic vision of
authorship structuring the condemnation. Rosencrantz is a
cheat, "a swill," because Stoppard filters the play through
layers of art rather than going straight to life for
material to produce an unmediated vision based on authentic
experience.
The legacy of Brustein's famous charge against Rosen
crantz has continued to haunt Stoppard criticism in general,
and we find critics filing the same complaint of derivative
ness against later Stoppard plays. John Simon, for example,
summed up Stoppard's stage plays to date by depicting them
as parasites: "What they all [Enter a Free Man, Rosencrantz,
Jumpers, After Magritte, The Real Inspector Hound, and
Travesties] have in common to some degree is what I have
at various times described with images culled from the
animal and insect worlds, where the eggs or larvae of one
species may be unconsciously hatched by the efforts, or fed
13
by the very organisms, of another species." Simon went
14
on to describe "this parasitic quality" of Stoppard's work
with an elaborate parasite/host-organism metaphor that
continued for the duration of the article.
Taking a slightly different tack, Philip Roberts con
demned Stoppard for lack of seriousness in an article
entitled "Tom Stoppard: Serious Artist or Siren?" He
criticized The Real Inspector Hound and After Magritte,
-8-
saying, "In both, what appears central is the opportunity
for wit, parody, and metaphysical dalliance to do with the
nature of perception."'*'^ And then, managing a sidelong
reference to the disease imagery which forms a motif in
Stoppard criticism, he charged, "The plays reel away from
16
seriousness as from a contagious disease." Though the
terms of the attack differ, the assumptions underlying
Roberts's condemnation are drawn from the same Romantic
notion of authorship that informed earlier complaints; that
is, "serious" art, art worthy of our deepest consideration,
stems not from wit and intellectual games, but from a
somber, preferably painful engagement with the stuff of
life.
Robert Brustein's "A Theater for Clever Journalists"
picked up the disease motif referred to by Roberts and used
so extensively by Simon. Reviewing Night and Day, Brustein
said the following of Stoppard: "He has insinuated himself
into the affections of smart people like a heartworm,
usurping whatever place might once have been reserved there
17
for genuine artists" (italics mine). Returning again to
the issue of seriousness that recurs in Stoppard criticism,
Brustein asked, "Can anyone really take Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern seriously after seeing the plays on which it
was based, Six Characters in Search of an Author and
Waiting for Godot?" (italics mine). Brustein tried to
dismiss Stoppard with the following pronouncement: "As a
-9-
1 9
dramatist, Stoppard is a dandy." The intended insult
likely stems from the idea that a dandy is concerned only
with appearances and surfaces while a "genuine artist" (to
use Brustein's term) shares his experiences of real life
in all their emotional richness.
Joan Juliet Buck's article on Stoppard's The Real Thing
revealed the same set of underlying assumptions about the
role of a genuine artist. Her combination interview-play
review featured in bold print, "The theater's foremost
20
gamesman takes on 'The Real Thing,'" a statement which
implies that the game-playing and derivativeness that
characterize Stoppard's early work are not as authentic as
the love relationships portrayed in The Real Thing. As
Buck told it, she spent her two-hour interview with Stoppard
trying to get him to discuss how his personal experiences
found their way into his latest play. Stoppard tried re
peatedly to redirect the questioning before saying, "There's
something wrong with the question . there must be some
false premise in it, and it's probably to do with your
21
underestimating the mechanical level of writing a play."
Stoppard closed the interview by reiterating his
doubts about the validity of the prevailing view of the
author, a view which sees the author creating art not from
other art, but from gut-wrenching life experiences:
The main trouble with the premise is that none
of these thoughts is a consideration while writing
a play. It's all kind of fake, and the interview
makes you fake by allowing retrospective ideas to
-10-
masquerade as some form of intention. One of the
problems is that writers don't think about their
work in that external way.22
While Stoppard makes every effort, both in interviews
and through his plays, to emphasize the derivative nature of
writing, critics and interviewers somehow overlook or mis
read this challenge to the traditional model of authorship
and condemn Stoppard for not conforming to the very model
of original creation his work seeks to dismantle. Such a
misreading is far from unprecedented, though, for we recall
that Beckett's Waiting for Godot met with early hostility
as critics complained that the play did not have much of a
plot. But just as the lack of traditionally defined plot
is vital to Godot1s point about the disintegration of
linear movement in a world without a Creator, so Stoppard's
lack of traditionally defined originality is vital to his
challenge to the traditional concept of the author as the
creating God of his work. Far from being the overriding
weakness in his work, Stoppard's open derivativeness may
be his most important contribution to the canon.
By recognizing Stoppard's celebration of borrowing as
a challenge to the traditional concept of authorship, we
put ourselves in a strong position for rebutting the second
major complaint against Stoppard, the complaint that his
plays are apolitical or politically conservative and thus
not as worthy as other, more "politically relevant" plays.
In filing this complaint, critics overlook the political
-11-
implications of his challenge to a conservative critical
model and focus their attention on Stoppard's outspoken
23
denunciation of Marx ("he got it wrong" ) and Lenin ("in
the ten years after 1917 fifty times more people were done
24
to death than in the fifty years before 1917" ) and on the
absence of any endorsement of Marxist or socialist prin
ciples in his plays. Because so many critics currently rely
on a rather simplistic equation of Marxism and political
progressivism, the perception "that Stoppard is a political
25
reactionary" has become one of "two fairly often voiced
2 6
anxieties" about Stoppard's reputation.
Kenneth Tynan's New Yorker Profile, for example,
centers around a vague disapproval of what Tynan perceives
as Stoppard's conservative politics. Noting that "Stoppard
27
is a passionate fan" of cricket, Tynan generalizes
"Cricket attracts artists who are either conservative or
nonpolitical." Tynan also divides British dramatists
since the 1960s into two groups, the "heated, embattled,
socially committed playwrights, like John Osborne, John
2 9
Arden, and Arnold Wesker" and the "cool, apolitical
3 0
stylists" like Stoppard. Echoing Tynan's evaluation of
Stoppard's politics, though not his disapproval, Joan
Fitzpatrick Dean, author of Tom Stoppard: Comedy as a
Moral Matrix, says, "Stoppard's plays tend toward the
right.in his 1982 Tom Stoppard's Plays, Jim Hunter
attempts to dismiss summarily this perception of Stoppard's
-12-
politics by pointing out that "the intellectual orthodoxy
of live theatrein sharp contrast, usually, to the box
office orthodoxytends in any age to be radical, and in
3 2
Western capitalist countries to be socialist." Stoppard,
he continues, voices moderate political opinions and so
should not be labeled reactionary. While Hunter's conclu
sion that Stoppard is no reactionary is undoubtedly correct,
his contrast between the box office and intellectual ortho
doxies of live theater seems, in effect, to concede that
Stoppard's plays are essentially conservative. In making
this concession, Hunter basically accepts the superficial
and misleading conception of "political art" put forward
by detractors.
The same flaw mars the reasoning of critics who argue
that Stoppard's work has gotten progressively better as he
has turned from the open derivativeness and game playing
of early plays to more serious concerns like "politics,"
for these critics also overlook the political implications
of his challenge to originality in authorship and simply
assume that art overtly endorsing political goals is in
herently valuable and should be embraced. Tynan, for
example, notes approvingly in his Profile that "There are
signs . that history has lately been forcing Stoppard
33
into the arena of commitment." In Beyond Absurdity: The
Plays of Tom Stoppard, Victor L. Cahn also nods his approval
of the shift in the content on Stoppard's plays as his
-13-
career has continued. Cahn traces a transition from resig
nation to involvement on the part of the characters who
populate Stoppard's plays. He says, for example, "Stoppard's
growing concern with political matters reaches new inten-
34
sxty m Every Good Boy Deserves Favor," a 1978 play set
in a cell in a Soviet mental hospital for political dis
sidents. Cahn concludes his book by praising the "dig-
35
nity" of later Stoppard plays which show characters
O
"struggling, not surrendering," characters who "seek faith
in rationality . faith in human emotions . faith in
relationships with other people . faith in their
37
humanity." Undoubtedly, then, Cahn shares the assumption
that a direct treatment of political topics makes for a
better play.
As recently as 1983, critics were still avidly praising
Stoppard for his enlarged commitment to social issues.
Carol Billman concludes her useful article on the manipula
tion of history in Travesties by noting approvingly that
many of Stoppard's more recent plays, such as Professional
Foul, Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, and Night and Day,
"truly represent social engagements on Stoppard's part:
these plays face squarely such issues as governmental
3 8
restriction of individual freedom." Bobbie Rothstein
devotes her entire article to praising "The Reappearance
of Public Man" in Professional Foul. She observes that
"Stoppard's current work implies that a retreat by the self
-14-
from the public world is untenablea stance diametrically
opposed not only to absurdism, the most important current
3 9
in postmodern writing, but also to his own earlier work."
She applauds Professional Foul because its characters take
a stand and condemns Jumpers because its characters ignore
pressing philosophical and political issues within the play.
4 0
She says the "New Stoppard" has "shifted gears from the
41
playful play of words to more serious intellectual drama,"
again using the term "serious" to indicate approval. To
shift gears, Rothstein explains, Stoppard has had to reach
"somewhat backwards in dramatic history for characters who
4 2
are publicly committed to action in the political sphere."
I would never want to argue that the shift these critics
perceive has not in fact occurred. Like those who argued
that Stoppard's early plays are derivative, and like those
who said Beckett's plays lack plot, these critics are
rightmany of Stoppard's later plays have indeed adopted
more overtly political themes. Rothstein is also correct
in pointing out that Stoppard has, paradoxically, had to
reach somewhat backwards in dramatic history to make his
ostensibly progressive change, for characters who struggle
against the odds and end up making the world a better place
to live are most at home in a teleological world that un
folds linearly, with man at the helm, always ultimately
realizing his preordained destiny in the great scheme of
things. My question at this point, though, is whether this
-15-
great leap backwards to overt political content in the form
of socially committed characters does, in fact, constitute
an improvement in Stoppard's playwriting, and whether, in
the end, such political content even makes a play more
politically valuable or effective.
Stoppard expressed similar reservations about the value
of writing plays on politics in a 1974 Theatre Quarterly
interviewbefore he started producing the plays critics
praise as politically important. The interviewer broached
the topic by saying, "You clearly don't feel yourself part
of a 'movement' either, and your plays could hardly be
43
called social or political." Then, he posed the follow
ing, fairly typical question to Stoppard: "Does this mean
you have no strong political feelings, or simply that
44
they're not what you want to write plays about?" Stoppard's
response"Look, can we clear a few decks to avoid confu-
4 5
sion?" likely revealed his irritation at being misunder
stood and unjustly maligned yet again. He continued by
listing ten recent plays that he "assume[d] all [went] into
46
[the] political bag," before offering his instructive
explanation of the relationship between plays and politics.
"There are political plays which are about specific situa
tions, and there are political plays which are about a
general political situation, and there are plays which are
political acts in themselves, insofar as it can be said
that attacking or insulting an audience is a political
-16-
4 7
act." But Stoppard challenged the idea that simply using
political content, such as setting a play in South Africa,
makes a play political: "There are even plays about politics
4 8
which are about as political as Charley's Aunt."
Stoppard is not alone in questioning the value of overt
political content in art, but it is highly ironic, given the
context of his remarks, that his critical comrades, so to
speak, include many Marxist literary critics. In Marxism
and Literary Criticism, for example, Terry Eagleton issues
a strikingly similar warning against "the 'vulgar Marxist'
mistake of raiding literary works for their ideological
4 9
content," for "the true bearers of ideology in art are
the very forms, rather than the abstractable content, of
the work itself.With Stoppard's work, there is for
tunately no need to insist upon a rigid (and ultimately
untenable) separation of form and content, for the content
of his plays reinforces the point made by the method of
construction he chooses: both undermine the traditional
concept of the author. If we can move beyond the prevail
ing, simplistic definition of political art (i.e., art
explicitly endorsing specific political causes equals
politically progressive, hence valuable art), we can begin
developing the kind of analysis needed to correct some of
these remarkable oversights in Stoppard criticism. This
analysis requires a careful investigation of the model of
originality in authorship, for we cannot begin to grasp the
-17-
import of Stoppard's challenge to this misleading and
highly conservative critical tool without a thorough under
standing of what interests are represented by the model,
what values are reinforced by the modelin short, what is
at stake here. In the course of this investigation, we also
gain a clearer understanding of the critical response to
Stoppard--particularly of the remarkable vehemence and tone
of moral indignation which characterize this responsefor
we begin to see that the traditional concept of originality
in authorship does indeed involve morals in a profound way.
As a first step, let us turn to an early, but still highly
influential model of creation to discover the roots of the
traditional view of the Author.
The groundwork of the traditional concept of the
author and the valorization of originality in artistic
creation is laid in Genesis, the first book of the First
Book, the book that describes the original act of creation.
The first words of the Holy Book read, "In the beginning
51
God created the heavens and the earth." The sole male
deity of the Judeo-Christian tradition created light, dark,
Heaven, Earth, land, oceans, plants, animals, the sun, the
moon, the stars, and man himself. He created all this by
52
His word: "And God said." The New Oxford Annotated Bible
notes that "Creation by the word of God expresses God's
absolute lordship and prepares for the doctrine of creation
out of nothing."53 The story of the creation links God with
-18-
the Word or "logos" (the original Greek word meaning,
according to the OED, not only "word," but also "speech,"
"reason," "discourse," and often used to designate Jesus
54
Christ, the Son of God ). It also provides artists with
a model of creation, reminding them that the original way
to create is ex nihilo.
Here, then, is our culture's sacred model of the act
of creation. Predictably, this model pervades and struc
tures traditional critical thinking about the role of
authors, positing the author as the sole origin of his work
as God is the sole origin of the world. As Sandra M.
Gilbert and Susan Gubar explain in their discussion of the
concept of authorship in The Madwoman in the Attic, "the
patriarchal notion that the writer 'fathers' his text just
as God fathered the world is and has been all-pervasive in
55
Western literary civilization." This "metaphor of
literary paternity" that Gilbert and Gubar describe is
shaped by the biblical account of the creation and points
to the intricate links between God, the Author, and the
Father in much received critical thinking. Beginning more
than a thousand years after the Genesis account, Gilbert
and Gubar trace the metaphor of literary paternity in the
West from the classical Greek period until the present and
find that "the mimetic aesthetic that begins with Aristotle
and descends through Sidney, Shakespeare, and Johnson im
plies that the poet, like a lesser God, has made or
-19-
engendered an alternative mirror-universe."^ They point
to "the network of connections among sexual, literary, and
57
theological metaphors" in medieval philosophy that con
tinues to influence thought even in the twentieth century
and conclude that "in patriarchal Western culture, therefore,
a text's author is a father, a progenitor, an aesthetic
patriarch whose pen is an instrument of generative power
like his penis.
Because Gilbert and Gubar seek primarily to examine
the ways in which the traditional model of authorship has
been used to exclude women writers from the canon, their
approach is specifically feminist, and as such, it tends to
minimize historical variations on the model in the interest
of presenting the larger remarkably consistent, and exclu
sively masculine tradition of authorship. But one such
variation is of particular relevance to the charge of
derivativeness that serves as a cornerstone of Stoppard
criticism. Before the Romantic era, authors borrowed freely
from existing writings and made no effort to cover the
tracks of their borrowing. Their critics, in turn, expected
such borrowing and would never have attacked their work for
lacking "originality" in the sense that the term is used
today. But economic changes coinciding with the ascendancy
of Romanticism brought a new emphasis on "originality," and
borrowed art came to be seen as not only artistically
inferior, but as tantamount to theft as well. In both
-20-
their poetry and their criticism, Romantic poets placed a
premium on art which created the impression of being an
unmediated representation of life. Skill in craft became
secondary to the authenticity of transferring real life
experiences and emotions directly to the page. To use
Wordsworth's famous formulation of the Romantic credo, poetry
should be "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings
59
. . recollected in tranquility."
While critical theorists have long since demonstrated
that Romantic poetry is far from unmediated, popular criticism
continues to value the impression of originality very highly,
in part because, as Michel Foucault argues, the notion of
originality is supported by bourgeois economic values. He
explains that literature "was not originally a product, a
thing, a kind of goods; it was essentially an actan act
placed in the bipolar field of the sacred and the profane,
\
the licit and the illicit, the religious and the bias-
fi 0
phemous." We only began to think of texts as having
61
authors when "authors became subject to punishment" for
writing transgressive, illicit, blasphemous tests. When
"a system of ownership for texts came into being . at
the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nine-
r n
teenth century," "literary discourses came to be accepted
only when endowed" with an author or owner. Once authors
and their works were "placed in the system of property that
A
characterizes our society," "once strict rules concerning
-21-
author's rights, author-publisher relations, rights of
reproduction, and related matters were enacted,"65 borrow
ing became a scandal. To avoid charges of theft, authors
had to make great efforts to feign originality, to cover the
tracks of their borrowing.
In spite of all the energy writers have expended trying
to cover up the scandal of borrowing, few critical theorists
have been fooled. Especially in the twentieth century,
literary theorists have actively worked to demonstrate that
all writing is borrowed, that the concept of originality is
grounded in untenable assumptions. As Gilbert and Gubar
summarize, "That writers assimilate and then consciously
or unconsciously affirm or deny the achievements of their
predecessors is, of course, a central fact of literary
history, a fact whose aesthetic and metaphysical implica
tions have been discussed in detail by theorists as diverse
as T.S. Eliot, M.H. Abrams, Erich Auerbach, and Frank
Kermode."66
Even as notoriously conservative a critic as T.S.
Eliot, for example, writes in "Tradition and the Individual
Talent" of the widespread but misleading "tendency to in
sist, when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work
6 7
in which he least resembles anyone else." Eliot explains
that if we put such prejudices aside, "we shall often find
that not only the best, but the most individual parts of
his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors,
-22
Q
assert their immortality most vigorously." Great poetry,
Eliot maintains, has little to do with a "realistic" trans
lation of personal emotions into poetry: "It is not in his
personal emotions, the emotions provoked by particular events
in his life, that the poet is in any way remarkable or
69
interesting." Instead, great poetry is that which makes
most full use of the tradition of poetry, drawing existing
works into a new fusion of writing.
J. Hillis Miller and Bertolt Brecht go considerably
further than Eliot in exposing the baselessness of the
traditional concept of originality in authorship. Miller
approaches the issue by demonstrating the inevitability of
derivativeness in art. In "The Critic as Host," he states
that "The poem, however, any poem, is, it is easy to see,
parasitical in its turn on earlier poems, or contains
earlier poems as enclosed parasites within itself, in
another version of the perpetual reversal of parasite and
70
host." Thus, Miller more than defuses the charge of
parasitism by celebrating borrowing in artistic creation.
Brecht, on the other hand, broaches the topic by challenging
the traditional God-like authority of the author, saying,
"People are used to seeing poets as unique and slightly
unnatural beings who reveal with a truly god-like assurance
things that other people can only recognize after much sweat
71 .
and toil." As a practicing playwright, Brecht is m much
the same position that Stoppard found himself in when he
-23-
tried to convince Joan Juliet Buck that dramatists do not
write plays because they have some special, omniscient
understanding of life. Stoppard's mundane alternative to
the god-like playwrightthe writer as a craftsperson with
a facility for language and dramatic structurecertainly
pales in comparison to the "unique and slightly unnatural
beings" of the popular view of the author, but Stoppard
apparently felt compelled to admit that playwrights are not
gods. Brecht follows his comment about god-like authors
with a similar admission: "It is naturally distasteful to
have to admit that one does not belong to this select band.
7 2
All the same, it must be admitted."
Roland Barthes follows suit in viewing the God-like
Author and the privileging of originality as erroneous
critical notions and offers brief comments on the political
implications of revising these concepts. In his explora
tion of the traditional concept of Authorship, Barthes
describes the old conception of the Author as being "in the
same relation of antecedence to his work as a father to his
7 3
child," using the metaphor of masculine procreation noted
by Gilbert and Gubar. Barthes contrasts the outdated
Author (a term he capitalizes to emphasize the traditional
link between the Author and God) to the contemporary
scriptor, who is seen as a weaver of codes, essentially a
collage-maker, rather than as the originator of his writing.
Like Eliot and Miller, Barthes acknowledges the impossibility
-24-
of originality in art, describing the text as "a tissue of
quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture,"7^
and not drawn, as the old view had it, from the life ex
periences of the Author. As Barthes explains, "We know now
that a text is not a line of words releasing a single
'theological' meaning (the 'message' of the Author-God) but
a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings,
75
none of them original, blend and clash."
This revised view of the author demands a revision of
the critical activity, for if the Author is no longer seen
as the origin of his text, he can no longer provide the key
to determining its "meaning." "Once the Author is removed,"
Barthes explains, "the claim to decipher a text becomes
quite futile. To give a text an Author is to impose a limit
on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close
7 6
the writing." During the reign of the Author, the critic
sought to discover the Author beneath the work, thereby
"explaining" the work. But when the work is accepted as
a collage of existing writings, accepted as having many,
ultimately untraceable "origins," the critic can no longer
close the text by discovering its "single 'theological'
77
meaning (the 'message' of the Author-God)." Barthes
describes the revised task of the critic: "In the multi
plicity of writing, everything is to be disentangled, nothing
deciphered; the structure can be followed, 'run' (like the
thread of a stocking) at every point and at every level,
7 8
but there is nothing beneath."
-25-
Inasmuch as it contributes to a decentralization of
authority, Barthes sees "truly revolutionary" implications
in this revised critical activity: "In precisely this way
literature (it would be better from now on to say writing),
by refusing to assign a 'secret,' an ultimate meaning, to
the text (and to the world as text), liberates what may be
called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is
truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in
the end, to refuse God and his hypostasesreason, science,
79
law." In Barthes's view, the authority vested in the
Author by the old model shuts out the reader, reducing him
or her to passively discovering the secret message encoded
in the text by the Author-God. Barthes's primary goal in
advocating "the Death of the Author" is to restore the
active role of readers, for under the revised model, readers
rather than writers are the locus of meaning: "The reader
is the space on which all the quotations that make up a
8 0
writing are inscribed without any of them being lost."
In spite of his primary concern with restoring the
active role of readers, Barthes also sees a role for writers
in bringing about this desired revision. "Though the sway
of the Author remains powerful (the new criticism has often
done no more than consolidate it), it goes without saying
that certain writers have long since attempted to loosen
O I ^
it." He cites the case of Mallarm, in whose work "it is
8 2
language which speaks, not the author." Certainly Stoppard
- 26-
numbers with Mallarm among those scriptors whose texts
illustrate that writing is always a collage of other texts
rather than some sort of direct transference of life ex
periences into art. Unfortunately, the critical response
to Stoppard illustrates just as vividly that "the sway of
the Author remains powerful," for there has been all too
little recognition of Stoppard's strides in dismantling
the concept of the Author/Father/God and all too much con
demnation of his plays for not rendering life experiences
"realistically" on the stage. This misreading has in turn
led critics to overlook the possibility of there being
"truly revolutionary" implications in Stoppard's demysti
fication of the Author.
In his thought provoking essay, "The Discourse of
Others: Feminists and Postmodernism," Craig Owens also
investigates the political ramifications of dismantling the
"crisis of cultural authority, specifically of the authority
8 3
vested in Western European culture and its institutions"
as the sine qua non of postmodernism and proceeds to raise
some compelling questions about the work of Sherrie Levine
that we might just as appropriately raise about Stoppard's
work. Levine takes photographsWalker Evans's photographs
and Edward Weston's photographsand redisplays them, much
as Stoppard takes Shakespeare's Hamlet, Beckett's Waiting
for Godot, and Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and
replays them. Owens asks about Levine's work:
-27-
Is she simply dramatizing the diminished possi
bilities for creativity in an image-saturated
culture, as is often repeated? Or is her refusal
of authorship not in fact a refusal of the role
of creator as "father" of his work, of the paternal
rights assigned the author by law?^4
Though Owens argues that such a refusal of authorship has a
different meaning when performed by a woman instead of a
man"when women are concerned, similar techniques have very
8 5
different meanings" it seems to me that Stoppard's bla
tant borrowing amounts to a refusal of authorship quite
similar to Levine's: regardless of their respective genders,
the strategies of both seem equally clear-cut refusals of
mastery.
Owens explores the political dimension of mastery as
he contrasts modernism and postmodernism. He characterizes
modernism as the era of the grands recits or master narra
tives such as Marxism which sought to be the "single
O
theoretical discourse," thought to provide the final
answer. In the postmodern era, "the grands recits of
modernitythe dialectic of the Spirit, the emancipation
of the worker, the accumulation of wealth, the classless
8 7
societyhave all lost credibility." Owens is clearly
not sad to observe the passing of master narratives, for
he finds their effect far from liberating; in fact, he finds
them enslaving and imperialistic:
For what made the grands recits of modernity
master narratives if not the fact that they were
all narratives of mastery, of man seeking his
telos in the conquest of nature? What function
-28-
did these narratives play other than to legitimize
Western man's self-appointed mission of transform
ing the entire planet in his own imageP^S
The desire of Western man for domination and control has
been palpably challenged in the twentieth century by "the
emergence of Third-World nations, the 'revolt of nature'
and the women's movementthat is, the voices of the con-
8 9
quered." At least two options are open to those faced
90
with the "tremendous loss of mastery" which characterizes
the postmodern era: "therapeutic programs, from both the
91
Left and the Right, for recuperating that loss" or the
more gracious and politically progressive, not to mention
inevitable, acceptance of this loss of mastery, even refusal
of mastery, as both Stoppard and Levine have done.
Owens's essay is invaluable for the light it sheds not
only on the specific critical response to Stoppard but also
on the larger, currently fashionable, but facile assumption
that adherence to Marxism serves as proof of political
progressivism. Owens's stinging indictment of the arrogance
underlying master narratives, of the arrogance of mastery
itself, helps provide the sort of perspective needed to go
beyond easy assumptions about what makes art political and
ask more enlightening questions about what is truly pro
gressive. It goes without saying that Stoppard's politics
appear far less suspect when viewed in light of Owens's
remarks, for the blatant borrowing that characterizes
Stoppard's work seems more a deliberate refusal of the
-29-
mastery of authorship than a sign of incompetence and
inferiority. This reading of Stoppard's borrowing as a
refusal of mastery is buttressed by the playwright's re
peated insistence that he does not write to present the
final truth to his audience. "I write plays because writing
dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting your
self. I'm the kind of person who embarks on an endless
leapfrog down the great moral issues. I put a position,
9 2
rebut it, refute the rebuttal, and rebut the refutation."
Stoppard goes so far as to designate his lack of certainty
as the dominant characteristic of his work: "What I think
of as being my distinguishing mark is an absolute lack of
93
certainty about almost anything." Thus, it seems clear
that Stoppard is intent upon refusing the white robe and
beard of the God-like Author who creates his original master
piece out of nothing and presents his audience with the
final "Truth."
While Owens's exploration is extraordinarily useful in
understanding the political implications of refusing Author
ship, we still might feel compelled to wonder about the
remarkable vehemence of the attacks on Stoppard's work. Why
do critics so often assume a tone of moral indignation when
they discuss the derivativeness of his work? Why do disease
and parasite metaphors form such recurring motifs in the
condemnations? Why does the critical hierarchy favoring
originality over derivativeness continue to carry so much
-30-
weight in spite of an entire body of critical and creative
writing which establishes the impossibility, indeed the un
desirability, of originality in art? What is at stake
here ?
What is at stake when an author borrows as boldly as
Stoppard does is something more than a specifically Romantic
notion of authorship. Such blatant borrowing is also more
than a mere transgression of property rights. Far from
being a relatively recent historical development> the aver
sion to derivativeness, the fear of copies, reaches all the
way back at least to its codification in the second and
third chapters of Genesis, where we find, in fitting proxi
mity to the first chapter's sacred tale of creation, the
still very influential story of the dangers of copied art.
As virtually every Westerner over the age of five knows,
"the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man be-
94
came a living soul." In contrast to Adam, who was
sculpted by God Himself, Eve is a mere copy made from
original man. "The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall
upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and
9 5
. . made he a woman." To underscore the difference
between Adam, God's original art work, and Eve, the copy,
Genesis presents Eve as a bodily creature while Adam is
specifically described as possessing a soul. When God
96
breathed life into Adam, "man became a living soul" (my
-31-
italics) ; but we search in vain for mention of Eve's soul
and find instead Adam's pronouncement: "This is now bone
of my bones and flesh of my flesh: and she shall be called
Q 7
Woman because she was taken out of man."
The connection between the manner of creation and the
relative status of the work in question is highlighted by
the Hebrew myth of Lilith, whose story is part of Jewish
lore, though not part of the authorized scriptures. Lilith
was Adam's first wife, but like him she was created by God
from the dust of the earth, and was not, therefore, copied
from the original. Since she was made in the same way as
9 8
Adam, Lilith "considered herself his equal" and "objected
9 9
to lying beneath him." When Adam tried to force Lilith
into submission, she ran away and refused to return even
after God vowed to put a hundred of her demon babies to
death every day until she submitted. Though the main func
tion of the Lilith myth is undoubtedly to illustrate the
dangers of autonomous woman, it also points clearly to the
importance of the means of creation in determining the
status of what is created. When man and woman are both
created by God from the dust, as in the Lilith myth, both
are original creations and there is no relationship of
superiority and inferiority.
While the second chapter of Genesis points to the in
herent superiority of original art (Adam has a soul while
derivative Eve is only body), the third chapter goes further
-32-
by warning of the dangers of giving in to the enticement
of a mere copy, the enticement of Eve, for it was Eve who
listened to the serpent and caused the fall of humanity.
The Scriptures describe the fall in terms of succumbing to
desire: "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for
food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to
be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof,
and did eat."^^ when Eve, the derivative one, gave in to
sensual desire and the desire for knowledge, she enabled
culture to invade the inside of Eden, originary nature. But
the fall was not complete until Eve offered the fruit to
Adam, and man, made by God in his own image, succumbed to
the enticement of derivative woman, thereby corrupting the
soul of man forevermore.
In this manner, the widely disseminated myth teaches
that derivativeness is inferior to originality just as the
body is weaker than the soul and woman is inferior to man.
But derivativeness is more than just inferior to origin
ality; it is a constant danger that threatens to corrupt
the soul and elicit God's wrath. Given the power of the
tale in Western culture, and given the countless reitera
tions of the values embodied in the tale, it is no wonder
that the prejudice against derivativeness is so pervasive
and persistent.
Thus, one of the legacies of the Adam and Eve myth is
a powerful revulsion to derivativeness which manifests
-33-
itself in critical values. This deep-seated mistrust of
derivativeness clearly operates in Stoppard criticism,
fueling disease and. parasite metaphors, feeding indignant
insistencies that Stoppard's derivative work should be
excluded from the canon, kept out of the garden of original
theater. The tone of moral indignation found in so much
anti-Stoppard criticism begins to make sense when we recog
nize that original and derivative have never been innocent
critical terms, devoid of mcrai and political implications.
Instead, the terms are caught up in an entire structure of
morals and values which are situated at the heart of the
Western tradition.
Jacques Derrida refers to this structure as the "meta
physics of presence" or "logocentrism." Translator Barbara
Johnson summarizes Derrida's view that Western thought "has
always been structured in terms of dichotomies or polari-
101
ties": original versus derivative, soul versus body,
man versus woman, good versus evil. The terms do not, how
ever, enjoy equal status. As Derrida explains: "In a
traditional philosophical opposition we have not a peaceful
coexistence of terms but a violent hierarchy. One of the
terms dominates the other (axiologically, logically, etc.),
102
occupies the commanding position." In the original/
derivative hierarchy, it is originality which dominates and
commands, drawing its power from a whole framework of sup
porting oppositions in which good, man, and soul occupy
commanding positions over evil, woman, and body.
-34-
These hierarchies are instances of the "metaphysics
of presence" or "logocentricism" because the first terms
in the above list or pairsoriginal, soul, man, good--are
seen as being in a position of relative proximity to
presence, to God, to logos, or to a source. Derrida explains
that "all the terms related to fundamentals, to principles,
or to the center have always designated the constant of
presence . consciousness or conscience, God, man, and
103
so forth." While the first or favored terms have in
common the constant of presence, the second terms in the
list--derivative, body, woman, evilare devalued because
they ..re defined by their removal from presence. The Adam
and Eve myth provides a vivid manifestation of this
phenomenon: man, possessor of a soul, was made directly
by God and is, therefore, defined by his nearness to the
source, to logos, while bodily woman, the disfavored member
of the pair, was made from Adam and is thus defined by her
removal from the presence of God, the source. "Original"
art is likewise favored because it is seen as stemming
immediately from the Author-source while derivative art
is disfavored because it is seen as being removed from the
Author-source inasmuch as it is "copied" from other art.
Derrida and other deconstructionists, including many
feminist critical theorists, seek to dismantle such
philosophical and critical hierarchies. Perhaps the first
step in deconstructing a hierarchy is "to work through the
-35-
structural genealogy of [the] concepts in the most scrupulous
104
and immanent fashion" in order to demonstrate "the sys
tematic and historical solidarity of the concepts and
gestures of thought that one often believes can be inno-
105
cently separated." By tracing, for example, the original/
derivative hierarchy back to its codification in the Book of
Origins, we reveal the complicities between the favoring of
originality over derivativeness and the favoring of man,
soul, and good over woman, body, and evil. While we are
accustomed to thinking of originality and derivativeness as
merely innocent critical terms, terms without moral or
political significance, deconstruction brings the recogni
tion that the original/derivative hierarchy cannot be
innocently separated from the hierarchies which support
it--and these supporting hierarchies (man/woman, soul/body)
have moral and political implications which are impossible
to overlook.
In On Deconstruction, Jonathan Culler focuses on the
importance of this kind of recognition in his discussion of
the impact of deconstruction on literary criticism: "By
disrupting the hierarchical relations on which critical
concepts and methods depend, [deconstruction] prevents con
cepts and methods from being taken for granted and treated
as simply reliable instruments. Critical categories are
not just tools to be employed in producing sound interpre
tations but problems to be explored."
Rather than
-36-
accepting critical tools as reliable instruments, decon
struction often works by "revealing the interested,
ideological nature of [the impositions]"^ Qn which critical
concepts and methods depend. In this manner, Culler explains,
deconstruction "can be seen as a politicizing of what might
otherwise be thought a neutral framework." An important
distinction must be made here. A deconstructive move does
not suddenly transform a neutral, apolitical discourse into
a politicized one. Instead, deconstruction encourages the
recognition that literary criticism has always been inter
ested and ideological, even though these political implica
tions have long been ignored. In "The Conflict of Facul
ties," Derrida explains that while many people will be
incapable of tapping the political potential of deconstruc
tion, this political potential is nevertheless there:
deconstruction is "at the very least, a way of taking a
position, in its work of analysis, concerning the political
and institutional structures that make possible and govern
our practices, our competencies, our performances. . .
This means that, too political for some, it will seem
paralyzing to those who only recognize politics by its most
familiar roadsigns. "
Fortunately, many feminist critical theorists have
avoided both traps. Recognizing the obvious political
implications of logocentrism's disfavoring of women, they
have worked to reveal the ways in which the metaphysics of
-37-
presence, or to use the Derridean term they prefer,
"phallogocentrism unites an interest in patriarchal author
ity, unity of meaning, and certainty of origin."110 These
are precisely the concerns which have been so central to
the critique of Stoppard's work: according to the tradi
tional view, the derivativeness of Stoppard's plays makes
their origin highly uncertain, thereby disrupting their
unity of meaning and reducing their patriarchal authority.
Feminist critical theorists have simply not accepted the
traditional view of authorship implied in such an assess
ment. Instead, they "investigate whether the procedures,
assumptions, and goals of current criticism are in complicity
111
with the preservation of male authority."
Their investigation of this complicity has followed
many avenues, but perhaps none is more pertinent to an
assessment of Stoppard's work than the investigation of the
assumptions underlying the traditional view of the author.
From a feminist perspective, the all-encompassing concern
with certainty of origin in authorship seems symptomatic of
a transference to the critical realm of masculine anxieties
about procreation and legitimacy. Culler summarizes
Dorothy Dinnerstein's observation that "fathers, because
of their lack of direct physical connection with babies,
have a powerful urge to assert a relation, giving the child
112
their name to establish a genealogical link." In addi
tion, men have traditionally made great "efforts to control
-38-
the sexual life of women to make sure that the children
1 1 T
they sponsor really do come from their own seed."
Patriarchal criticism adopts these bio-sexual concerns,
treating the text as the author-father's child, assigning
the author-father legal rights to the text, and as is clearly
seen in Stoppard criticism, treating any text of uncertain
origin as a bastard-text.
Undoubtedly, then, the traditional model of authorship
is interested on many, if not all levels, and the interests
it represents are too clear to require further comment.
Recognizing that the model is indeed interested and ideo
logical, we move closer to understanding why the model re
mains so powerful even though so many critical theorists
have shown it to be a highly misleading critical tool. As
Eliot realized, the tendency to praise what is "original"
and "individual" in art leads us to overlook the very thing
that made the work "great"the work's incorporation of
existing writing. By continuing to insist on originality
in art, by clinging to a theological npdel of authorship,
critics misrepresent the process of artistic creation, for
earthly authors have never created ex nihilo. The one truly
original act of creation is mythic, and critics could pro
ceed more productively if this mythic model were placed
aside.
Furthermore, a look at the canon indicates that the
standard of originality has always been inconsistently
-39-
applied, revealing that critics have, perhaps necessarily,
been of two minds on the issue. Oedipus Tyrranos, for
example, has long been highly valued even though we know
that Sophocles wrought the play from widely known material.
We value the play as much for its incorporation of cultural
values, made possible because the play is derivative, as
for its excellent craft. Similarly, we know that Shakespeare
made Hamlet from earlier versions of Hamlet, that Beckett
and Brecht draw heavily on existing theatrical traditions
to make their plays. "Stylistically speaking, there is
nothing all that new about the epic theatre," Brecht ex
plains. "Its expository character and its emphasis on
virtuosity bring it close to the old Asiatic theatre.
Didactic tendencies are to be found in the medieval mystery
plays and the classical Spanish theatre, and also in the
114
theatre of the Jesuits." With the possible exception of
medieval mystery plays, the sources Brecht names are all
relatively unfamiliar to most of us, suggesting that we do
not readily recognize these sources when we watch a per
formance of a Brecht play. Similarly, due to historical
distancing, we may not readily recognize the sources
Sophocles and Shakespeare used. This distance from or
unfamilarity with sources makes it possible for us to join
the critics, the keepers of the canon, in forgetting, will
fully or otherwise, the highly derivative nature of plays
we value. This "forgetting," in turn, allows us simul
taneously to value derivative plays and to value originality
-40-
in art. If we could cast aside the blinders imposed by the
theological model of authorship, we might resolve this
contradiction by seeing that derivativeness is far more
essential to the art we value than originality.
We might see further that the insistence on originality
poses a far greater threat to the garden of theater, to the
canon, than the misplaced fear of derivativeness. Though
we are indeed fortunate that, through the process of "for
getting," many plays have escaped censure for derivative
ness, the canon remains at risk nevertheless, for as long
as critics insist on the phallogocentric model as the sole,
legitimate model, we risk exclusion of any play that does
not conform to this rigid, interested prescription. Since
the model is exclusively masculine, it works toward the
exclusion of all non-masculine authors. Another look at
the canon reveals the paucity of women playwrights, and we
recognize that the model works first to discourage women
from writing (lacking a penis, she cannot hope to effec-
115
tively wield a pen, the patriarchs have often repeated ),
and then, for those few who overcome an entire tradition
and write anyway, it works to cast their writing as suspect,
illegitimate, or parasitic.
Moreover, the model works to exclude male authors such
as Stoppard who choose an authorial strategy other than the
single, legitimate one prescribed by the model. Of course,
Stoppard's plays have not in fact been shut out of the
-41-
canonthey are widely anthologized, frequently performed,
and constantly written about. But the plays have been
accepted in spite of widespread, lingering suspicion that
their derivativeness is a weakness that detracts from their
artistic merit. Robert Egan accurately describes the evolu
tion in the critical response to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead by noting that although "we are well beyond Robert
Brustein's early charge of 'theatrical parasitism,'" "several
studies that have since appeared echo Brustein's definition
(though without the pejorative sense) of Stoppard's play in
terms of Beckett's."^^^ The same sort of evolution can be
traced in the critical response to other Stoppard plays: in
general, while critics no longer openly denounce the plays
as inferior theatrical parasites, they still tend to
apologize for Stoppard's derivativeness, tend to explain
away the open borrowing as an unfortunate weakness in
otherwise worthy plays.
What has been lacking in Stoppard criticism, though,
is the vital next step in this evolution, namely, the
recognition that Stoppard's borrowing is a thing greatly
to be desired. Far from being an unfortunate weakness,
Stoppard's derivativeness is an integral part of his multi
level challenge to the traditional model of originality, a
model that is politically conservative, morally suspect,
and highly misleading as a critical tool. Because Stoppard
so vividly foregrounds his borrowing, he forces us to come
-42-
to terms with the inevitable derivativeness of all writing.
We cannot watch or read a Stoppard play and leave with our
functioning ambivalence intact: the plays do not allow us
the convenient process of "forgetting" that art is deriva
tive. Not only are we confronted with unmistakably borrowed
materialundisguised segments from Hamlet, The Importance
of Being Earnest, Eliot's poetry, and whatever else was in
Stoppard's hat when he assembled the play in questionbut
we are also, via the content of the plays, drawn into ex
tended consideration of the nature of authorship. Rosen-
crantz and Guildenstern Are Dead asks us to consider the
authors role in determining the fate of characters as the
usually buried metaphor equating the playwright with God,
the source of fate, is exhumed, opened up for investigation.
In Travesties, we face squarely the question of the origin
of art, as "authors" with widely diverging political views
all nevertheless make their art in the same wayby pulling
it out of a hat. The Real Thing coyly tempts us to identify
Henry, the character-playwright, with Stoppard, the "real"
playwright, and then pulls the rug out from under us
repeatedly as the play discredits the view of authorship
implicit in such identification.
By reading Stoppard's open derivativeness as a challenge
to the traditional model of authorship, we gain a more
integrated understanding of the relationship between the
form and content of his plays, and we move, not incidentally,
-43-
toward a more productive, less prejudiced set of critical
tools. Moreover, we lose nothing in the process, for in
leaving behind the theological, phallocentric model of
authorship, we assign to the scrap heap a model that has
always been highly misleading, has always misrepresented the
process of artistic creation. And as we scrap this outdated
model, we also move closer to dismantling the related
original/derivative hierarchy that has likewise always been
more a morality laden pair of blinders than a useful tool
for assessing the value of art.
Notes
Tom Stoppard, Travesties (New York: Grove Press,
1975), p. 18. All further quotations refer to this edition
and will be cited parenthetically within the text. Unless
otherwise noted, ellipses are Stoppard's.
2
Jim Hunter, Tom Stoppard's Plays (London: Faber and
Faber, 1982), p. 240. Hunter provides a full "translation"
from nonsense to French to English of Tzara's opening
four-line poem.
David Bratt, Introduction to Tom Stoppard: A
Reference Guide (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1982), p. xviii.
4 . .
Bratt, p. xviii.
^Robert Brustein, "Waiting for Hamlet," New Republic,
4 November 1967, p. 25.
^Brustein, "Waiting," p. 26.
7
Brustein, "Waiting," p. 26.
8Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind," in The
Norton Introduction to Literature, shorter 3rd ed., eds.
Carl E. Bain, Jerome Beaty, and J. Paul Hunter (New York:
W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1982), p. 497.
-44-
9
Christopher Nichols, "Theater: R & G: A Minority
Report," National Review, 12 December 1967, p. 1394.
^Or.H. Lee, "The Circle and Its Tangent," Theoria: A
Journal of Studies in the Arts, Humanities and Social
Sciences 33 (October 1969): 37-43.
11C.O. Gardner, "Correspondence: Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead," Theoria: A Journal of Studies in
the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences 34 (May 1970): 83.
^Gardner, p. 83.
13
John Simon, "Theater Chronicle," Hudson Review 29
(Spring 1976): 79.
^Simon, p. 79.
"^Philip Roberts, "Tom Stoppard: Serious Artist or
Siren?" Critical Quarterly 20 (Autumn 1978): 86-87.
^Roberts, p. 87.
1 7
Robert Brustem, "Robert Brustein on Theater: A
Theater for Clever Journalists," New Republic, 5 January
1980, p. 23.
18
Brustein, "Clever Journalists," p. 23.
19
Brustein, "Clever Journalists," p. 23.
2 0
Joan Juliet Buck, "Tom Stoppard: Kind Heart and
Prickly Mind," Vogue, March 1984, p. 454.
2^"Buck, p. 514.
22Buck, p. 514.
23Tom Stoppard, "Ambushes for the Audience: Toward a
High Comedy of Ideas," Theatre Quarterly 4 (May-July
1974): 13.
24Stoppard, "Ambushes," p. 12.
2~>Hunter, p. 197.
2^Hunter, p. 197.
27Kenneth Tynan, "Profile: Withdrawing with Style from
the Chaos," New Yorker, 19 December 1977, p. 43.
28
Tynan, p. 43.
-45-
29
Tynan, p. 42.
30
Tynan, p. 42.
31
Joan Fitzpatrick Dean, Tom Stoppard: Comedy as a
Moral Matrix (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1981),
p. 108.
33Hunter, p. 197.
33Tynan, p. 45.
34 .
Victor L. Cahn, Beyond Absurdity: The Plays of Tom
Stoppard (Rutherford, N.J.: Farleigh Dickinson Univ. Press,
1979), p. 143.
33Cahn, p. 155.
3^Cahn, p. 155.
3^Cahn, p. 155.
O
Carol Billman, "The Art of History in Tom Stoppard's
Travesties," Kansas Quarterly 12 (Fall 1980): 52.
39
Bobbie Rothstein, "The Reappearance of Public Man:
Stoppard's Jumpers and Professional Foul," Kansas Quarterly
12 (Fall 1980): 35.
40
Rothstein,
p. 40.
41
Rothstein,
p. 40.
42
Rothstein,
p. 43.
^3Stoppard,
"Ambushes,"
P-
11.
44
Stoppard,
"Ambushes,"
P-
11.
4 5
Stoppard,
"Ambushes,"
P-
11.
46
Stoppard,
"Ambushes,"
P-
11.
4 7
Stoppard,
"Ambushes,"
P*
12.
48
Stoppard,
"Ambushes,"
P-
12.
49
Terrv Eagleton, Marxism
and Literary Criticism
(Berkeley: Univ.
of California
Press, 1976), p. 24.
50Eagleton, p. 24. Eagleton is summarizing and con
curring with an argument made by Georg Lukcs.
-46-
51
Genesis 1:1, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, revised
standard version, eds. Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977).
52Genesis 1:3, 1:6, 1:9, 1:11, 1:20, 1:24, and 1:29,
The New Oxford Annotated Bible.
53
The New Oxford Annotated Bible, footnote, p. 1.
54
I use the definitions offered by the Compact Edition
of the Oxford English Dictionary.
"^Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in
the Attic (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1979), p. 4.
^Gilbert and Gubar, p. 5.
57
Gilbert and Gubar, p. 5.
5 8
Gilbert and Gubar, p. 6.
5 9
William Wordsworth, "Preface to Lyrical Ballads," in
Critical Theory Since Plato, ed. Hazard Adams (Atlanta:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971), p. 441.
60Michel Foucault, "What Is an Author?" in Textual
Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism,
ed. Joseu Harari (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1979),
148.
^Foucault,
P-
148.
^2Foucault,
P-
148.
6 3
Foucault,
P-
149.
^ ^Foucault,
P-
149.
^Foucault,
P-
148.
^Gilbert and
Gubar, p. 46.
67T.S. Eliot,
"Tradition and
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971), p. 784.
^Eliot, p. 784.
^Eliot, p. 787.
70J. Hillis Miller, "The Limits of Pluralism. III. The
Critic as Host," Critical Inquiry 3 (Spring 1977): 446.
-47-
71
Bertolt Brecht, "Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for
Instruction," in Brecht on Theatre, trans. John Willet (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1964), p. 73.
^Brecht, p. 73.
^Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author," in Image-
Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang,
1977), p. 145.
74
Barthes,
P*
146.
^Barthes f
P-
146.
^Barthes,
P*
147.
77
Barthes,
P-
146.
"^Barthes,
P-
147.
"^Barthes,
P-
147.
soa
Barthes,
P-
148.
^ "'"Barthes,
P.
143.
82n .
Barthes,
P-
143.
8 3
Craig Owens,
"The Discourse of
Others: Feminists and
Postmodernism" in The Anti-Aesthetic:
Essays on Postmodern
Culture, ed. Hal
Foster (Port Townsend, Washington:
Bay
Press, 1983), p.
57
84^
Owens, p.
73
8 5~
Owens, p.
73
86^
Owens, p.
64
8 7
Owens, p.
64
. Owens refers to
Jean-Francois
Lyotard,
La condition postmoderne (Paris: Minuit, 1979), p. 8.
88
89
90
Owens, pp. 65-66.
Owens, p. 67.
Owens, p. 67.
91
Owens, p. 67.
^Mel Gussow, "Stoppard Refutes Himself, Endlessly,
New York Times, 26 April 1972, p. 54.
-48-
93
Cited in Ronald Hayman, Tom Stoppard, Contemporary
Playwrights Series, 3rd ed. (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1979), p. 40.
94
Genesis 2:7. All further biblical references are to
the Kind James Version.
^Genesis 2:21-22.
96 T -7
Genesis 2:7.
^Genesis 2:23.
^Gilbert and Gubar, p. 35.
9 9
Gilbert and Gubar, p. 35.
100^
Genesis 3:6.
^'''Barbara Johnson, Translator's Introduction to Dis
semination by Jacques Derrida (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1981), p. viii.
1 n 2
Jacques Derrida, Positions, quoted by Jonathan
Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after
Structuralism (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1982), p. 85.
101
Jacques Derrida, L'ecriture et la difference, quoted
in Translator's Preface to Of Grammatology by Jacques
Derrida, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1976), p. xxi.
104Jacques Derrida, Positions, quoted in Culler, p. 86.
1 QC
Derrida, Of Grammatology, pp. 13-14.
49^Culler, p. 180.
4^^Culler, p. 166.
49^Culler, p. 156.
109Derrida, "The Conflict of Faculties," quoted in
Culler, p. 156.
110Culler,
P-
61
111Culler,
P-
61
112Culler,
P-
60
-49-
113
Dorothy Dinnerstem, The Mermaid and the Minotaur:
Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise (New York: Harper &
Row, 1977), p. 80.
*14Brecht, pp. 75-76 .
115Gilbert and Gubar demonstrate in the introduction
to The Madwoman in the Attic the consistent linking of the
pen with the penis. See pages 3-16.
116
Robert Egan, "A Thin Beam of Light: The Purpose of
Playing in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," Theatre
Journal 31 (March 1979): 59.
ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD OR
TOM STOPPARD DOESN'T KNOW
Dislocation of an audience's assumptions is an
important part of what I like to write.
Tom Stoppard^
Even before the curtain rises on Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead, Stoppard has begun the process of
dislocating his audience's assumptions, for the very title
indicates a central, "dislocating" fact about the play, the
fact that has been at the heart of the critical controversy
surrounding Stoppard's first major stage success: the play
is derivative. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are drawn, not
from life, but from art. And once the curtain rises, this
dislocation of assumptions continues unabated as we realize
that Stoppard is not only replaying Hamlet, but is incor
porating essential elements of Waiting for Godot as well.
Stoppard's borrowing operates at virtually all levels, from
the all-encompassing frame of Hamlet, to repetitions of
Hamlet as the play-within-the-play, to the Beckettian
scenario of two men waiting on a vacant stage, to specific
echoes of lines from Hamlet, Godot, and other works. This
blatant and pervasive borrowing specifically dislocates
-50-
-51-
assumptions about originality in art, for Stoppard clearly
makes no effort to pretend that Rosencrantz is an unmediated
representation of life. Such an implicit challenge to the
primacy of originality in art in turn raises questions about
the concept of authorship and the nature of representation
(what do authors do if not look at life and then represent
it in art?), questions which, not coincidentally, have a
direct bearing on the major thematic issues explored within
the play.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, modelled after Vladimir
and Estragn, caught up in the script of Hamlet, develop an
interest in sources and origins, and as we join them in
trying to determine where they came from, the derivativeness
of the play intensifies the futility of our joint search,
for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, like the play, have no
single origin. The play's derivativeness intervenes in the
same way as we participate in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's
search for their end, their fate. Stoppard juxtaposes the
Renaissance tragic vision of Hamlet (death is part of a
grand design) with the modern absurdist vision of Godot
(death is as meaningless as life), unmasking both, reveal
ing them as artificial constructs based upon different
assumptions about life, neither of which is endorsed as a
uniquely valid way of representing reality. This juxta
position leaves us, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, with
no firm ground to stand on as we try to explain their
-52-
deaths. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern die because, as the
2
Player explains, "It is written" no God, not even an
absent Godot, only an implied author passively assembling
an already written story. Thus, the whole concept of fate
is thoroughly undermined as Stoppard refuses us the stable
ground of a fixed theatrical mode which corresponds to life;
the end of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is refracted and
reflected through layers of art which may not at all be
rooted in a valid relationship with life. Lest we try to
push aside the realization that both the origin and the end
of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are art, not life, Stoppard
foregrounds debates, discussions, and demonstrations con
cerning the possibilities and limitations of illusion and
representation. Guildenstern tells a series of stories
espousing the virtues of believing in an illusion which is
clearly at odds with reality; the Player teaches several
lessons concerning the conventions of the theater; and we
see "death" performed repeatedly in a variety of theatrical
modes only to hear the performance critiqued by the onstage
audience immediately afterwards. In the end, the deaths of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become an opening into the
question of how the theater works, and the assumptions
audiences traditionally rely on to frame their responses
are completely dislocated.
While it seems clear that Stoppard's blatantly deriva
tive authorial strategy is a uniquely well-suited vehicle
-53-
for exploring the issues raised within the play, surprisingly
enough, critics are only beginning to ask the rather old-
fashioned New Critical question of how the form works with
the content of Rosencrantz. Critics have for the most part
overlooked the relationship between the outside and the
inside, addressing either the derivativeness of the play or
its content, but only rarely asking whether the two work
together in any special way. Early reviewers often focused
on Stoppard's derivativeness, and they found nothing to
admire. Robert Brustein's complaints are easily the most
well-knownhe labelled the play a "theatrical parasite,
feeding off Hamlet, Waiting for Godot, and Six Characters
3
in Search of an Author" and rechristened it "Waiting for
4
Hamlet" but his was by no means a lonely, dissenting
voice. C.O. Gardner joined the chorus of condemnations,
denouncing the play as "a swill, composed of second-hand
5
Beckett, third-hand Kafka, and the goon show," and, as
g
such, thoroughly unworthy of "serious critical attention."
Likewise, Christopher Nichols found the play's stage suc
cess surprising since he saw "no stinging innovation"^ in
Rosencrantz. According to the early critical consensus,
then, the derivativeness of Stoppard's play constituted an
artistic weakness of the most grave nature, a weakness of
sufficient magnitude to relegate the play to the ash-heap.
Instead of fading into oblivion, however, Rosencrantz
is, as Robert Egan observes (borrowing one of the play's
-54-
own lines), "gathering weight as it goes on."8 As the play
began to show signs of becoming a "modern classic,"9 the
critical response slowly grew more accommodating, but the
legacy of Brustein's charge has continued to haunt the play.
Normand Berlin saw some good in the play, arguing in
"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: Theater of Criti
cism" that "what Stoppard does best" is "to help us realize
'how remarkable Shakespeare is.'"10 But while Berlin thought
the play might succeed as criticism of Hamlet, he thought
it largely failed as a play, agreeing whole-heartedly with
Brustein's assessment: "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead is a derivative play, correctly characterized by
Robert Brustein as a 'theatrical parasite.'"11 After re
peating Brustein's version of the play's genealogy, he
elaborated, "Stoppard goes to Shakespeare for his charac
ters, for the background to his play's action, and for some
direct quotations, to Pirandello for the idea of giving
extradramatic life to established characters, to Beckett
for the tone, the philosophical thrust, and for some comic
routines." Berlin's move toward some sort of critical
accommodation is clearly a small step, for while it is true
that criticism is an important part of Rosencrantz, Berlin
sees this critical element as strictly limited to an eluci
dation of Hamlet rather than as an exploration of the
tragic genre and even of the nature of theater, and more
importantly, he retains the assumption that criticism is
-55-
itself basically parasitical, so that Stoppard's play about
art is less worthy than a play about life.
As the play continued to gather more weight, critics
largely dropped the condemnations of Stoppard's borrowing
as they embarked on detailed source studies, treating
Stoppard's borrowing in much the same way they might treat
Chaucer's or Shakespeare's borrowing in the pre-Romantic
period, before criticism began to place such a premium on
"originality" in art. Margarete Holubetz, for example,
argued that the fake death scene in Webster's The White
Devil is very close to, and may have served as a source for,
13
the fake death scene in Rosencrantz while Ruby Cohn, in
Modern Shakespeare Offshoots, detailed the evidence of
Stoppard's thinking about two bit-players from Hamlet
"through the absurdist twilight of Beckett's Godot." ^ "In
performance," she observed, "the Godot quality of Stoppard's
couple is evident in their music-hall exchanges, their
games, their boredom, their lack of memory, and their
general uncertainty about their condition^^ Cohn accu
rately noted other similarities between Godot and Rosen
crantz : "In both plays, two friends ask each other ques
tions, tell each other stories, play with puns, clichs,
16
pauses, repetitions, and impersonations." Cohn found
that, "more obviously than Beckett, Stoppard introduces
17
philosophy into the music-hall patter of his pair," and
she deemed this philosophical dimension valuable. But her
-56-
summary of Stoppard's use of source plays contained hints
that the earlier bias against the borrowing in Rosencrantz
was still at work: "Extremely skillful in dovetailing the
Hamlet scenes into the Godot situation, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead is a witty commentary rather than a
theatrical exploration into either great work." While
the source plays are great, her comments suggested, the
derivative Rosencrantz is merely witty.
Ronald Hayman and Jill L. Levenson similarly wrote of
Stoppard's play in terms of source material, observing the
borrowing without condemning it, and even, in the case of
Levenson, praising the derivativeness as a source of textual
richness. Noting that "the public was ready for a depar
ture from the mould of working-class anti-hero that John
19
Osborne had established in 1956," Mayman argued that
"Stoppard appeared at the right moment with his beautifully
engineered device for propelling two attendant lords into
2 0
the foreground." "Stoppard," Hayman continued, "was not
the first playwright to incorporate generous slabs of
Shakesperian dialogue into a modern text, but he was the
boldest and the cleverest."21 Writing in Shakespeare Survey,
Levenson began by observing that
As soon as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
Dead appeared in performance, reviewers and
academic commentators recognized its derivation
not only from Shakespeare's Hamlet, but also
from Beckett's Waiting for Godot. They have
noticed other influences as well: Pirandello,
-57-
T.S. Eliot, Wilde, Kafka, and Pinter have left
theatrical or literary traces, and Ludwig
Wittgenstein's late Investigations provide
philosophical bearings.
In Levenson's view, Stoppard's borrowing served as both "a
means for solving practical problems of composition" and
a source of allusions and reverberations that make the text
richer. Hamlet provided Stoppard with "a familiar text
whose interpretation he could share with his audience,"24
and his many other sources worked with Hamlet as threads
which converge or, to use Levenson's preferred image, "trans-
25
parencies stacked on top of one another." Levenson saw
Stoppard's borrowing as a major source of "the wit which
2 6
has continually engaged Stoppard's audiences," a wit
which "arises not only from his verbal ingenuity but also
from the meeting of pointssometimes whole linesin the
27
transparencies."
Undoubtedly, these more recent studies of Stoppard's
use of sources are far more productive than the earlier
blanket condemnations of Stoppard's theatrical parasitism,
but we need at this point to take heed of William E. Gruber's
words of caution about accepting even this more fruitful
approach as an adequate frame for discussing Stoppard's
play, which Gruber believes "has no clear theatrical prece
dent."2^ Reviewing the commentaries of Cohn, Hayman, and
Thomas Whitaker, Gruber observes, "Such language 'skillful
in dovetailing,' 'beautifully engineered,' 'clever pastiche'
condemns while it praises, subtly labeling Stoppard's play
-58-
2 9
as a derivative piece of workmanship." He continues with
a most accurate comment about the critical response to art
in general: "We tend to mistrust anything which is not
3 0
obviously new, not wholly original." And I could not
agree more with Gruber's observation that "Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead ought to cause us to acknowledge some
inadequacies in the vocabulary we currently use to discuss
31
plays," for "a workshop vocabulary proves unable to explain
what occurs when the script of Hamlet mingles with the
32
script of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." The
scope of this problem becomes acutely apparent when we
read, for example, Richard Corballis's conclusion to the
Rosencrantz chapter in his 1984 Stoppard: The Mystery and
the Clockwork. Seeking to praise the play at the end of a
chapter which fruitfully examines Stoppard's conflation of
Hamlet and Godot, Corballis must, in the absence of more
appropriately descriptive terminology, resort to a vocabu
lary that does not at all describe how Rosencrantz works:
33
"Stoppard," he writes, "created an original masterpiece."
In spite of these "vocabulary" problems--and I submit
that this weakness in critical terminology is rooted in an
underlying conceptual problem that cannot be entirely re
solved by a mere substitution of wordsthree studies that
have appeared since 1979 (including Corballis's) repre
sent major strides in the evolution of the critical response
to Rosencrantz. All three critics, Robert Wilcher, Corballis,
-59-
and Michael Hinden, treat Stoppard's borrowing as an integral
part of the play, praising his incorporation of a Renais
sance world view, via Hamlet, into the absurdist vision of
Godot.
Robert Wilcher's 1979 "The Museum of Tragedy: Endgame
and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," the earliest of
the studies, may be most properly classified as a transition
essay, for Wilcher retains a central feature of older
approaches to the play, namely, the viewing of Stoppard's
play in terms of Shakespeare's. "My chief purpose," he
states, "is to see what light is thrown on the plays of
Beckett and Stoppard by reading them in the context of
Hamlet in particular and of the tradition of tragic art
34
alluded to by Hamm [in Endgame] in general." But Wilcher's
reading clearly goes beyond the view of Brustein and com
pany, who see Rosencrantz as an inferior parasite feeding
off great plays, and beyond that of Berlin as well, for
Wilcher reads the play as a window onto the entire tradition
of tragedy rather than as a commentary only on Hamlet, and
he does not work from the assumption that the play's cri
tical function is essentially parasitical. Instead, he
suggests that his study of the relationship between the
tradition of tragedy and Rosencrantz and Endgame may "have
some bearing upon the death or survival of tragedy in the
modern age."^~* Thus, Wilcher sees the contemporary plays
as potentially life-giving rather than as life-sapping
parasites.
-60-
Wilcher begins by observing that "tragedy is no longer
O
viable as an art-form in the mid-twentieth century" since
the ethical conventions and Providential world order they
rely on are no longer part of a broadly shared cultural con
sensus. Rosencrantz, he argues, raises "the question of the
relation of modern drama to the tragic art of the past quite
37
explicitly." Since Stoppard cannot rely on the shared
Providential world view which previously provided the basis
for the structure of tragedy, he substitutes the script of
Hamlet as an alternative "for a cultural consensus about
3 8
the nature and meaning of the universe." By incorporating
39
"fragments of Shakespeare's play" into the action,
Stoppard presents "the script as a viable theatrical alter-
40
native to Destiny or Grade."
But Stoppard's substitution is not designed to keep
alive a mode of theater that has outlived its usefulness;
it works instead as an expansion of the insights Pirandello
offered about the theater. The traditional "distinction
between the reality of life and the unreality of the stage
41
has been blurred and inverted in the twentieth century"
so that, after Pirandello, all the world is no longer a
4
stage, "but the stage is itself a world with its own laws."
Whereas in the Renaissance tragedy reflected a shared view
of the world as essentially orderly, in the twentieth
century, only art is orderly, and the orderly world of the
stage reflects only the order of art, not of life, which is
-61-
viewed as fundamentally chaotic. Stoppard's play differs
from Pirandello's in that Stoppard does not have to "tell us
the story in which his Characters [are] trapped as he [goes]
43
along." He "can rely on his audience's knowledge of the
44
source play, Hamlet."
Thus, Wilcher argues, "The universe of the modern
characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, is not the Renais
sance macrocosm of Prince Hamlet, Shakespeare, and the
Elizabethan-audience, but Hamlet the playand it is impor
tant to stress again that it is not a view of the world but
a familiarity with Hamlet that is shared by Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, Stoppard, and the twentieth-century audience."
By using Hamlet as a "formal equivalent for the agreement
46
between dramatist and audience on which tragedy depends,"
Stoppard's presentation of the deaths of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern becomes an opening onto the workings of tragedy
and of the theater as a whole. Why, Wilcher asks, "should
Shakespeare bother to tell us what happened to two insig
nificant attendant lords?"47 "Such is the fate of those
who inhabit the world of the stage," we realize, "where
48 ...
aesthetic laws apply as well as moral ones." The divinity
that shapes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern' s ends, unlike the
Divinity that shapes Hamlet's end, does not extend beyond
the world of the stage. While the death of Hamlet reaches
out of the play to confirm a world view, the deaths of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, no less in Shakespeare's
6 2-
play than in Stoppard's, are mandated by the order of art,
which requires that there be no loose ends. While Wilcher
suggests that Stoppard's confirmation of the order of art
allows us to "still share a belief in the creative power of
49
the artist" m an age "when we may doubt the existence of
50
a Creator or a Providence," I believe Stoppard's extension
of Pirandello's strategy may have the opposite effect. In
stead of reinforcing the Author/Father/God topos, Stoppard
unmasks the model, revealing that the deaths of Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern never had any connection to Providence,
that Shakespeare was not so much presenting Divinity at work
as simply tying up a thread in the plot in order to produce
a well-made, orderly play.
In his 1980 "Extending the Audience: The Structure of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" (which he revises
slightly for his book on Stoppard), Richard Corballis begins
with a different emphasis but treats Stoppard's use of
Hamlet in much the same way as Wilcher. Noting that critics
who do not accept Brustein's assessment of the play tend
to accept Berlin's, Corballis dissents, arguing that "al
though the 'overt' themes of the play may look derivative,
'forced and jejune' on the page, I have always found them
highly effective and even moving in the theatre."^ He
similarly rejects the consensus that Stoppard communicates
his themes "by sheer 'rhetoric'" and suggests that
"Stoppard has contrived a very sophisticated strategy for
-63-
53
the presentation of his ideas." This strategy is, of
course, Stoppard's incorporation of Hamlet into the "mani-
54
festly bizarre" world of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Corballis also finds inadequate the standard explanation
of Stoppard's use of Hamlet--"Stoppard's play turns
55
Shakespeare's inside out" so that the bit-players,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, move to the center, usurping
Prince Hamlet and pushing him to the peripheryfor it
"implies that Stoppard tinkered (albeit ingeniously) with
an (or should I say the?) established dramatic masterpiece
for no better reason than that 'it was there.
For Corballis, "the play is based upon a much more
57
substantial foundation than this"; namely, "the inversion
of the Hamlet action is merely a symptom of a thoroughgoing
58
inversion of conventional assumptions about life."
Corballis essentially argues that, "as a result of 'the
death of tragedy' in modern times, Hamlet had to be re-
defined." Stoppard redefines tragedy by juxtaposing the
disorderly world of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with the
orderly world of Hamlet so that the modern couple is "por
trayed as an extension of the audience and therefore as
'real' people"^ while "the Hamlet characters . are
made to appear all the more artificial, stagy, and 'un
real. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern begin the play as
spectators of Hamlet, but as they are gradually drawn into
the script, the "fortuitous" gives way to the "ordained
-64-
(Corballis borrows a line from Guildenstern here) as their
random, Beckettian world is taken over by the Providential
world of Hamlet, which "comes to symbolize the 'ordaining'
power over which Stoppard's protagonists struggle to impose
a measure of personal control."
Corballis explains that the Players work at first as
a link "between the real world of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern
and the audience and the artificial, stage-world of
6 3
Hamlet," but "they make one decisive shiftlate in Act 1
64
from the 'real' to the 'artificial'" so that they serve "to
develop the abstract antithesis between the world of Hamlet
and the world of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern into a dramatic
confrontation full of fear and menace."^ In Corballis's
view, the contrast between these two worlds "constitutes
6 6
the core of Stoppard's play," for the Hamlet "world (un
like the 'real' world of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) has
form and meaning; and death (which so perplexes Rosencrantz
6 7
and Guildenstern) is an accepted part of its design."
While Corballis's reading provides insight into the
function of the Hamlet script, I am not comfortable with
his classification of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as "real"
(even though he calls the term into question by using
quotation marks), for they seem every bit as stagy and
artificial as the Hamlet characters, perhaps more so, since
they are doubly derived from art (and thus emphatically
removed from life), existing as the conflation of
-65-
Shakespeare's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Beckett's
Vladimir and Estragn. The Renaissance world view under
lying Hamlet seems, from the perspective offered by
Rosencrantz, no more an artificial construct than the
absurdist world view underlying Godot. Rather than endorsing
the absurdist view as more real than the Renaissance view,
Stoppard seems instead to juxtapose two equally artificial
(or two equally "real," for that matter, since the dis
tinction is no longer clear) modes of theaterwithout
endorsing eitherin order to undermine the concept of
"realism." If we at first respond to Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern as "real" and to the Hamlet characters as
artificial, it is, we begin to realize, because we have
been taught since the mid 1950s to respond to absurdism as
a valid representation of life, as more "realistic" than
preceding theatrical modes. But once again, Stoppard's
overt derivativeness intervenes to undermine any comfortable
assumptions we might attempt to rest on, for the repeated
attention given within the play to theater as only a set
of conventions works with this juxtaposition of two incom
patible dramatic modes to render the notion of "realism"
untenable.
In his 1981 "Jumpers: Stoppard and the Theater of
Exhaustion," Michael Hinden makes regrettably brief com
ments about Rosencrantz which support just such a reading.
Like Corballis, he begins by disagreeing with the critical
-66-
view that Stoppard's derivativeness constitutes an artistic
weakness: "Some critics have confused Tom Stoppard's use
of earlier dramatic tradition (Shakespeare in Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead and Wilde in Travesties) with
parody, lack of originality, or want of purpose."68 Unlike
Wilcher and Corballis, though, Hinden's alternative context
for reading Stoppard's borrowing is not the death of tragedy
in the contemporary era, but John Barth's "The Literature
of Exhaustion," in which Barth puts forth the thesis that
"the used-upness of certain forms" is "by no means neces
sarily a cause for despair" and should not be equated with
6 9
"physical, moral, or intellectual decadence." Hinden
argues that "Like Barth, Stoppard finds himself in the
predicament of having to succeed not only classical tradi
tion (Shakespeare), but the newly defined (and therefore
70
defunct) tradition of absurdism as well." Hinden believes
71
"Berlin misses the point" when he labels Rosencrantz
72
"criticism, not literature" and describes the play
"feeding on" its source plays. "Stoppard," he argues,
"does not 'feed on' Shakespeare, Beckett, and Pirandello;
7 7
he dines with them." Hinden gives substance to this
substitution of words by citing Barth's remark that "if
Beethoven's Sixth were composed today, it would be an
embarrassment; but clearly it wouldn't be, necessarily, if
done with ironic intent by a composer quite aware of where
we've been and where we are.
74
By analogy," Hinden
-67-
continues, "Stoppard does not reinvent the world's most
7 R
famous play so much as he encounters and subverts it."
With all due deference to the intentional fallacy, I think
we can safely conclude that Stoppard did not intend to
quietly pass off Hamlet as his own invention; he clearly
uses the source play with an awareness "of where we've been
and where we are." In Barth's view, such an informed use
of the art of the past works to replenish art by confronting
"an intellectual dead end" and turning it "against itself to
7 6
accomplish new human work."
Thus, Hinden sees Stoppard's position in relation to
the history of the theater as analogous to Barth's position
in relation to the history of fiction. Just as Barth "ties
himself self-consciously to Joyce and Beckett in repetition
of the way Joyce tied himself consciouslybut not self-
7 7
consciously--to Homer," so Stoppard ties himself self
consciously to Shakespeare and Beckett in repetition, we
ought to realize, of the way Shakespeare and Beckett tied
themselves to the many sources they used in constructing
Hamlet and Godot. Hinden goes on to describe how Rosencrantz
"telescopes dramatic history, contrasting tragedy with
theater of the absurd," duly noting the differences between
the two theatrical modes which are highlighted by Stoppard's
conflation of his two primary source plays. But his major
contribution lies not so much in his discussion of the
specific insights which emerge from Stoppard's juxtaposition
-68-
as in the Barth frame he provides for reading Stoppard's
borrowing in general.
Post-modern aesthetic principles like Barth's provide
a much more adequate frame for reading Stoppard's borrowing
than either a Romantic aesthetic of originality in author
ship (on which the vehement condemnations of Stoppard's
"parasitism" are based) or a pre-Romantic aesthetic that
sidesteps the originality question (on which the relatively
non-judgemental source studies are based), for neither a
Romantic nor a pre-Romantic aesthetic can account for the
implications of Stoppard's overt derivativeness. Critics
locked into a Romantic conception of originality in author
ship fail to recognize that Stoppard's authorial strategy
directly challenges the aesthetic of originality, and as
a result, they produce little more than wholesale condemna
tions of Rosencrantz. While commentators working from pre-
Romantic assumptions generally produce more insightful
studies, they too fall short of the mark. Stoppard's
borrowing cannot simply be treated in the same way as
Chaucer's or Shakespeare's, for in the contemporary era,
when the popular view of authorship is still very much in
tune with early nineteenth century Romantic ideals, borrow
ing, especially borrowing as blatant as Stoppard's, means
something very different than it did in the days of yore
before critics embraced the creative genius of the Author
as a central aesthetic tenet. In short, critics, as much
-69-
as authors, must work from an awareness "of where we've
been and where we are." And where we are is limbocaught
between a play that demands an awareness of contemporary
critical theory, and an applied criticism that is still
stuck where we have been, still stuck with outdated critical
assumptions that render it unable to account for a play like
Rosencrantz.
Rosencrantz offers us a fun-filled ride out of limbo
land, and it will escort us safely to the shores of a re
vised aesthetic theory if only we will hop aboard and leave
our heavy, outdated critical baggage behind. Stoppard does
not just abruptly confront us with his blatant, jarring,
"dislocating" derivativeness and leave us empty-handed,
unable to reconcile our old ideas about art with this play
that so outrageously flies in the face of those ideas.
Instead, he fills his play with dialogue and situations
which guide us toward a series of insights about the nature
of the theater. As we watch Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
struggle with their lessons about the theater, we join
them in pondering the nature of representation, fate, and
dramatic structure. Berlin was at least partially correct
in calling Rosencrantz Theater of Criticism, for the play
does in fact function as criticism, prodding us, as so much
contemporary critical theory does, to revise our notions of
"originality" and "realism." But it also works as theater.
And this may be Stoppard's greatest achievement while he
-70-
teaches us that theater is a self-contained set of conven
tions with nothing behind or beneath it, no god-like Author
working in collaboration with Providence, no special rela
tionship with life, he also shows us that we can, as
Guildenstern advises, still "Enjoy it. Relax" (p. 40).
Theater has never needed God to provide fate, life to pro
vide "realism"; it has always been a set of conventions,
complete unto itself, always a matter of "playing at [. .]
words, words" (p. 41).
We feel no sense of loss at being asked to abandon our
old notions about art because while Stoppard is undermining
"realism" and "originality," he is simultaneously reassuring
us that theater still works perfectly well without these
aesthetic assumptions, reassuring us that we can give up
these old notions without sacrificing one iota of the joy
we have always found in the theater. Stoppard gives us a
play that not only defies "realism" and "originality," but
is also about deaththe deaths of Rosencrantz and Guilden
stern, the death of tragedy, the death of old assumptions
about representation. All these gloomy ingredients,
however, do not add up to a gloomy play, for Rosencrantz
is decidedly a joyand a large measure of the joyful
playfulness that pervades it is made possible by the
loosening of the constraints imposed by old aesthetic
rules. The deaths of tragedy, representation, "original
ity," and "realism" are, to borrow Barth's phrase, "by no
-71-
7 Q
means necessarily a cause for despair." In Rosencrantz,
Stoppard taps the potential of these deaths, demonstrating
that they make room for new lifeand that the room is
bigger, for the limits of theater have been extended.
In Act One, Guildenstern comments, "The only beginning
is birth and the only end is deathif you can't count on
that, what can you count on?" (p. 39). In Rosencrantz, you
cannot count on either, for neither the beginning nor the
end of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is a simple, single
point. In "The Death of the Author," Roland Barthes argues
that "a text is not a line of words releasing a single
'theological' meaning (the message of the Author-God) but
a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings,
8 0
none of them original, blend and clash." While Barthes
is describing a contemporary theoretical view of writing
in general, no play has ever more vividly manifested this
description than Rosencrantz. And the consequences of this
blatant blending and clashing could hardly be more far-
reaching for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and for us.
At the beginning of the play, they are most concerned
with their own beginnings, and they try repeatedly, though
unsuccessfully, to determine where they came from. Eventu
ally, as the play progresses and the "fortuitous" gives way
to the "ordained"the randomness and stagnation symbolized
by the coin toss give way to the outcome ordained by the
script of Hamletthe question of their origins becomes
-72-
moot, and they become ever more concerned with determining
their end. The blending and clashing of writings confounds
their search for their end even more profoundly than it
does their search for origins. And when death finally comes
to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, it raises more questions
than it answers, leaving us to carry on the search for an
explanation in their absence. Is this death as it was
written in Hamlet? If so, were the deaths of Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern ever part of tragedy's Grand Design, even
in Hamlet? Or were their deaths required in Shakespeare's
play merely to tie up a loose end? Or is this death accord
ing to Godot, pointedly absurd? Or is this death, as John
Perlette argues, according to Freud, "death" which demon
strates our psychological inability to believe that we
81
cease to exist, even as spectators? Or is this death by
magic trick"Now you see me, now you(and disappears)"
(p. 126).
It is death by all of these, death as "It is written"
(p. 80) in a variety of styles that blend and clash end
lessly, with no origin in a single Author-Father-God and,
as Barthes argues, therefore no end. "To give a text an
Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it
8 2
with a final signified, to close the writing." Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern's inability to find their origins and ends
points to the generalized lack of origins and ends in the
entire play. Stoppard and Barthes, however, both encourage
-73-
us to think, not in terms of a lack of origins and ends,
but in terms of a freedom from the limits formerly imposed
on the text by the Author-Father-God. By declining to pose
as the Author, Stoppard frees himself from the constraints
of feigning "originality." He is no longer compelled to
cover the tracks of his borrowing in an effort to pass
Rosencrantz off as an unmediated representation of reality.
Nor is he compelled to give us the Truth, the final answer,
the single 'theological' meaning in the form of an endorse
ment of one mode of theater at the expense of all the others.
If Rosencrantz offers us any truth, it is that theater never
depended on Truth. Rosencrantz does not rely on the truth
of the tragic vision"There's a divinity that shapes our
8 3
ends" any more than it relies on the Truth of the
absurdist visionthere is no divinity shaping any aspect
of lifeor on the Truth of the Freudian or even of the
magic trick vision.
The text does not offer us Truth, which inherently
requires closure. It offers playan endless play of styles
of writing. The text becomes, as Guildenstern explains,
"a prize, an extra slice of childhood when you least expect
it, as a prize for being good, or a compensation for never
having had one ..." (p. 40). The play is clearly a prize
for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, for they get to play
title roles this time, not bit parts as they did in Hamlet.
And when they are not futilely searching for their
-74-
untraceable origins or their inscrutable ends, they are
very often playingplaying games, role-playing. Egan
believes Rosencrantz's "truest debt to Waiting for Godot"84
lies not in a shared absurdist vision, but in a more full
realization of the potential of play suggested by Godot.
"One of the few consolations Didi and Gogo have in their
limbo state, besides the uncertain pleasure of one another's
company, is their sporadic ability to improvise games,
thereby endowing their existence with an artificial sense
8 5
of form and meaning," he observes. In Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead, the tenuous and wry note of hope
represented by this sense of play becomes a major chord and
8 6
a dramatized philosophy."
The major chord of hope stemming from Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern's ability to sustain play--Stoppard's ability
to sustain playin the absence of Truth, "realism," and
"originality" (ingredients formerly thought necessary to
make a play work) turns Rosencrantz into a prize for us as
well. After all the focus on what we have lost in the
twentieth centurywe have lost God, lost order, lost mean
ing, suffered a crisis of cultural authorityRosencrantz
moves beyond the gloom of expounding our losses and demon
strates what we have gained. Without the limits imposed
by Truth, theater is no longer restricted to endorsing a
single theatrical mode at the expense of all others. To
put it another way, theater is no longer restricted to
-75-
representing "life" and, in doing so, reinforcing a single
world view. We recall Craig Owens's distinction between
modernismthe era of master narrativesand post-modernism
the era when master narratives have lost their credibility,
when we have developed a healthy skepticism of attempts to
provide the single theoretical discourse. Stoppard fosters
this healthy postmodern scepticism by refusing to endorse a
single theatrical discourse. Rather than embarking on a
therapeutic program for recuperating "the tremendous loss
8 7
of mastery" characteristic of our era, Stoppard warmly
embraces the loss of mastery, treating it not so much as a
loss, but as an opening, an opportunity for extending the
limits of what theater can do.
To signal the extension of the limits of theater,
Rosencrantz opens with a coin toss which Stoppard describes
as "impossible" (p. 11), and the Players make their final
appearance, moments before the play's end, by emerging
"impossibly" (p. 122) from a barrel. The impossible opening
situation, in sharp contrast to the impossible barrel trick
near the play's end, provokes a lengthy consideration of
the nature of reality and order. Guildenstern's first
sustained response to the bizarre run of heads clearly
indicates that his faith in the order of reality has been
shaken: "A weaker man might be moved to re-examine his
faith, if in nothing else at least in the law of proba
bility" (p. 12). As still more coins consistently turn
-76-
up heads, Guildenstern grows ever more aware of the un
settling implications and seeks an explanation, sensing
that the lop-sided coin toss "must be indicative of some
thing" (p. 16). While the appearance of the ghost at the
beginning of Hamlet indicates only that there is something
rotten in the state of Denmark, the "impossible" coin toss
at the beginning of Rosencrantz reaches beyond mere plot
implications to indicate that the order of theater is
separate and distinct from the order of reality.
Guildenstern, however, does not immediately grasp these
broad implications. He first tries a variety of explana
tions to account for the impossible run of heads in terms
of reality as he has known it. He suggests that perhaps
he is willing it, that time has stopped dead, that the
divine has intervened, or that maybe the bizarre results
are "a spectacular vindication of the principle that each
individual coin spun individually (he spins one) is as
likely to come down heads as tails and therefore should
cause no surprise each individual time it does" (p. 16).
When the ninety-second coin he has just spun turns up heads
as well, he tries a trio of syllogisms which serve more to
undermine the whole concept of logic than to explain the
coin toss in terms of reality.
The failed syllogisms drive him to continue "with tight
hysteria, under control" (p. 17) with one last attempt to
contrive a realistic explanation of the impossible coin toss
-77-
before the approach of the Players prompts him to take a
different tack. "The equanimity of your average tosser of
coin depends upon a law, or rather a tendency, or let us
say a mathematically calculable chance," Guildenstern ex
plains, "which ensures that he will not upset himself by
losing too much nor upset his opponent by winning too often"
(p. 18). Desperately searching for a realistic explanation
of this event which has shaken his faith in the order of
reality, Guildenstern begins by referring to the "law"
which kept the world in balance. But he quickly reduces
that binding certainty to a "tendency," then a "probability"
before finally settling on "chance" as the principle of
order.
In accounting for his indebtedness to Beckett, Stoppard
told Ronald Hayman that "the Beckett novels show as much as
the plays" in Rosencrantz "because there's a Beckett joke
8 8
which is the funniest joke in the world to me." The joke,
he continued, "consists of a confidement statement followed
by immediate refutation by the same voice. It's a constant
process of elaborate structure and suddenand total
dismantlement.1,89 Guildenstern s lengthy speech is clearly
built on the Beckett jokea confident statement about the
order of reality, followed by refutations that dismantle
the whole structure he has just built.
Rosencrantz, who has not been at all disturbed by the
implications of winning ninety-two coins in a row, responds
-78-
to Guildenstern's elaborate discourse with a typically
inappropriate comment: "Another curious scientific phenom
enon is the fact that the fingernails grow after death, as
does the beard" (p. 18). Lightly dropped, apparently without
significance, this inappropriate remark unobtrusively intro
duces the topic which will gradually grow into an obsession
death. But Guildenstern is not yet interested in their
end. "Tensed up by [Rosencrantz1s] rambling" (p. 19), he
tries to redirect their discussion to an issue which seems
to him more appropriate at this early stagetheir begin
ning. "Do you remember the first thing that happened
today?" (p. 19), he asks. They connect again as Rosencrantz
recalls "that man, a foreigner" (p. 19)a messenger from
Hamlet"we were sent for" (p. 19). "That's why we're here"
(p. 19), he asserts triumphantly, as though certainty has
suddenly been restored. Of course, it has not, for they
do not even know where they are, except as Rosencrantz
lamely explains, "Travelling" (p. 19). Guildenstern's
suggestion that "We better get on" (p. 20) takes them all
the way to the footlights, where Rosencrantz asks, "Which
way do we(He turns round. ) Which way did we?" (p. 20).
They are temporarily saved from fruitless contempla
tion of where they came from by the sound of a band which
signals the approach of the six Tragedians. Rosencrantz
responds to the music, which is not yet audible to those
of us in the audience, by flatly stating, "It couldn't be
-79-
real" (p. 20). In a way, of course, he is right--the
Tragedians are always "on," "always in character" (p. 34),
always in a play, and thus never in reality. Before they
arrive, though, Guildenstern proposes another explanation
of their situation to Rosencrantz which shares a rhetorical
similarity with his second syllogism but marks a departure
from his previous attempts to reconcile the impossible coin
toss with "reality." When Guildenstern was still trying to
account realistically for the coin toss, he instructed
Rosencrantz to "Discuss" (p. 17) a syllogism centered on
the operation of probability in "un-, sub- or supernatural
forces" (p. 17). Now, as illusion is about to intrude in
the form of a troupe of actors, he instructs Rosencrantz
to "demolish" (p. 20) the following proposition: "'The
colours red, blue and green are real. The colour yellow
is a mystical experience shared by everybody'" (p. 20).
Rosencrantz does not demolish this proposition any
more than he discussed the syllogism, so Guildenstern
further explores the nature of reality and illusion with
an expanded story about "a man breaking his journey between
one place and another at a third place of no name, charac
ter, population, or significance" (p. 21)an apt synopsis
of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's situationwho "sees a
unicorn cross his path and disappear" (p. 21) A second,
third, and fourth man report the same sight, "and the more
witnesses there are the thinner it gets and the more
-80-
reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality"
(p. 21). The mystical encounter with the unicorn is by
degrees robbed of its magic until it is explained away as
"a horse with an arrow in its forehead" (p. 21).
Unable to reconcile the impossible coin toss with
"reality," Guildenstern embraces illusion as an equally
plausible way of interpreting events. Why not unicorns?
Stoppard asks us through Guildenstern. Why stubbornly ad
here to the limits imposed by "realism" when the difference
between reality and illusion is on the whole rather arbi
trarywhy should yellow be mystical and red real?and a
matter of collective consent, not some distinction based
concretely on authentic divisions in the world? The uni
corn tale's disappointed "thin as reality" assessment
indicates that the usual privileging of reality over
illusion has been turned on its head, for the case of the
unicorn at least, believing in illusion offers a more
interesting way of perceiving the world. The point of
Guildenstern1s unicorn tale is lost on Rosencrantz, but
it is not lost on those of us in the audience. Theater
itself is a kind of unicorn, Stoppard is showing us, but
it is better than a unicorn because it does not lose its
magic when seen by multiple witnesses. Theater, like
unicorns, depends on "a choice of persuasions" (p. 21)
we can choose to believe in its magic, or we can explain
it away in realistic terms as "a horse with an arrow in
its forehead" (p. 21).
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Guildenstern's last wistful comment on the topic
"I'm sorry it wasn't a unicorn. It would have been nice
to have unicorns" (p. 21)provides the vocal accompaniment
for the musical arrival of the six Tragedians. In a way,
Guildenstern misreads the Players, for they are unicorns,
at least in some limited sense, for, as Egan argues, "despite
their sorry condition, the Player and his troupe are that
very hint of magic for which Guildenstern has been look-
90
ing." But while the Players may share the unicorn's
magic, they prove a bitter disappointment to Guildenstern
on other levels. "He has hoped for an omen, such as the
9
hero of a romance might receive at the outset of his quest,"
Egan observes. Instead of an immortal unicorn replete with
associations of virginity, Guildenstern finds "a comic
pornographer and a rabble of prostitutes" (p. 27) whose
forte is the performance of death. "I can do you blood and
love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and
rhetoric without the love [. .] but I can't do you love
and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory--
they're all blood" (p. 33), the Player explains.
Reality may be unfathomable for Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, but illusion is no calm, safe harbor either,
for the illusion Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are just
about to get caught up in ends in death every time. And
when the Hamlet script intrudes moments after the Player's
Blood is compulsory" speech, it serves to underscore the
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Player's explanation of fate: "We have no control" (p. 25).
Like the Players, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are charac
ters in a script over which they have no control, but
Stoppard emphasizes their lack of control even in Hamlet by
incorporating Act Two, scene two into Rosencrantz. After
Claudius instructs Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to draw
Hamlet "on to pleasures" (p. 36) and thereby glean what
afflicts him, "They both bow" (p. 36) and respond with
metrically identical speeches emphasizing their powerless
ness to refuse the will of the King and Queen:
Rosencrantz: Both your majesties
Might, by the sovereign power you
have of us,
Put your dread pleasures more into
command
Than to entreaty.
Guildenstern: But we both obey,
And here give up ourselves in the
full bent
To lay our service freely at your feet,
To be commanded. (p. 36)
Their twin speeches, however, belie the real differ
ences in their responses to the intrusion of the Hamlet
script, for while Guildenstern seems sincere in giving him
self freely "To be commanded" (p. 36), Rosencrantz imme
diately proclaims that he wants no part in this new script:
"I want to go home" (p. 37). Guildenstern, who was very
concerned about the randomness of the coin toss, finds the
certainty of the Renaissance play comforting, but Rosen
crantz, who was never disturbed by the randomness of their
-83-
initial situation, somehow senses, amidst great confusion,
the ultimate implications of accepting the roles offered by
the King and Queen: "I tell you it's all stopping to a
death, it's boding to a depth, stepping to a head, it's all
heading to a dead stop" (p. 38).
Thus, Guildenstern now plays the soothing "nursemaid"
(p. 38) as Rosencrantz panics about the growing number of
questions and the diminishing number of satisfactory answers,
reversing the roles they played when the script was random
and Guildenstern was the one in a panic. When Rosencrantz
complains, "I remember when there were no questions"
(p. 38), Guildenstern disagrees: "There were always ques
tions. To exchange one set for another is no great matter"
(p. 38). For Guildenstern, though not for Rosencrantz,
the opening random script raised a multitude of questions
about the nature of reality. In exchanging one theatrical
mode for another, they merely swap sets of questions--"no
great matter," according to Guildenstern.
Rosencrantz, though, does not like all this inter
changeabilitythe interchangeability of their names, their
roles, the scripts. He wants to know, once and for all,
who he is, Rosencrantz or Guildenstern. "I don't care one
way or another," he tells Guildenstern, "so why don't you
make up your mind" (p. 38). "We can't afford anything quite
so arbitrary," Guildenstern replies, not wanting to risk
falling back into the pointed arbitrariness from which they
-84-
have just been saved by the ordered Renaissance script.
"Nor did we come all this way for a christening. All that--
preceded us" (p. 39). Guildenstern's remarks indicate that
he is beginning to grasp the potential significance of the
script for them. Certainly, the "christening" preceded
them, for Shakespeare named them long before. As Guildenstern
tries to explain to Rosencrantz, they would be in a much more
uncertain predicament were it not for the author who named
them: "We are comparatively fortunate," he argues. "We
might have been left to sift the whole field of human nomen
clature, like two blind men looting a bazaar for their own
portraits ..." (p. 39). While they may still be uncertain
of which one is Rosencrantz and which Guildenstern, the
roles offered by the new script narrow their options from
"the whole field of human nomenclature" to just two names:
"At least we are given alternatives" (p. 39), Guildenstern
explains. "But," and here is the rub, "not choice" (p. 39),
he quickly adds.
As the attributes of fate begin to accrue to the
script, Rosencrantz by steps reveals that God does not
control fate as much as the author controls the script,
for in this play, destiny is defined and choice is limited,
not by the fate ordained by God, but by the script written
by the author. The blending and clashing of theatrical
modes undermines the Truth value of both the random,
Beckettian initial mode and the ordered Renaissance mode
-85-
which intrudes. For Guildenstern, it is "a choice of per
suasions" (p. 21), one set of questions or another. But
as Rosencrantz indicates with his "anguished cry," "Con
sistency is all I ask!" (p. 39), the blending and clashing
of modes is as unsettling for him as the impossible coin
toss was for Guildenstern. Unmoved, Guildenstern answers
Rosencrantz's anguished cry with the first of many scrambled
versions of the Lord's Prayer: "Give us this day our daily
mask" (p. 39). What was in times past (when God controlled
the fate of characters) a prayer to God for bread to sustain
life now becomes a prayer to the author of the script for
a role--a maskto sustain play.
Rosencrantz, however, still wants "to go home" (p. 39).
What he does not realize is that, as Wilcher observes,
"Characters, in the Pirandello sense, have no being and no
'home' but the text and the stage; when they are not on
stage, speaking the lines written for them, then they cease
to exist."92 Although Stoppard will illustrate this abstract
point more fully after Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have
had another encounter with Hamlet, he suggests it fleet-
ingly here with Rosencrantz1s repetition of the question,
"Which way did we come in?" (p. 39). The pair will never
answer that question and will never be able to find the
"home" Rosencrantz seeks. To get there, they will have to
redefine "home" as the text and the stage.
-86-
Guildenstern', who feels more at home with the new
text, tries to encourage just such a redefinition as he
delivers perhaps the most beautiful speech in the entire
play, a speech directed as much to us in the audience as
to Rosencrantz, for most of us likely share Rosencrantz's
apprehension about the blatant blending and clashing of
theatrical modes. "We'll be all right" (p. 40), Guilden-
stern assures Rosencrantz and us. Rosencrantz, still
skeptical of the script, vaguely sensing what we already
know to be true about the ultimate end of Hamlet, asks,
"For how long?" (p. 40). "Till events have played them
selves out" (p. 40), Guildenstern convincingly answers.
"There's a logic at workit's all done for you, don't worry.
Enjoy it. Relax" (p. 40). In any play, characters are only
all right until events have played themselves out, only
all right as long as the script lasts.
Besides, Guildenstern continues, the script is in it
self a kind of prize, a chance to play: "To be taken in
hand and led, like being a child again, even without the
innocence, a childit's like being given a prize, an extra
slice of childhood when you least expect it, as a prize for
being good, or compensation for never having had one . ."
(p. 40). We in the audience should relax and be taken in
hand, for though we have lost our innocence--we know what
happens to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at the end of
Hamlet and we are being shown the error of our naive
-88-
questions to glean what afflicts the Prince without giving
away any information about themselves in the process.
Helene Keyssar-Franke, observing that in this game,
9 6
"one loses when one answers a question," argues that "the
sense conveyed is that an answer is a box, an enclosure
which stops action and creates the death of the speaker;
questions are vital, freeing; answers are dead and en-
97
slaving." What is true for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,
98
she suggests, "is also true for the audience." Although
Keyssar-Franke is intent primarily upon illustrating the
appearance of free will in the actions of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, her comments about the vitality of endless
questions and the enslaving nature of final answers ring
true as a statement about the general strategy of the play.
While audiences may initially share Rosencrantz and Guilden
stern s sense of dislocation about the lack of final
answers, the lack of a fixed theatrical mode corresponding
to a fixed world view, both the content and the open-ended
structure of the play push toward a revision of the pre
ference for a clear-cut origin and a final message in art.
Rosencrantz encourages us to replace the old aesthetic
model of a god-like Author providing both the single origin
and the final answer with a model which recognizes neither
origins nor ends, but which celebrates instead endless
playplay of questions, play of styles, play of "words,
words.
-87-
assumptions about "originality," "realism," and Truth in
the theaterthis loss of innocence need not stop play.
And for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the play is decidedly
a prize, an answer to Guildenstern's prayer for a mask, for
Rosencrantz gives them new roles to play, starring roles
this time. Even though the outcome will be the same
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will still be deadthe chance
to play their roles again is a prize all the same, compen
sation either for being good or for never having had a
childhood (they were "born" as adults in both Hamlet and
Godot, after all). By reusing an old (con)text, Stoppard
has, in effect, given them new "life" as characters.
Guildenstern follows this speech by declaring, "It's
a game" (p. 40), and indeed, after some pointed allusions
to Hamlet and GodotGuildenstern tells Rosencrantz he is
93
playing at "words, words" (p. 41), echoing both Hamlet
94
and Vladimir, and Rosencrantz describes the business of
being a spectator as "appalling" (p. 41), recalling Vladi
mir's "... appalled. (With emphasis. ) AP-PALLED" ^
they engage in the most sustained period of playing in
Rosencrantz. First, they pursue Rosencrantz1s suggestion
to "play at questions" (p. 42), a most appropriate activity
since they have had no luck with answers. The question
game, which is won by always answering each question with
another question, is intended to serve as practice for their
match with Hamlet, the idea being that they will ask
-89-
Interestingly, the actual questions of the question
game also point to the death of the old aesthetic, for God,
upon whose existence the old aesthetic ultimately depends,
is first mentioned by name in the question game. When
Guildenstern poses the question "What in God's name is going
on?" (p. 42), Rosencrantz declares "Foul! No rhetoric"
(p. 42). Similarly, when Guildenstern responds to Rosen
crantz 1 s "Is there a choice?" (p. 43) with "Is there a God?"
(p. 43), Rosencrantz again declares a foul on the grounds
that the game allows "No non sequiturs" (p. 43). God has
been rendered irrelevant to choice, mere rhetoric, under
scoring the idea that the fate of characters lies not in
God's hands, where traditional assumptions placed it, but
in the hands of the author. The game winds down with
Rosencrantz's asking a question which will become the
central question as the play continues, "Where's it going
to end?" (p. 44), to which Guildenstern replies with the
statement, "That's the question" (p. 44). Rosencrantz
aptly sums up the general situation with his lament, "It's
all questions" (p. 44).
As they reach a new dead-end, Hamlet wanders on stage
briefly, providing a new impetus for dialogue. His appear
ance first prompts them to return to their earlier preoccu
pation with determining their names, a pursuit that offers
some initial success--just by randomly guessing, they are
right half the timebut no sustained certainty. When
-90-
Rosencrantz answers to the name of Guildenstern, Guilden-
stern is "disgusted" (p. 45) and exclaims, "Consistency is
all I ask!" (p. 45), taking over Rosencrantz's earlier line.
Then, just as they are about to engage in another extended
game, Rosencrantz quietly states, "Immortality is all I
seek . ." (p. 45). Guildenstern1s rhymed response is
another version of the Lord's Prayer, "Give us this day our
daily week . ." (p. 45), which is, in effect, a reitera
tion of Rosencrantz's call for immortality, a prayer for a
week for each day they are allotted. These requests for
immortality are strategically placed in the midst of their
most obvious, extended playing, illustrating the inverse
of Wilcher's observation that "when they are not on stage,
speaking the lines written for them, . they cease to
9 9
exist." As long as they are on stage, speaking their
lines, they continue to existplay gives them, if not im
mortality, at least remarkable longevity.
And play they do. For the first of many times in
Rosencrantz, they engage in role-playing, an activity with
overt metadramatic implications. Guildenstern suggests that
he play Hamlet and that Rosencrantz question him, again with
the intent of practicing for the upcoming match with Hamlet.
The immediate effect is greater confusion, since there are
now three roles instead of just two, and Rosencrantz cannot
figure out who he is supposed to play, Rosencrantz, Guilden
stern, or Hamlet. Once the verbal slapstick stemming from
-91-
this identity confusion subsides, the role-playing yields
an admirable explanation of what afflicts Hamlet: "Your
father, whom you love, dies, you are his heir, you come back
to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his young
brother popped onto his throne and into his sheets, thereby
offending both legal and natural practice" (p. 51), Rosen-
crantz summarizes. "Now why exactly are you behaving in
this extraordinary manner?" (p. 51), he asks. The humor
of this scene arises at least in part from Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern's ability to somehow arrive, amidst great
fumbling and bumbling, at what seems a better explanation
of Hamlet's behavior than did T.S. Eliot in his well-known
and very serious "Hamlet and His Problems." Rosencrantz1s
explanation undermines Eliot's declaration that Hamlet "is
most certainly an artistic failure"because "Hamlet (the
man) is dominated by an emotion which is ... in excess of
the facts as they appear."If Rosencrantz, whose
strengths do not include a keen intellect, can account for
Hamlet's behavior in terms of the facts as they appear, the
facts cannot be nearly as obscure as Eliot claims.
This amusing scene of rare, triumphant insight degener
ates rapidly into confusion as Rosencrantz once again hears
the sounds of a band. But this time, his announcement
heralds the second appearance of Hamlet, not the Players,
and their long-awaited match with Hamlet finally comes in
the form of the latter part of Act Two, scene two of
-92-
Shakespeare's play. Stoppard chooses this moment for his
act break. By placing a blackout in the middle of the
scene, he is able to omit the incriminating dialogue between
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Hamlet in which the pair
admit to having been sent for by the King and Queen. The
effect of this altered presentation, of course, is to foster
audience sympathy for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by
furthering the impression that they are helpless victims
with no control over their destinies, or even much under
standing of their situation, rather than willing conspira
tors in the plot of Claudius and Gertrude. When we do hear
of the exchange, it is through Rosencrantz's dismal assess
ment of the game they have practiced for so extensively.
He declares the match "twenty-seventhree" (p. 57) in
Hamlet's favor. The script has become a game for Rosencrantz
as well as for Guildenstern, but Rosencrantz sees it as a
losing game. "He murdered us" (p. 57), he complains after
the match with Hamlet, not yet fully aware of how prophetic
his words are.
The intrusion of the Hamlet script also prompts the
pair to return to a question twice raised by Rosencrantz,
"Which way did we come in?" (p. 58). In contrast to the
last two times Rosencrantz posed this question, this time
Guildenstern pursues it, hoping that by determining direc
tion, they will gain some insight into Hamlet's madness
since the Prince claims he can "tell a hawk from a handsaw"
-93-
(p. 57), but only "when the wind is southerly" (p. 57).
As Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try to determine which
direction is south, they find themselves unable to do so in
the absence of any fixed point of reference. All the old
ways of determining direction, the position of the sun in
relation to the time of day, for example, fail for Rosen
crantz and Guildenstern. They cannot work from the known to
determine the unknown since the information that would pro
vide their starting point is itself shrouded in mystery.
Unable to determine whether or not it is morning or which
way they came in, they turn in confusion to establishing
the direction of the wind. Invoking the old theater joke
that stages are notoriously drafty places, Rosencrantz ob
serves, "There isn't any wind. Draught, yes" (p. 59).
Guildenstern suggests a method for proceeding: "In that
case, the origin. Trace it to its source and it might give
us a rough idea of the way we came inwhich might give us
a rough idea of south, for further reference" (p. 59,
italics mine).
This idea immediately fails since the draft comes
"through the floor" (p. 59) and "that's not a direction"
(p. 59), but their inability fo find the source or origin
is more significant as a symptom of the generalized lack
of sources and origins in the play as a whole. God has
traditionally served as the ultimate source or origin, as
well as the end, of everything in the universe--the "Alpha
-94-
i n o
and the Omega, the beginning and the ending." But He
has been declared irrelevant, mere rhetoric. The other
traditional source or origin in literaturethe Author, who
has conventionally been seen as the creating God of his
fictive universeis not operating either, at least not in
the traditional, conventional sense, for Stoppard does not
pretend to be the ex nihilo creator of the fictive world of
Rosencrantz. The source of this script is not One, but
many, not one god-like Author, but many already existing
writings that are fused together in a new writing. In place
of a simple starting point from which they could determine
the one known to discover many unknowns, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern encounter layers of unknowns that slip and
slide infinitely without ever yielding a fixed source.
Again finding reality unfathomable, Guildenstern "sits"
(p. 60) and returns to pondering the benefits of embracing
illusion instead. Echoing his earlier tale of the unicorn,
he tells a story about "a Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty
and, by which definition, a philosopher[who] dreamed he
was a butterfly" (p. 60). "From that moment," Guildenstern
continues, "he was never quite sure that he was not a
butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher" (p. 60).
Unlike the unicorn tale, this story ends in an explicitly
stated moral: "Envy him; in his two-fold security" (p. 60).
The Chinaman never loses his illusion, perhaps because,
unlike the man who saw the unicorn, he does not share his
-95-
private illusion with anyone. But the illusion of the
theater can never be private: it must necessarily be shared
between players and audience.
This is exactly the point that the Player histrionically
makes when he enters the stage again momentarily. Pro
testing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's departure in the
midst of his troupe's performance of number "thirty-eight"
(p. 63), the Player "bursts out," "You don't understand the
humiliation of itto be tricked out of the single assump
tion which makes our existence viablethat somebody is
watching . ." (p. 63). He carries on, very dramatically,
"We pledged our identities, secure in the conventions of
our trade, that someone would be watching" (p. 64). Rosen
crantz and Guildenstern have violated the covenant between
actors and audience on which theater is based: actors play
and the audience gives meaning to the play by watching and
playing along. As the Player's protests make clear, the
illusion of the theater depends only on the audience and
actors playing their roles according to accepted conven
tions; it has nothing to do with an accurate representation
of life. "There we were," the Player explains, "demented
children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore,
speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and
rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords"
(p. 63, italics mine).
-96-
No, art does not mirror life, the Player teaches in
this, his first lesson to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and
to the audience. It is a self-contained set of conventions
which requires that the audience share in the illusion. The
Player has usurped Guildenstern's role as the spokesperson
for the possibilities of illusion. In his Chinaman story,
which, not coincidentally, is his last story espousing the
virtues of embracing illusion, Guildenstern revealed a
serious flaw in his understanding of the way illusion works,
for theater must be a shared illusion. From now on, Rosen
crantz and Guildenstern will be unwilling and contentious
students of the Player. They will resist his explanations
of the conventions of theater and cling stubbornly to an
old aesthetic model based on "realism" and Truth. The more
they insist upon these outdated assumptions, the less sense
they will be able to make of the script as it unfolds, and
the weaker their position will become vis-a-vis the Player.
They resist even this first lesson, which Guildenstern
responds to by clapping "solo with slow measured irony"
(p. 44) and critiquing the Player's overly dramatic monologue
"Brilliantly recreated--if these eyes could weep! . .
Rather strong on metaphor, mind you. No criticismonly a
matter of taste" (p. 64). Similarly, Guildenstern reveals
his resistance by responding to the Player's announcement
that their performance that evening will be "about a King
." (p. 65) by dismissing it as "Escapism!"
and Queen .
-97-
(p. 65), even though the script Guildenstern is himself
caught up in is also about a King and Queen. As Guildenstern
vies with the Player for the upper-hand, the Player gets
tough and delivers a series of lines pointing to his super
iority. In contrast to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the
Player "can come and go as [he] please[s]" (p. 66). When
Guildenstern admits, "We're still finding our feet" (p. 66),
the Player scores another point by advising, "I should con
centrate on not losing your heads" (p. 66). Then, the
Player pushes the moment to its crisis by declaring, "And
I know which way the wind is blowing" (p. 66).
This unnerving comment rattles Guildenstern, who first
tries to retaliate by insulting the Player as a man of the
theater: "Operating on two levels, are we?! How clever!
I expect it comes naturally to you, being in the business
so to speak" (p. 66). The Player knows that he has the
upper-hand now and that he does not have to take these in
sults. As he "makes to go off again" (p. 66), and in doing
so demonstrates his own freedom of movement, Guildenstern
breaks down and concedes victory to the Player, at least for
the moment. He admits to their pitiful plight: "The truth
is, we value your company, for want of any other. We have
been left so much to our own devicesafter a while one
welcomes the uncertainty of being left to other people's"
(p. 66). Unmoved, the Player pronounces a truth which has
been apparent since the play's opening: "Uncertainty is the
-98-
normal state. You're nobody special" (p. 66). As the
Player "makes to leave again" (p. 66), Guildenstern drops
all pretenses of superiority and adopts the role of a student
questioning the master: "But for God's sake what are we
supposed to do?!" (p. 66). The Player returns advice that
Guildenstern, in a calmer moment of accepting the script as
written, had given Rosencrantz: "Relax. Respond. That's
what people do. You can't go through life questioning your
situation at every turn" (p. 66). Guildenstern again re
veals that he has regressed to old aesthetic assumptions
when he complains, "We don't know how to act" (p. 66), be
cause they have been told so little, "and for all we know
it isn't even true" (p. 66). Guildenstern, who had once
taught Rosencrantz that Truth was merely "a choice of
persuasions" (p. 21), now gets his own lesson returned.
The Player tells him,
For all anyone knows nothing is. Everything has
to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is
taken to be true. It's the currency of living.
There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't
make any difference so long as it is honoured.
One acts on assumptions. (p. 67)
Truth is like the theater, the Player might add. There
may be nothing behind itno god-like Author carrying out a
Providential plan, no special relationship with reality
but as long as the conventions are honored, as long as both
actors and audience play their roles, the illusion works.
For that matter, Guildenstern might realize, Truth is like
-99-
"reality"; as long as everyone honors the color red as real,
it functions like a real color. There may not be, indeed
may never have been, anything behind Truth, reality, or
illusion, but this is, as Barth says, "by no means neces-
103
sarily a cause for despair." Although the Player knows
that there may be nothing behind all his playing, he and
his troupe keep right on playing roles: "We learn something
every day, to our cost" (p. 115), he tells Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern later. "But we troupers just go on and on.
Do you know what happens to old actors?" (p. 115), he asks.
"Nothing. They're still acting" (p. 115), is his punch
line. Guildenstern, who had earlier prayed for a mask to
sustain play, ought to know that play is like questions
104 .
"vital, freeing," as Keyssar-Franke explains. Ultimate
answers, which depend on Truth, are a box which stops play
and "creates the death of the speaker.
In insisting upon Truth as a precondition for play,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become counter-examples for
the audience, examples which illustrate the unfortunate
consequences of clinging to an outdated aesthetic model in
the face of a script that denies such a model. Before their
second meeting with the Tragedians, they had engaged in
extended playplay with coins, play with the Players, play
with questions, play with roles. After resisting the
Player's lesson and insisting upon Truth, though, they very
pointedly lose their ability to play. In rapid succession,
-100-
their games fail. First, Rosencrantz shouts "Next!" (p. 69)
into the wings, but no one comes. Then he refers to the
coin they were tossing"You remember that coin?" (p. 69),
he asksbut notes, "I think I lost it" (p. 70).
With no one and nothing to play with, Rosencrantz
imagines himself in the box Keyssar-Franke refers to. "Do
you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box
with a lid on it?" (p. 70), he asks. Throughout the play,
Rosencrantz typically merely responds"I can't think of
anything original. I'm only good in support" (p. 104), he
explains when Guildenstern complains, "You just repeat
[everything] in a different order" (p. 104)and his
responses are usually limited to one or two lines. For
once, though, he takes the initiative and delivers a twenty-
one line monologue on being dead--or alivein a box. He
begins, "It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean one
thinks of it as being alive in a box, one keeps forgetting
to take into account the fact that one is dead" (p. 70). He
"blunders on in a series of mutually self-cancelling state-
ments" which, as Perlette argues, indicate that death is
for Rosencrantz (and for all of us, according to Freud) "an
entirely unattainable thought, a literally unthinkable
107
thought, imaginatively considered."
Rosencrantz's box speech marks the beginning of the
growing obsession with death. Before, death was mentioned
only fleetingly, but after this sustained speech, it will
-101-
become the central issue of the playit will be discussed
and performed in a variety of theatrical modes until-
Stoppard has turned the one certainty of life into a series
of open-ended questions which subsume the other open-ended
questions raised by the play.
Rosencrantz comes out of his box reverie only to enter
another box, actually a continuation of the box he was al
ready inthe box which stops play. After failing to summon
anyone to play with and losing their coin, Rosencrantz
attempts to tell several stories that sound at first like
Guildenstern's unicorn and Chinaman parables in praise of
illusion. Sadly, all these stories fail. The first one,
about an early Christian meeting Saul of Tarsus in Heaven,
ends with a lame punch line whose pointlessness prompts
Rosencrantz to exclaim, "They don't care. We count for
nothing. We could remain silent until we're green in the
face, they wouldn't come" (p. 71). Guildenstern picks up
only the mention of green and responds, "Blue, red" (p. 71),
recalling his first venture into the nature of reality and
illusion, but mentioning, significantly, only the real
colors and not the mystical color yellow. Rosencrantz
stumbles through another abortive tale about the meeting
of a Christian, a Moslem, and a Jew, and a final one-line
failed story about the meeting of a Hindu, a Buddhist, and
a liontamer.
102-
These failed stories mark the end of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern's turning to illusion as a more attractive
alternative to "reality." They will hereafter see no uni
corns, but only horses with arrows in their foreheads.
Instead of enjoying the opportunities for play offered by
the script, they will fear the end of the script, fear death.
Interspersed in the failed stories are Rosencrantz1s twin
recognitions, "We have no control" (p. 71), an exact repeti
tion of the Player's earlier comment about the nature of
fate for characters caught up in a script, and "there's only
one direction" (p. 72), not South, but death. Rosencrantz
brings the sequence to a close by declaring, "I forbid any
one to enter!" (p. 72). Previously, they had hoped that
someone would come on to save them from stagnation, but now,
sensing that the script is headed in the one direction they
do not want to go, they wish to be left alone.
To underscore their lack of control, Rosencrantz's
request to be left alone is met by the immediate entrance
of "a grand procession" (p. 72), including Claudius, Gertrude,
Polonius, and Ophelia. The insult is extended as, amidst
Rosencrantz's complaint, "It's like living in a public
park!" (p. 75), Hamlet intrudes as well, followed by Alfred,
dressed like the Queen, and the Player. As a preliminary
indication of his inability to "read" the conventions of
the theater, Rosencrantz mistakes Alfred (in costume) for
Queen Gertrude and attempts to play the child's "Guess
-103-
who?!" (p. 75) game. The Player spoils his game by answer
ing "Alfred!" (p. 75), illustrating that the Player is,
after all, in charge of playing, for he understands the
conventions of the theater as Rosencrantz obviously does
not. Rosencrantz leaves this embarrassing situation to face
immediately yet another insult which again demonstrates how
far his fortunes have fallen in comparison to the Player's.
Hoping to repeat his earlier coup, when, much to the chagrin
of the Player, he retrieved a coin from under the Player's
foot, Rosencrantz "bends to put his hand on the floor"
(pp. 75-76). But "the Player lowers his foot" (p. 76),
after which Rosencrantz "screams" (p. 76). The Player is
firmly in charge now after having, quite literally, put his
foot down.
His position consolidated, the Player plays both
director and schoolmaster in the ensuing sequence, two very
fitting roles of power. The play he directs is Hamlet--"a
slaughterhouseeight corpses all told" (p. 83), the Player
explains. Though the Tragedians' performance begins exactly
like the play-within-the-play in Hamlet, the dumb show is
allowed to continue much further in Rosencrantz, all the
way to the "deaths" of "Rosencrantz" and "Guildenstern."
As Hinden argues, the two plays-within-the-play differ not
only in length, but in function as well. Whereas The
Murder of Gonzago "simplifies the world around it and so
accurately holds up a mirror to that world that it can
-104-
catch the conscience of a king in its reflection,"108
Hamlet, both the play-within and the play-without Rosencrantz,
"breaks its bonds and finally overwhelms the parent play, but
the image it catches in reflection is a baffling one to
10 9
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern." The play-within-Rosen-
crantz undermines rather than reinforces mimesis, for it
mirrors not "life," but one of the competing modes of
theater. While we understand The Murder of Gonzago to be a
reflection of Hamlet, which is in turn a reflection of
Renaissance reality, we understand Hamlet in Rosencrantz as
a script, an artificial construct, which is governed by a
set of conventions based on a world view we no longer accept
as valid.
The Truth value of the Hamlet script is further under
mined by the Player's lessons about the conventions of the
theater, which he teaches while the performance of Hamlet
is in progress. This is to be his most extended teaching
session, but it falls on the deaf ears of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, who cling ever more stubbornly to an old
aesthetic based on Truth and "realism." It is decidedly
more effective, however, as a lesson to the audience, for
\
we recognize that the pair's falling fortunes are directly
related to their unwillingness to adopt the revised aesthetic
advocated by the Player.
The Player explains first that the dumbshow is "a
device, really" (p. 77) and then when Guildenstern misreads
-105-
an act break that leaves "practically everyone on his feet"
(p. 79) at the end, the Player laughs and further explains,
"There's a design at work in all artsurely you know that?
Events must play themselves out to aesthetic, moral and
logical conclusion" (p. 79). Art is governed by its own
rules, invariable rules, as the Player teaches when Guilden-
stern responds to his general pronouncement by asking a
limited, plot-oriented question: "And what's that, in this
case?" (p. 79). "It never varies," the Player replies. "We
aim at the point where everyone who is marked for death
dies" (p. 79). Guildenstern1s question reveals how fully
he has failed to understand his lessons: "Who decides?"
(p. 80). He is still searching for an ultimate source of
fate, a God or Author to provide the single starting point,
the origin. In spite of their complete failure to deter
mine where they came from, in spite of the blending and
clashing of theatrical modes they have witnessed, and in
spite of the Player's lessons about the baselessness of
Truth, Guildenstern still insists on believing in origins
and the Truth of theatrical representation. The Player is
f
obviously shocked by his question, which could not be
posited on aesthetic assumptions more different from his
own. "Decides?" (p. 80), he asks incredulously. "It is
written" (p. 80).
The Player knows that the script is not a line of words
with a single origin and end, but is instead "a multi
dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of
-106-
them original, blend and clash."110 Guildenstern's ques
tions, "Who decides?" (p. 80), is typical of a critic
working within the confines of the old aesthetic, which
Barthes ironically describes as proceeding by "allotting
itself the important task of discovering the Author (or its
hypostases: society, history, psyche, liberty) beneath the
work: when the Author has been found, the text is 'ex-
plained'victory to the critic." The Player has already
taught Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that there may be nothing
beneath the script and that it does not make any difference
one way or the other. "Who decides?"who controls fate,
who served as the origin of the script--is an irrelevant
question at best, a positively debilitating one at worst.
Rosencrantz systematically undermines the old aesthetic
model by defying "originality" with its overt borrowing,
by defying "realism" with its blatant blending and clashing
of incompatible theatrical modes, and by denying the Truth
of representation by repeatedly exposing theater as a set
of conventions entirely separate from "reality."
In spite of all the overwhelming evidence pointing to
the errors in their aesthetic assumptions, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern cling stubbornly to these antiquated assump
tions, insisting on the old limits to theatrical represen
tation. When the performance continues, Rosencrantz
objects, "Oh, I say--herereally! You can't do that!"
(p. 80) sounding quite a bit like a stuffy critic objecting
-107-
to, say, Rosencrantz. "Why not?" (p. 80), the Player asks.
Indeed, why not? What is there to stop the theater from
doing whatever it wants? "What do you wantjokes?" (p. 80) ,
the Player asks. Rosencrantz states his aesthetic prefer
ence: "I want a good story, with a beginning, middle and
end" (p. 80). No wonder Rosencrantz is having such a rough
time of things, getting his hand stepped on and being embar
rassed at every turn. His aesthetic principles date back
to Aristotle's teleological formula, when art derived its
structure from a world view that had God (or the gods) as
its Alpha and Omega. Guildenstern's statement of aesthetic
preference is equally antiquated: "I'd prefer art to mirror
life" (p. 81). The former unicorn advocate has decidedly
become a spokesman for horses with arrows in their fore
heads. Guildenstern has, by "a choice of persuasions,"
opted to ignore the implications of all that he has witnessed
and all that he has been taught. In contrast to his earlier
advice to relax and enjoy the opportunities for play afforded
by the script, he joins Rosencrantz in futilely adhering
to outdated aesthetic assumptions that render both of them
incapable of "reading" the script.
Their inability to "read" the script is illustrated
very clearly by their confused reaction to the Tragedians'
enactment of the "deaths" of "Rosencrantz" and "Guilden
stern. They watch as the dumbshow rolls toward its con
clusion, portraying two spies, dressed in coats identical
-108-
to those of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, being prepared
for execution by the Player, now in the role of the English
King. Rosencrantz "approaches 'his' SPY doubtfully [and]
does not quite understand why the coats are familiar" (p. 82).
Unable to interpret the script, he comments confusedly:
Well if it isn't! No, wait a minute, don't tell
meit's a long time sincewhere was it? Ah, this
is taking me back towhen was it? I know you,
don't I? I never forget a face(he looks into the
SPY's face) . not that I know yours, that is.
For a moment I thoughtno, I don't know you, do
I? Yes, I'm afraid you're quite wrong. You must
have mistaken me for someone else. (p. 82)
The rehearsal culminates in the execution"The SPIES die
at some length, rather well" (p. 84)but Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern refuse the lesson of the performance. Faced,
as Egan explains, with a "prophetic mirroring of [their]
112
future," Guildenstern protests, "No, no, no . you've
got it all wrong ..." (p. 84). He then denies that death
can be represented at all: "You can't act death. The fact
of it is nothing to do with seeing it happenit's not
gasps and blood and falling about" (p. 84). Death, Guilden
stern insists, is "just a man failing to reappear, that's
allnow you see him, now you don't, that's the only thing
that's real" (p. 84).
We might at this point feel comfortable with declaring
the aesthetic debate between the Player and Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern to be a clear victory for the Player. Rosen
crantz and Guildenstern's fortunes have fallen precipi
tously, and we in the audience know that they are headed
-109-
straight for death. But things are rarely so simple and
straightforward in a Stoppard play, and they are never
simple and straightforward in Rosencrantz, perhaps his most
thoroughly open-ended achievement. Perlette argues con
vincingly that Guildenstern's protest that "you can't act
death" (p. 84) points simultaneously to the Truth of death
according to Freud and to a further truth about "the limits
113
of theatrical representation." "Guildenstern's insis
tence upon dissociating death from 'seeing it happen' is,"
he argues,
not only a recognition that nothing can repre
sent the abstract negativity of death to us. It
is also a confirmation of Freud's recognition of
the structural key to this impossibility, namely
that every representation (imaginative image or
dramatic spectacle) falls short because, by the
very act of witnessing it, "we really survive as
spectators. "
Theater will, because of "the structural limits of the
115
medium itself," always fall short of adequately repre
senting death, for by its very nature, it reinforces our
psychological self-deception about death, encouraging us
to believe that we really survive as spectators.
In representing in Rosencrantz that death cannot be
represented, Perlette argues, Stoppard creates "a curiously
contradictory effect.When we identify with Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern as spectators, "we are put into the posi
tion of identifying with their inability to identify,"
and "we are expected to be 'satisfied' with the adequacy of
-110-
a representation representing the inadequacy of representa-
118
tion." Furthermore, "we are asked to see a certain
reality in the representation of Rosencrantz and Guilden-
stern's recognition that representations don't give them
119
reality." Perlette accurately views these "flat contra-
120 121
dictions" as "aporra or insolubilia" which are not
meant to be resolved. "They are," he argues, "the struc-
12 2
tural counterpart of the play's thematic of uncertainty."
Because of this reflexivitythe play calls into question
the whole nature of representation which lies at the heart
of the theatrical experienceRosencrantz pushes theater to
its limits. When a medium is "operating at the extremity
123
of its own limits," he argues further, "we must recog
nize that any insight, truth, or reality we would be tempted
to derive here is thoroughly undermined."^2^
This process of undermining Truth and reality is not,
of course, confined to a single speech of protestation by
Guildenstern. Virtually all that has preceded and all that
follows Guildenstern's speech is equally a part of the same
process. When the dumbshow is brought to an abrupt conclu
sion by "Shouts . 'The King risesl . 'Give o'er the
playi . cries for 'Lights, lights, lightsl" (pp. 84-
85), Rosencrantz returns to his old search for direction.
"That must be east, then. I think we can assume that"
(p. 85), he observes as the light grows. Guildenstern
declines to pursue the question of where they came from,
111-
though, sensing' the futility of their search for origins.
"I've been taken in before" (p. 85), he replies, refusing
to play that game again.
But they are no longer gameless as they were briefly
at the height of their insistence on the Truth of theatrical
representation. Perhaps as a subtle indication of the
potential credibility of their position about the limits
of what can be represented, they are tentatively welcomed
back into the fold of play. Their game, however, has rather
ominous undertones, for it overtly echoes the final game
Vladimir and Estragn play in Godot as they temporarily
decide to commit suicide with the cord Estragn uses to hold
up his oversized trousers. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
decide to catch Hamlet in a trap created by joining their
two belts together. Rosencrantz's "trousers slide slowly
down" (p. 89) when he removes his belt, just as Estragn's
had fallen in Godot.
Their trap fails, but Hamlet surprises Rosencrantz by
coming on when he simply shouts "Lord Hamlet!" (p. 90).
The talk is of death, for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have
been given another mission by Claudius, to find out what
Hamlet has done "with the dead body" (p. 90) of Polonius.
Upon completion of their "trying episode" (p. 92) with the
Hamlet cast, Rosencrantz complains, "They'll have us hang
ing about till we're dead. At least. And the weather will
change. The spring can't last forever" (p. 93). Rosencrantz
-112-
has not, of course, abruptly dropped the topic of death to
make polite conversation about the weather. When he con
tinues, "We'll be cold. The summer won't last" (p. 93),
and Guildenstern replies "It's autumnal" (p. 94), we recog
nize that the pair is invoking the poetic code of represent
ing death, using the universal, even banal code of the cycle
of seasons to describe the beginning and end of human life.
Guildenstern's speech beginning "Autumnalnothing to do
with the leaves. It is to do with a certain brownness at
the edges of day. . Brown is creeping up on us, take my
word for it . ." (p. 94) is less poetry than a parody of
poetic codes, for in addition to using the cliche of seasons,
it continues with a catalogue of colors that one inevitably
associates with the flowery language of overly ornate
poetry. "Russets and tangerine shades of old gold flush
ing the very outside edge of the senses . deep shining
ochres, burnt umber and parchments of baked earthreflect
ing on itself and through itself" (p. 94). Brown may indeed
be creeping up on them, but the poetic code of representa
tion is no more an adequate discourse for describing death
than are any of the other competing discourses. No code,
no theatrical or literary mode can ever truly provide the
"thin beam of light" (p. 83) that might "crack the shell
of mortality" (p. 83), for death remains the "undiscover'd
country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns";
remains the thing which cannot be represented.
it
-113-
The second act comes to an end momentarily, with
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern bound for England on Claudius's
orders. This time, the act break marks a real change, com
plete with a new setting, which provides Stoppard with the
opportunity to pull one of his funniest and most character
istic jokes, the joke that provides a large measure of the
humor in The Real Inspector Houndexaggerated exposition.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern begin the act in typical un
certainty. After determining various bits of vital informa
tion, that they are still alive, for example, Stoppard's
stage directions call for sailors shouting "obscure but
inescapably nautical instructions" (p. 98), including (he
provides a short list) "Hard a larboard! Let go the stays!
Reef down me hearties!" (p. 98). "When the point has been
well made and more so" (p. 98), Rosencrantz arrives at the
brilliant conclusion, "We're on a boat" (p. 98).
The marked change of setting, however, is a bit of a
false lead, for very little else actually changes in
Stoppard's final, shortest act, which is more a matter of
tying up the "loose ends" Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
mention repeatedly than one of new direction. The third
act is a time for recapitulating themes and motifs already
in place and a time for playing with the limits of theatrical
representation. When an inexplicable "better light Lan
tern? Moon? Light" (p. 99) finally elucidates the
stage, we see "three large man-sized casks on deck" (p. 99)
props for the barrel tricksand "a gaudy striped umbrella
-115-
we like, without restriction" (p. 116), but Rosencrantz
undermines this sweeping proclamation of freedom by adding,
"Within limits, of course" (p. 116) "Certainly within
limits" (p. 116), Guildenstern agrees, dismantling the whole
structure. They role-play again, with Guildenstern taking
the part of the English King and questioning Rosencrantz
about just why he came to England. As in Act Two, they find
themselves unable to overcome the "abstract negativity of
126
death." Rosencrantz explains that whenever he tries to
think of England, he draws a blank. "I have no image. I
try to picture us arriving, a little harbour perhaps . .
roads[. . .] But my mind remains a blank" (p. 108). And
as has happened repeatedly in the play, just when they have
run out of games to play and topics to discuss (inconclu
sively) they hear the sound of a band, the Tragedians
"playing together a familiar tune which has been heard
three times before" (p. 113). Rosencrantz's "I thought I
heard a band" (p. 114) is both another humorous statement
of the obvious and a pointed repetition of an observation
he has made in both of the previous acts, a repetition which
calls attention to the truth of his complaint that "nothing
is happening" (p. 102) and Guildenstern's exclamation, "No
wonder the whole thing is so stagnant!" (p. 104).
Act Three i_s stagnant, at least until the pirates
attack and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and the Player
emerge from the wrong barrels (as Stoppard has some fun
-114-
[. .] one of those huge six-foot-diameter jobs" (p. 99).
We will soon discover that the umbrella hides Hamlet. Why
would the Prince of Denmark be sitting behind a huge, gaudy,
striped beach umbrella? The third act repeatedly asks us,
why not? If we are no longer tied to the limits imposed
by realism, why cannot Hamlet be sitting under a beach
umbrella? Why cannot the Players "emerge, impossibly, from
[a] barrel" (p. 122)? None of the many blatant violations
of the realistic code that punctuate the third act provokes
any comment from the on-stage spectators, and their suspen
sion of disbelief provides those of us in the off-stage
audience with our cue for responding to the bizarreness of
the third act"Enjoy it. Relax [. .] it's like being
given a prize" (p. 40). Stoppard's extension of the limits
of theater eradicates the need to explain away unicorns as
horses with arrows in their foreheads.
Prior to the unsurprising surprise attack by pirates,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern spend their time on the boat
engaged in activities which are by now very familiar to the
audience. They play games with coins, and they sort out
the confusion surrounding which one received the letter of
instruction from Claudius, an extension of the identity
confusion which has plagued them through two acts. They
contemplate the nature of fate and free will at length,
but, as always, inconclusively. Guildenstern proclaims
that "We can do what we like and say what we like to whomever
-116-
with the possibilities of trap doors). The disappearance
of Hamlet during the pirate attack, though, saves the final
act from stagnation by reintroducing the topic of death.
"Is he dead?" (p. 119), Rosencrantz inquires about Hamlet.
When Guildenstern confirms that Hamlet is "not coming back"
(p. 119), Rosencrantz reiterates the pair's position on
death: "He's dead then. He's dead as far as we're con
cerned" (p. 119). Death is, for Rosencrantz and Guilden
stern, "just a man failing to reappear" (p. 84).
Once death is reintroduced, events roll rapidly toward
their open-ended conclusion, replacing the pointed stagna
tion of the earlier part of the act, which we recognize as
a sort of deliberate lull, a period of buying time through
the reiteration of lines and the replaying of games. Rosen
crantz and Guildenstern have exhausted their lines, run out
of playing timealmost. One more round in the debate con
cerning death, and the representation of death, remains.
It opens with the anguished cry of the absurdist situa
tion: "But why? Was it all for this? Who are we that so
much should converge on our little deaths. . Who are
we?" (p. 122), Guildenstern asks. The Player's reply, "You
are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. That's enough" (p. 122)
is "not enough" (p. 122) for Guildenstern. And when the
Player smugly holds to his old position with "In our
experience, most things end in death" (p. 123), Guilden
stern temporarily forgets himself, and his position that
-117-
death is "just a man failing to reappear," as "He snatches
a dagger from the PLAYER'S belt and holds the point at the
PLAYER1S throat" (p. 123). He delivers a very dramatic
speech beginning, "I'm talking about deathand you've never
experienced that. And you cannot act it" (p. 123) It
culminates in his convincing proclamation, "No one gets up
after death--there is no applause--there is only silence
and some second hand clothes, and that'sdeath" (p. 123).
With that, Guildenstern "pushes the blade in up to the
hilt" (p. 123), and the Player "makes small weeping sounds
and falls to his knees, and then right down" (p. 123). As
Guildenstern's sometime competitor, sometime teacher dies,
Guildenstern delivers a rhetorically balanced, moving
elegy: "If we have a destiny, then so had heand if this
is ours, then that was hisand if there are no explanations
for us, then let there be none for him" (p. 123).
But the Player does get up after this, the most
theatrically convincing death in the whole play, and there
is applause as the Tragedians respond to their leader's
performance "with genuine admiration" (p. 123). His "death"
is the result of another illusion, a trick sword, a device
much like the trap doors under the barrels. If we are
surprised by his resurrection, it is not because we thought
the sword was real, but because we do not expect to see the
illusion of the trick sword revealed on stage. But the
Player's resurrection is not simply another joke at the
-118-
expense of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and another pat
victory for the Player. As Perlette argues, the fake death
scene endorses both of their positions at the same time.
Upon arising, the Player proclaims, "You see, it i_s the kind
they do believe init's what is expected" (p. 123). He is
right, of course; audiences are only prepared to believe in
the sort of patently theatrical performance he has just
given. But Guildenstern is also right in insisting that
the belief we invest in such a performance does not take us
any closer to experiencing the void of death. While we may
"believe" in the Player's death, we still survive the
spectacle as spectators. And "this, as Guildenstern has
been insisting, is the cheat at the heart of representa-
127
tions of death which renders them inadequate," Perlette
observes. We may "believe" in the Player's performance,
but only "because we are distanced (protected) from [it] by
128
a fundamental disbelief." Guildenstern's position is
backed by the position of the play as a whole which, as
Perlette argues, "once again . has gone out of its way
to make us aware that the reality of death is simply inac-
129
cessible to us."
The reality of death is inaccessible to us no matter
what mode of representation is used, and the various modes
blend and clash to a crescendo in the closing moments of
the play. The absurdist discourse has given way to the most
theatrically convincing death in the entire play, but this
-119-
death is immediately revealed as yet another trick. After
brushing himself off, the Player breaks into the discourse
of a carnival man hawking his spectacles: "Deaths for all
ages and occasions! Deaths by suspension, convulsion, con
sumption, and malnutrition! Climactic carnage, by poison
and by steel!" (p. 124). Then, as the Tragedians perform
a variety of these deaths and "the two SPIES dressed in the
same coats as ROS and GUIL, are stabbed, as before" (p. 124),
the light begins to fade, and the Player switches to the
poetic code of representing death. "Dying amid the dying
tragically; romantically" (p. 124), he goes down for the
final time with, "Light goes with life, and in the winter
of your years the dark comes early" (p. 124).
Guildenstern rejects all these discoursesthe carnival
call to witness a spectacle, the spectacles themselves, and
the romance of poetic death. "No . no . not for
us, not like that. Dying is not romantic, and death is not
a game which will soon be over . Death is not anything
. . death is not ..." (p. 124), Guildenstern tiredly
argues as the mime comes to a close, leaving the "dead"
bodies of the Tragedians scattered on stage. And when
"death" finally comes to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, it
follows the script Guildenstern has written: "It's just a
man failing to reappear, that's allnow you see him, now
you don't" (p. 84). There are no "gasps and blood and
falling about" (p. 84); the Player's version of the death
-120-
of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern never materializes. Instead
of being executed at the hands of the English King as the
Tragedians have twice performed it, Rosencrantz simply
disappears from view, leaving Guildenstern to remark, "Well,
we'll know better next time. Now you see me, now you"
(p. 126). Amidst the words of a magic trick, he disappears
also.
But one more discourse requires final playing time,
and immediately after Guildenstern disappears, "the whole
stage is lit up, revealing, upstage, arranged in the
approximate positions last held by the dead TRAGEDIANS,
the tableau of court and corpses which is the last scene
of Hamlet" (p. 126). This ending is a revision, for "in
the first published edition of the play (May 1967) the
action, like that of Waiting for Godot, is circular. . .
Someone is shouting and banging on a shutter, indistinctly
130
calling two names." In the revised version, Horatio's
penultimate speech in Hamlet is the last word, as he first
denies that Hamlet ordered the deaths of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, and then, in effect, introduces the beginning
of the play:
. . give order that these bodies
high on a stage be placed to the view;
and let me speak to the yet unknowing world
how these things came about: so shall you hear
of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts,
' of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, . .
. . all this can I
truly deliver. (p. 126)
-121-
Stoppard's revision retains the circularity of his
earlier version, but it is much richer than the simple
circularity of someone's banging on shutters. While the
earlier version would have endorsed the absurdist mode,
Horatio's words invoke the same circularity while denying
an endorsement of the Truth of any specific theatrical mode.
These words are Shakespeare's, but they are also part of
our common mythology, and as such, they resonate through the
history of theater, encouraging us to realize that no matter
what mode of representation is used, the world will always
remain "yet unknowing." Horatio's description, coming so
soon after the Player has hawked his spectacles like a
carnival man, takes on a subdued carnival flavor itself:
"carnal, bloody and unnatural acts, / of accidental judg
ments, casual slaughters, / of deaths put on by cunning and
forced cause" (p. 126).
The ambiguity of the final spectacle joins the ambiguity
of the final words to thoroughly resist closure. The Hamlet
cast assumes "the approximate positions last held by the
dead TRAGEDIANS" (p. 126) visually conflating the two
modes of theater the two casts represent, as Horatio's
speech conflates the circularity of absurdism, the language
of tragedy, and a hint of the language of a carnival. The
closing tableau does not so much provide the final answer
as it raises a multitude of questions. Is this death
according to tragedy's grand design, never grander than
-122-
in Hamlet, the central tragedy of our language? Or is this
death as the Tragedians perform it, glibly, without "dig
nity, nothing classical, portentous, only thisa comic
pornographer and a rabble of prostitutes ..." (p. 27)?
Or is death a sort of carnival freak show, as the words of
both Horatio and the Player suggest? Or is it pointedly
absurd, as Guildenstern's anguished cry"But why?" (p. 122)
and the Beckettian circularity suggest? Or is death just
another trick, as Guildenstern1s final magician's discourse
indicates?
It is death as "It is written" (p. 80) in a variety of
modes, none of which can directly expose us to the inscru
table, unknowable reality of death. Stoppard shows us,
through a series of dislocating contradictions, that death
remains what it has always beenthe thing which cannot be
represented. These contradictions pervade the play, operating
at the level of the Beckett joke, where a confident state
ment is followed by refutations which dismantle the whole
structure that has just been built, as well as at the larger
level, where one discourse bumps into another and then
another, qualifying and undermining the Truth of the pre
ceding discourse until none of the discourses retains its
Truth value. Even until the final curtain, the blending
and clashing of modes continues, refusing closure. Rosen-
crantz does not so much stop on one discourse at the end
as it plays all of them in rapid succession, "ending" with
-123-
a discourse that both suggests another beginning and con
tains elements of previous discourses within itself.
The blending and clashing of modes, which is vital to
the structure and themes of Rosencrantz, undermines the
critical hierarchy favoring originality over derivativeness.
We are hard put in Rosencrantz to distinguish between the
"original" segments and the derivative ones because the
writing is so heavily sedimented that we begin to suspect
that all of it could be traced back to a "source," which
would then likely slip to reveal another "source" behind
it, and so on, endlessly. As this critical hierarchy begins
to collapse, it carries others down with it. Because of the
blatant blending and clashing of modes, no mode is given the
authority of being designated as more "realistic" than any
other; thus, the distinction between reality and illusion,
life and art, begins to blur as well. The illusion of art
is presented less as a parasite on the reality of life than
as a realm of its own, governed by its own conventions,
chief among which is the agreement between actors and
audience to play their respective roles.
In teaching us, showing us, that the play of the
theater need not stop in the absence of Truth, "originality,"
and "realism," Rosencrantz also breaks down the opposition
between art and criticism, yet another manifestation of
logocentricism, another traditional host/parasite rela
tionship. Just as contemporary critical theory has moved
-124-
progressively toward becoming a literary genre in its own
right, thereby diminishing the distinction between Art, the
host, and criticism, its parasite, so Rosencrantz graciously
responds to the invitation by stepping on to the dance floor
and embracing contemporary critical theory as its partner.
As the play teaches us so many of the lessons of contem
porary theorythat art never depended on Truth, "reality,"
or "originality"it also reassures us that we do not have
to sacrifice any of the magic of the theater as we leave
these old assumptions behind. The play of the theater need
not stop in the absence of a center, a Truth.
Though art has never been able to expose us to the
reality of life, or of death, the play of styles, of "words,
words" (p. 41), keeps right on going. In fact, the room
for play may be even bigger without the old constraints
imposed by the need to feign "originality" and "realism,"
the need to present us with the final Truth. Now there is
room for a variety of discourses instead of just One, and
room for many witnesses to play with unicorns, though not,
perhaps, enough room for those who would, by "a choice of
persuasions," see only horses with arrows in their fore
heads.
Notes
'Torn Stoppard, "Second Interview with Tom Stoppard," in
Ronald Hayman, Tom Stoppard, Contemporary Playwrights Series,
3rd ed. (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1979) ,
p. 143.
-125-
2
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
(New York: Grove Press, 1967), p. 80. All further quota
tions refer to this edition and will be cited parenthetically
within the text. Unless otherwise indicated by brackets,
all ellipses are Stoppard's.
3
Robert Brustein, "Waiting for Hamlet," New Republic,
4 November 1967, p. 25.
4
Brustein, p. 25.
5C.O. Gardner, "Correspondence: Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead," Theoria: A Journal of Studies in
the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences 34 (May 1970): 83.
g
Gardner, p. 83.
7
Christopher Nichols, "Theater: R & G: A Minority
Report," National Review, 12 December 1967, p. 1394.
O
Robert Egan, "A Thin Beam of Light: The Purpose of
Playing in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," Theatre
Journal 31 (March 1979): 59.
Egan, p. 59.
^Normand Berlin, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
Dead: Theater of Criticism," Modern Drama 16 (December
1973): 271.
^''Berlin, p. 269.
12
Berlin, p. 269.
13Margarete Holubetz, "A Mocking of Theatrical Con
ventions: The Fake Death Scene in The White Devil and
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," English Studies
63 (October 1982): 426-429.
14
Ruby Cohn, Modern Shakespeare Offshoots (Princeton:
eton Univ.
Press
' 3Cohn, p.
215.
16-, .
Cohn, p.
215.
17
Cohn, p.
217.
^Cohn, p.
217.
19
Hayman,
p. 34.
-126-
20tt ...
Hayman, p. 34.
21
Hayman, p. 34.
22
Jill L. Levenson, "Tom Stoppard's Two Versions:
'Hamlet' Andante/'Hamlet' Allegro," in Shakespeare Survey
36, ed. Stanley Wells (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press,
1983), p. 21.
23
Levenson, p. 22.
24
Levenson, p. 22.
25
Levenson, p. 23.
2 6
Levenson, p. 23.
27
Levenson, p. 23.
2 8
William E. Gruber, "'Wheels within Wheels, etcetera'"
Artistic Design in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,"
Comparative Drama 15 (Winter 1981-1982): 291.
29
*^Gruber,
P-
291.
30
uGruber,
P-
291.
31Gruber,
P-
291.
32Gruber,
P-
291.
33Richard
Corball
Clockwork (New York:
is, Stoppard:
Methuen, 1984)
The Mystery and the
, p. 48.
34Robert Wilcher, "The Museum of Tragedy: Endgame and
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," Journal of Beckett
Studies 4 (1979): 44.
33Wilcher,
P-
44.
3^Wilcher,
P-
43.
3^Wilcher,
P-
44.
33Wilcher,
P-
51.
39
Wilcher,
P-
44.
4^Wilcher,
P-
47.
43Wilcher,
P-
47.
-127-
42Wilcher, p. 47.
42Wilcher, p. 48.
44Wilcher, p. 48.
45
Wilcher, p. 49.
4^Wilcher, p. 51.
^Wilcher, p. 51.
^Wilcher, p. 51.
4^Wilcher, p. 51.
^Wilcher, p. 51.
51
Richard Corballis, "Extending the Audience:
Structure of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,
11 (April 1980):
LO
v£>
"^Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
65.
53
Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
65.
54
Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
68.
"^Corballis r
"Extending,"
P-
66.
^Corballis,
"Extending,"
P*
66.
^Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
66.
^Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
66.
59
Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
78.
60^, , .
Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
68.
^Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
68.
^ 2Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
70.
^Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
73.
^4Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
74.
^corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
75.
^Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
73.
The
" Ariel
-128-
6 7
Corballis, "Extending," p. 77.
6 8
Michael Hinden, "Jumpers; Stoppard and the Theater
of Exhaustion," Twentieth Century Literature 27 (Sprinq
1981): 1.
69
John Barth, "The Literature of Exhaustion," cited in
Hinden, p. 1. The article originally appeared in the
Atlantic, pp. 29-34. All subsequent quotations refer to
the original article.
78Hinden, p. 2.
"^Hinden, p. 2.
72
Hinden, p. 2.
73Hinden, p. 2.
7^Barth, p. 31.
75
Hinden, p. 2.
78Barth, p. 31.
77Hinden, p. 2.
7 8
Hinden, p. 2.
7^Barth, p. 29.
^Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author," in Image-
Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang,
1977), p. 146.
81John M. Perlette, "Theatre at the Limit: Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead," forthcoming in Modern Drama.
While Perlette demonstrates that the play supports a
Freudian vision of death, he goes further to argue that it
ultimately undermines any truth we might be tempted to
derive since the play operates at the limits of theater.
83Barthes, p. 147.
83Hamlet, 5.2.10.
84
Egan, p. 65.
8 5
Egan, p. 65.
8 6
Egan, p. 65.
108. ,
Hxnden, p
. 3
109. ,
Hinden, p
. 3
-
^Barthes,
P.
146.
111D ..
Barthes,
P-
1.
112-,
Egan, p.
65.
113Perlette,
PP
. 7-
114
Perlette,
P.
7.
3 "^Perlette,
P-
8.
33^Perlette,
P-
8.
117
Perlette,
P.
10.
1 1 O
Perlette,
P-
o
11
33^Perlette,
P-
10.
32^Perlette,
P.
9.
121
Perlette,
P-
10.
122
^Perlette,
P-
10.
123
Perlette,
P-
10.
324Perlette,
P-
9.
125
^Hamlet, 3
.1.
78-7
32^Perlette,
P-
7.
127
Perlette,
P-
13.
323Perlette,
P-
13.
129
Perlette,
P-
14.
130
Hayman, p
. 46.
-129-
8 7
Craig Owens, "The Discourse of Others: Feminists and
Post-Modernism," in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern
Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Port Townsend, Washington: Bay-
Press 1983), p. 67.
8 8
Tom Stoppard, "First Interview with Tom Stoppard,"
in Hayman, p. 7.
8 9
Tom Stoppard, "First Interview," in Hayman, p. 7.
90
Egan, p. 62.
91
Egan, p. 62.
^Wilcher, p. 50.
9 9
^Hamlet, 2.2.192.
94
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (New York: Grove
Press, 1954), p. 33b.
^Beckett, p. 8.
96
Helen Keyssar-Franke, "The Strategy of Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead," Educational Theatre Journal 27
(1975) p. 93.
97
Keyssar-Franke, p. 93,
98
Keyssar-Franke, p. 93.
99
Wilcher, p. 50.
100T.S. Eliot, "Hamlet and His Problems" in Critical
Theory Since Plato, ed. Hazard Adams (Atlanta: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971), p. 789.
101Eliot, p. 789.
i o?
^Revelation 1:8.
103Barth, "The Literature of Exhaustion," cited in
Hinden, p. 1.
'"^Keyssar-Franke, p. 93.
^Keyssar-Franke, p. 93.
'"^Perlette, p. 5.
10 7
'Perlette, p. 6.
TRAVESTIES OR TOM STOPPARD
SORTS IT OUT
One of the impulses in Travesties is to try to
sort out what my answer would in the end be if
I was given enough time to think every time I'm
asked why my plays aren't political, or ought
they to be?
Tom Stoppard"*"
Much more directly and explicitly than Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead, Stoppard's 1974 Travesties addresses
the related questions of Truth, the political function of
art, and the concept of originality in authorship. In
Rosencrantz, Stoppard worked from a distanced perspective,
setting his play about two inconsequential bit players from
Hamlet in an innocuous "place of no name, character, popu-
lation or significance." And just as Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are themselves safely void of immediate poli
tical relevance, so are Rosencrantz's two major competing
theatrical modes, tragedy and absurdism. At a safe remove
from the entangling encumbrances of specific political
issues, Rosencrantz prompts us to revise our general
aesthetic and political assumptions: as it encourages us
to revise our aesthetic preference for Truth and closure
in art, it simultaneously invites us to adjust our poli
tical preference for mastery, to question the Truth of
-131-
-132-
master narratives which seek to reduce the diversity of the
world to a single interpretive discourse. Thus, although
it steers clear of patently political content, Rosencrantz
is nevertheless a profoundly political play, for it asks us
to reconsider our whole conceptual framework for thinking
about Truth and the authority of authors to bring us that
Truth.
In Travesties, Stoppard zooms in for a more immediate,
unfiltered exploration of largely the same questions, for
the setting is Zurich during World War I, and his charac
ters are of great political and artistic consequence. Center
ing his play around three key Author-Fathers of modern
thoughtLenin, James Loyce, and Tristan TzaraStoppard
engages the questions of authorship and the Truth of
modernism's master narratives directly. And just as poli
tically charged characters replace the neutral characters
of Rosencrantz, so politically charged theatrical discourses
replace the neutral discourses of the earlier play. In
place of tragedy and absurdism, Travesties is built primarily
from the blending and clashing of the comic mode of Wilde's
The Importance of Being Earnest and the didactic mode of
Brecht's epic theater. The leftist political goals of the
epic theater are obvious given Brecht's outspoken advocacy
of Marxism. The political affiliations of comedy are cer
tainly more understated, and indeed Earnest often serves
as neutral ground for the characters, but the tendency of
-133-
comedy to endorse existing social values nevertheless pits
the comic mode against the epic mode, which aims to under
mine the same social values comedy supports.
The immediacy of Travesties' perspective may very well
lie at the root of the most significant difference between
the two plays: unlike Rosencrantz, which playfully resisted
a stable center of Truth, Travesties ultimately endorses
the Joycean vision at the expense of the visions of Lenin
and Tzara. While the first half of Travesties recreates
the open-ended, dislocating experience of Rosencrantz
questions are raised and answers are withheld as the play
exposes the limits of competing discourses and demystifies
the process of writingthe play abruptly turns about face
in mid-stream. The radical change of course coincides with
Joyce's moving speech insisting that "an artist is the
magician put among men to gratifycapriciouslytheir urge
for immortality." Unlike earlier speeches, Joyce's eloquent
defense of the artist is allowed to stand unrefuted, and
it is, furthermore, visually reinforced by the spectacle
of Joyce's pulling a carnation, flags, and a rabbit out of
a hatmagician styleas Tzara childishly smashes crockery
in a fit of Dadaist destruction.
But Tzara is not the real loser of Travesties; that
distinction belongs to Lenin, whose story bores us to tears
in Act Two. And while we are turning numb from boredom,
we hear Lenin's position persuasively rebutted by dialogue
-134-
which Stoppard repeats as his own version of Truth in a
4
1974 interview. Nor is the denunciation of Lenin confined
to an unfortunate speech or two: the revolutionary is
structurally ostracized as well. All the other characters
get caught up in the action of The Importance of Being
Earnest, but Lenin and his wife, Nadya, are, like Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern during their period of insisting on Truth,
refused roles, denied play. Furthermore, unlike Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern, they are never welcomed into the fold,
not even at the end: the concluding dance of comedy has
room for Tzara and Gwendolen, British consular official Carr
and Cecily, even (bizarrely) Joyce and Carr's manservant
Bennett, but not, alas, for Lenin and Nadya. Like the
scapegoats of earlier comedic tradition, they are sent off
into exile, the exile of the Russian revolution, banished
to atone for the sins of society.
As Lenin's position is denounced and Joyce's enjoys
the endorsement of Truth, the two major competing theatrical
modes get dragged into the imbroglio as well. As a result,
the comic mode is spared as the Brechtian mode, through
guilt by association with Lenin, also suffers an attack.
This seems most regrettable, for when Stoppard's theater
is at its best, as in Rosencrantz, it works according to
central Brechtian principles. Rosencrantz, like the epic
theater, does not allow the audience "to submit to an
experience uncritically [. .] by means of simple empathy
-135-
with the characters.1,5 Instead, the blending and clashing
of modes takes "the subject-matter and the incidents shown
and put[s] them through a process of alienation: the
alienation that is necessary to all understanding."6 Rosen-
crantz constantly calls into question the whole concept of
7
"what is 'natural'" and encourages the kind of critical
inquiry into the motivations of modes of representation
that Brecht hoped to encourage. Stoppard's stage environ
ment, like Brecht's, is no longer simply "seen from the
8
central figure's point of view"; instead, it tells its
own story, and in doing so, it makes us aware of the impor
tance of the environment in shaping and even controlling
what we used to call, naively perhaps, human nature. Though
Stoppard uses clashing theatrical modes where Brecht pre
ferred big screens and projected documents which "confirmed
q
or contradicted what the characters said," the effect of
Stoppard's technique is remarkably similar to Brecht's.
Furthermore, Stoppard achieves in Rosencrantz the combina
tion of pleasure and instruction that Brecht thought vital
to good theater. Given Stoppard's own success with central
principles of the epic theater, it seems unfortunate that
Travesties submits Brecht's theater to such an unfriendly
travesty in Act Two, presenting it as some kind of humor
less, leftist harangue delivered "from a high rostrum"
(p. 85).
-136-
Perhaps because the two halves of the play move in such
markedly different directions, critics do not universally
agree that Joyce wins and Lenin loses. Craig Werner, for
example, argued that although critics hailed Travesties "as
a vindication of James Joyce."10 it is not that at all.
"Centering his attention on the interaction of the mythologies
of Art (represented by Joyce), Political Revolution (repre
sented by Lenin), and Radical Individualism (represented
by Tristan Tzara), Stoppard unveils the limitations of the
twentieth century's most cherished systems of belief,"11 he
argued. In its best moments, which are almost exclusively
limited to the play's first half, Travesties is indeed a
rather spectacular exploration of the limitations of early
twentieth century master narratives. But Travesties is
not all great moments, and in the second half it slips
into a master narrative of its own. For Werner, "Carr,
a minor official at the British consulate in Zurich, stands
12
firmly at the center of Travesties' thematic structure,"
and "Stoppard indicates that the nature of his mind and
values is at least as much at issue as those of the three
13
obviously important intellectual characters." He believes
that Joyce and Lenin are equally discredited by their
failure to convince Carr, a sort of twentieth century
Everyman, and that "Tzara's myth comes closest to embody
ing Carr's Zurich experience."1^ even if "it also fades
quietly from historical memory.
-137-
Even as perceptive a critic as Thomas Whitaker declares
Tzara "easily the most captivating character on stage,"16
indicating that the voice of Truth which emerges in the
second half does not completely negate the playfulness of
the first half, in which Tzara co-stars with Carr. Whitaker
1 7
argues that Tzara's "moral and political outrage" over the
I Q
senseless slaughter of World War I "wins our sympathy."
But he qualifies his reading of Tzara by noting that "his
aleatory verses have meaning for us primarily because Stoppard
19
has transformed them with Joycean word-play." Whitaker's
qualification is crucial, for while Tzara's random verses
may delight us, the credit for their verbal magic is
ultimately taken away from Tzara and given to the true team
of artist-magicians, Joyce and Stoppard. For Whitaker, the
play is less an endorsement of any single character than a
game which "asks us to refract both the content and the
style of our playing through an ironic prism that illuminates
several large questions: How do we make art? Or revolu-
20
tion? Or history? Or, indeed, any kind of meaning?"
Perhaps what is most surprising, and most encouraging,
about the critical reaction to Travesties is the frequency
of observations like Whitaker's which take into account the
relationship between Stoppard's authorial strategy and his
content. Though far less has been written about Travesties
than about the more controversial Rosencrantz, we find
that critics very often incorporate Stoppard's blatant
-138-
borrowing into their readings of the content of the play
rather than insisting that the derivativeness is a sign of
Stoppard's incompetence as a playwright. Not that Travesties
completely escaped derision as a theatrical parasite: John
Simon lumped it with the rest of Stoppard's plays, which he
felt all "have in common to some degree . what I have
at various times described with images culled from the
animal and insect worlds, where the eggs or larvae of one
species may be unconsciously hatched by the efforts, or fed
21
by the very organisms, of another species." Nevertheless,
critics for the most part moved with admirable speed beyond
blanket condemnations of the play's derivativeness to recog
nize that Stoppard's borrowing serves as a structural
counterpart for one of the play's central themes, namely,
22
that all writing is "a tissue of quotations."
The explanation for this welcome change seems at least
two-fold. In the first place, the content of Travesties
is much more obviously centered on the process of writing
than is Rosencrantz's content, so it more readily invites
critics and audiences to make the connection between the
outside and the inside of the play. Timing must also be
taken into account. Not only does Travesties follow
Rosencrantz, which in effect demonstrated that borrowing
is a viable authorial strategy, but the perceptive readings
of Travesties began to appear at roughly the same time
(1978) that critics began to reject the parasite consensus
-139-
on Rosencrantz to ask instead how the derivativeness of
Stoppard's 1966 play worked with its content. But this is
not a simple matter of Travesties' basking in the glow of
Rosencrantz, for if Travesties has reaped critical dividends
from Rosencrantz's efforts to extend the limits of what we
accept as a valid authorial strategy, Rosencrantz has also
profited from Travesties' explicit treatment of borrowing
as the common denominator of all writing. Travesties works
as a sort of critical gloss for the earlier play, and the
interpretive frame it provides must surely have contributed
to the collapse of the parasite consensus on Rosencrantz.
Michael Hinden tacitly acknowledges the reciprocal
relationship between the two plays, for he uses the same
John Barth context to read the borrowing in Travesties
that he used to account for the borrowing in Rosencrantz.
Thus, he sees Travesties as "another possible tribute to
23
theatrical 'exhaustion'" because Stoppard uses "Wilde's
self-conscious farce"^ in Travesties in much the same way
he used Hamlet in Rosencrantz. Hinden, however, fears that
"the gears of Travesties do not mesh as smoothly as those
25
of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, in part be
cause "Stoppard editorializes in the play, siding with
Joyce on major issues. Other critics seem less con
cerned with Stoppard's editorializing and more interested
in his efforts to revise the old view of authorship. Ian
Donaldson argued in 1980 that "behind the exuberant nonsense
-140-
of Stoppard's play glitters the beginnings of a serious
proposition: that art, and indeed other forms of creative
enterprise, are essentially a matter of the stylish bringing-
together of miscellaneous scraps and particles which in
themselves, discretely, may be of negligible interest."27
John William Cooke put forth a similar argument in 1981:
"The process of making meaningbe it telling a story,
writing Ulysses, or composing socialist historyis the
28
central focus of Stoppard's play." And Margaret Gold
specifically cited the relationship between Stoppard's
strategy and the debates within the play, observing that
Travesties' "stylistic and thematic ventures proceed in
29
tandem," for the play is "pastiche, a cut and paste job
like the one Tzara performs on Shakespeare's sonnet number
30
18." Thus, she argued that "Tzara's pastiche is a meta-
31
phor for Stoppard's methods."
Pastiche is indeed the method, in Travesties as well
as in Rosencrantz, but from the moment the curtain rises,
Stoppard goes out of his way to show us that Tzara is by
no means unique in composing his writing from scraps. In
fact, the entire opening scene, including Carr's narrative
bridge, is a brilliantly executed rebuttal to the tradi
tional concept of authorship. Tzara may open the scene
with an ostentatious display of the cut and paste method--
he uses "a hat and a large pair of scissors" (p. 17) but
Joyce likewise composes by "searching his pockets for tiny
-141-
scraps of paper" (p. 19), and at one point, he "encounters
a further scrap of paper which is lying on the floor: LENIN
has inadvertently dropped it" (p. 20). Thus, as Cooke
argues, "rather than drawing distinctions among Lenin,
Joyce, and Tzara, Stoppard emphasizes their similarities:
they are all makers, composing their works from facts out
3 2
of context, apparent scraps." "Whether the products are
novels, histories, or dadaist poems," he continues, "the
33
process is the same."
When the characters speak in the opening scene, to read
aloud from their scraps, the verbal dimension reinforces the
visual, for in spite of the widely varying authorial intents
behind the writings, any scrap has roughly the same chance
as another of sounding like nonsenseor genius--depending
upon what kind of expertise the particular spectator in
question brings to the theater. Tzara's "Eel ate enormous
appletzara" (p. 18), though deliberately nonsensical, may
strike an ear accustomed to the sounds of French (which
34
would then hear "II est un homme, s'appelle Tzara") as
more intelligible than Joyce's "Deshill holies eamus"
(p. 18), unless our ideal audience member is also intimately
acquainted with Ulysses. And Lenin's acronym-ridden
"G.E.C. (U.S.A.) 250 million marks" (p. 20) may very well
sound like nonsense to a spectator whose love of languages
and literature has left little time for the study of
economics.
-143-
Lenin, Joyce, and Tzara were in fact all in Zurich during
some part of World War I, and Carr, a minor British consular
official, did cross paths with James Joyce when Carr agreed
to play Algernon in a performance of The Importance of Being
Earnest that Joyce managed. Unfortunately, Carr and Joyce
quarrelled over the financial arrangements and ended up
going to court, amidst Joyce's insistence that Carr had
slandered him. As Stoppard explains, "Joyce won on the
money and lost on the slander, but he reserved his full
retribution for Ulysses," (p. 12) in which Carr becomes a
drunken soldier in the "circe" episode. Carr apparently
did not know Lenin or Tzara, but this fact does not deter
him in the least from including them in his memoirs, for
Carr is not notably concerned with the distinction between
fact and fiction. What is most remarkable about Carr's
narrative bridge, however, is not so much its creative
blending of reality and fancy, but its uncannily accurate
representation of the act of writing. Carr's confused
ramblings remind any writer of any persuasion of the series
of drafts that are only too familiar. We have to laugh as
we see the private tricks of the trade unveiled on stage,
for as Carr starts a draft and stops in frustration, and
then starts again on a new sheet of paper, he saves the
best phrases and rhetorical strategies from his previous
attempts, even though his ostensible subject changes from
"Memories of James Joyce" (p. 22) to "Lenin as I Knew Him
-142-
In this opening scene, styles and even languages
(Lenin and Nadya engage in an extended conversation in
Russian, and there is a quadrilingual apology as Lenin
retrieves his scrap of paper from Joyce) blend and clash
in such rapid succession that the closing moments of Rosen-
crantz seem tame by comparison. As language is ripped from
its context, the audience becomes "the space on which all
3 5
the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed." And
though Barthes optimistically adds "without any of them
3 6
being lost," many of the quotations that make up this
elaborate linguistic game must necessarily be lost on all
but the most erudite audience members. Thus, by trans
forming Tzara's nonsense into bilingual exposition and
selecting cryptic quotations from Joyce and Lenin, Stoppard
uses his verbal games in conjunction with his visual effects
to reduce the significance of the political and aesthetic
differences the characters will argue about so vehemently
as the play proceeds. Underneath the narcissism of their
minor differences lies the basic sameness of all writing
it is always a kind of cut and paste job, and authorial
intent is always open to subversion as readers and
audiences may or may not supply the expected context.
The process of writing is further demystified as Henry
Carr takes over the scene (which has all taken place in
side his senile mind) and begins orally "writing" his
memoirs of Zurich during the Great War. For the record,
-144-
(p. 23) to "Street of Revolution!" (p. 24) to "Memories of
Data by a Consular Friend of the Famous in Old Zurich: A
Sketch" (p. 25).
Thus, while Carr may readily, abandon the topic of Joyce
to begin a sketch of Lenin, he is much less willing to throw
out his favorite lines. He recycles one of his Joyce
openers, "To those of us who knew him, Joyce's genius was
never in doubt" (p. 22) for his portrait of Lenin: "To
those of us who knew him, Lenin's greatness was never in
doubt" (p. 24). He describes Joyce as "a complex personality,
an enigma" (p. 23) and asserts that "To be in his presence
was to be aware of an amazing intellect bent on shaping
itself into the permanent form of its own monumentthe
book the world now knows as Ulysses 1" (p. 22). After de
claring Joyce "not worth the paper" (p. 23), Carr reassembles
the scraps, adds a bit of alliterative embellishment, and
pulls out of his hat this description of Lenin: "To be in
his presence was to be aware of a complex personality,
enigmatic, magnetic, but not, I think, astigmatic" (p. 23),
and furthermore, a man "bent [. .] on the seemingly im
possible task of reshaping the civilised world into a feder
ation of standing committees of workers' deputies" (p. 23).
And Stoppard recycles his own favorite Beckett joke as he
has Carr qualify his assertions about Joyce to the point
of negationand then reapply the same formula to Lenin.
One moment, Carr describes Joyce as "exhibiting a monkish
-145-
unconcern for worldly and bodily comforts" (p. 23), but in
the same breath, he declares that Joyce was not given to
"shutting himself off from the richness of human society"
(p. 23). Lenin is likewise both "an essentially simple man,
and yet an intellectual theoretician" (p. 23) .
As we observe Carr struggling to get the words right,
we laugh not only at his bungled attempts and the obvious
absence of veracity, but at the defrocking of the romantic
conception of writing as "the spontaneous overflow of power-
37
ful feelings . recollected in tranquility." For Carr,
no less than for the three famous authors, or for any of us,
writing is not notably tranquil or spontaneous. It seems
less a matter of recording "powerful feelings" than of
assembling the right words into the right rhetorical stra
tegiesCarr, after all, fails most miserably and must begin
again whenever he actually recollects how much he hated
Joyce and resented Lenin's escape from Zurich. And inasmuch
as Carr's memoir writing demonstrates the triumph of form
over content, it also serves as both a subtle tribute and
an introduction to Oscar Wilde, whose The Importance of
Being Earnest is just about to take over the structure of
Travesties via Carr's recollection of his personal triumph
"in the demanding role of Ernest (not Ernest, the other
one)" (p. 25).
Gold sees an inverted relationship between Travesties
and Earnest, observing that Wilde
-146-
wrote a play as deliberately emptied of content
politically, emotionally, and philosophicallyas
can be imagined, and while he was engaged in
making light of most of the sacraments and almost
every bourgeois notion of seriousness, he called
his play The Importance of Being Earnest. Stop
pard, on the other hand, has written a play
called Travesties and filled it with serious
matter
If we take this observation one step further, however, we
see that this relationship is inverted again so that the
first half of the play firmly supports Gwendolen's conten
tion in Earnest that "In matters of grave importance, style,
39
not sincerity, is the vital thing." The opening movement
in particular is "as deliberately emptied of content
politically, emotionally, and philosophicallyas can be
imagined," in spite of the fact that it purportedly por
trays Lenin, Loyce, and Tzara working away on germinal
writings of the modern era. Whitaker notes that W.H. Auden
"once called The Importance of Being Earnest 'perhaps the
only purely verbal opera in English' obviously, Auden
had not seen Travesties, for even more than the parent
play, it calls our attention to language and style to such
an extent that the "serious matter" becomes incidental to
the verbal play.
After Carr's narrative bridge subsides to make way
for more dramatic action, the play of language and styles
continues, though it is now more firmly grounded in a con
text. That context, however, is anything but simple. For
now Act One of Earnest is providing the basic structure as
-147-
Carr relives his stellar performance as Algernon, while his
manservant Bennett assumes the role of Lane, Tzara becomes
Jack, and Joyce (christened James Augusta) plays Algy's Aunt
Augusta, Lady Bracknell. As if this were not enough com
plexity for one act, Bennett's exposition has a Brechtian
flavor in its didacticism (we later learn from Cecily that
Bennett "has radical sympathies" (p. 73)), and "the politi
cal debates . have an unmistakably Shavian crackle."41
Joyce's interview of Tzara travesties "the 'handbag' inter
view in Wilde and also the dry catechetical tone of the
4 2
penultimate section (Ithaca) of Ulysses," and one scene
is written entirely in limericks. Carr's memory, meanwhile,
has not improved, so "The story (like a toy train perhaps)
occasionally jumps the rails and has to be restarted at the
point where it goes wild" (p. 27). Added to this trademark
Stoppardian pastiche are equally trademark Stoppardian word
games. The verbal games, delightful in themselves, also
work to sustain the effect of the opening scene; that is,
until Joyce overwhelms the play near the end of the first
act, the dance of styles brings the characters together,
undermining their differences and providing them with a
common idiom.
The Earnest segment opens as Carr takes off the hat
and dressing gown of Old Carr and modulates his voice to
that of the Young Carr of 1917. Bennett enters with the
tray of tea and sandwiches, la Earnest, and after Carr
-148-
delivers some well-phrased cliches about the neutrality and
punctuality of Switzerland, Bennett ventures beyond a simple
"Yes, sir" (p. 26) to inform Carr, for the first of five
times: "I have put the newspapers and telegrams on the
sideboard, sir" (p. 26). Carr responds in turn with the
question he will repeat five times as his toy train jumps
its tracks: "Is there anything of interest?" (p. 26).
Bennett's summary of the news stylishly embodies the general
strategy of contradiction Stoppard envisioned for the play
as a whole. As he explained to Hayman, in Travesties "what
I'm always trying to say is 'Firstly, A. Secondly, minus
43
A. '" Bennett gives us A and minus A in the same elegant,
Wildean sentence: "The Neue Zricher Zeitung and the
Zricher Post announce, respectively, an important Allied
and German victory, each side gaining ground after inflict
ing heavy casualties on the other side with little loss to
itself" (p. 26). Of course, Bennett's news report also
contains the essence of another related Travesties theme,
that historical fact depends as much on the observer as on
the events observed, or, simply, that Truth is relative.
Carr's response to Bennett's rhetorically polished
war report is a most un-Wildean emotional outburst filled
with dashes, fragments, and exclamation points: "Never in
the whole history of human conflict was there anything to
match the carnageGod's blood! the shot and shell! grave
yard stench!Christ Jesu!deserted by simpletons, they
-149-
damn us to hell-ora pro nobisquick! no, get me out!"
(p. 27). Nor is this the end of his outburst, for he goes
straight into a description of the clothes he plans to wear
that evening to the theater. As in his opening memoir
writing, topics may come and go, but style is decidedly more
permanent: Cooke observes that "Carr (or rather Stoppard)
uses an almost identical pattern of sounds (much like Tzara's
dadaist poem which opens the play) to convey an entirely
44
different meaning." Carr's "I think to match the carna
tion, oxblood shot-silk cravat, starched, creased just so"
(p. 27) repeats the sounds of his "anything to match the
carnageGod's blood! the shot and shell!graveyard
stench!Christ Jesu!" (p. 27), just as "asserted by a
simple pin, the damask lapelsor a brown, no, biscuitno
get me out [. .]" (p. 27) is patterned after "deserted
by simpletons, they damn us to hellora pro nobisquick!
no, get me out!" (p. 27). As Cooke explains (with less than
perfect clarity), "This is more than simply an elaborate
pun,"45 for "like Tzara's passage, ^he verbal 'facts' have
no meaning in themselves but two meanings when perceived in
context."45 Furthermore, he argues, "the meanings them
selves reinforce the idea that the reality of events in
the objective world (the war) is a creation of the subjec
tive self (clothing) ,"4"^ for "Here Carr's aesthetics
literally shapes his vision of war." In other words,
Carr's chaotic tirade makes the same point that Bennett's
-151-
Earnest, they retain both Wilde's rhythms and his character
istic inverted cliches. Meanwhile, throughout the remaining
four versions of Travesties1 renditions of the opening scene
of Earnest, Bennett modulates seamlessly from the Wildean
mode to the Brechtian mode and back again. He plays Lane
respectfully accouncing that Mr. Tzara called while also
summarizing the newspaper reports on the progress of the
Russian Revolution. As Whitaker notes, "Bennett's reports
50
on current politics" foreshadow Cecily's "sober lectuire
51
on the history of Marxism" which opens Act Two. Bet
Bennett's exposition is mercifully saved from the deadem-
ingly dull earnestness of Cecily's lecture by Stoppard's
delightful exploitation of the comic potential of the scene.
We are always amused by the stock device of the learned
servant teaching the stupid master, but doubly so here
because the topic isof all thingsthe class war. And
Stoppard carries the joke one step further in this scene
as he undermines even the stupid-master/learned-servant
device through brilliant exploitation of the clashing of
the comic and epic modes. Carr may play the dense master
being taught by his well-informed and articulate servant,
but his comic frame contains and neutralizes the radical
content of Bennett's polished Brechtian speeches.
The combination of the two modes leads to repeated
dislocations which are unfailingly funny and often thought-
provoking. After Bennett explains with aplomb both the
-150-
elegant news report made, namely, that the reality of the
war depends on the interpretation of the observer.
But we recognize in Carr's Dadaist outburst a continua
tion of the strategy of the opening scene. Although Carr and
Tzara are headed for a stormy confrontation, mainly about
style, Stoppard defuses the impact of their dispute with his
own stylistic games. While Carr is "au fond a bourgeois,
49
Wilde's favorite target," and a philistine who detests
Dadaist nonsense, his outburst is very much Dadaist non
senselike Tzara's opening poem, it depends on "chance"
sound qualities rather than substance. This stylistic game
includes Bennett as well, for although Carr's servant "has
radical sympathies" (p. 73) the style of his speech is
drawn from the gentlemanly banter of Earnest. Until the
play changes course with Joyce's triumphant speech, all of
its characters are brought together in this game of styles
all except Lenin and his wife, who are banished after the
opening library scene to reappear only in Act Two, when
their stylistic consistency will work to highlight the
substantive contradictions in Lenin's doctrine.
When Carr and Bennett begin the sequence again, Carr
is under control and back into characterthe character of
Algernon, or perhaps Wilde himself. His character note, an
excessive interest in clothing, marks him as a Wildean
Dandy and underscores his preference for style over sub
stance. And when his lines are not directly borrowed from
-152-
process of dialectical materialsm" (p. 30) and the Soviet
stance that the war is merely an "imperialist adventure
carried on at the expense of workers of both sides" (p. 31),
he observes that the Soviet term for those participating in
the war'"lickspittle capitalist manservant'" (p. 31)is
"unnecessarily offensive in my view" (p. 31) At the surface
level, Carr seems to miss completely the chance to coopt
Bennett, but his reply, "I'm not sure that I'm much inter
ested in your views, Bennett" (p. 31), while discouraging
his servant's budding bourgeois leanings, does coopt Bennett
back into the comic mode, where he meekly returns to his
subservient demeanor. Like Lane who once apologized for
offering his solicited views on marriage (only to be told
by Algy, "I don't know that I am much interested in your
52
family life, Lane" ), Bennett now apologizes for having
offered his views on politics"They're not particularly
interesting, sir" (p. 31). But without missing a beat,
Bennett drops back into the Brechtian mode and explains
"the Bolshevik line" (p. 31) that "some unspecified but
unique property of the Russian situation, unforeseen by
Marx, has caused the bourgeois-capitalist era of Russian
history to be compressed into the last few days, and that
the time for the proletarian revolution is now ripe"
(p. 31).
As the scene shuttles back and forth from the comic
mode to the Brechtian mode, Bennett undoubtedly gets the
-153-
best lines, but Carr manages to retain his position of
social superiority, even while being taught about the class
war, by maintaining the comic frame of Earnest. And if
Bennett reveals a certain lack of awareness by addressing
Carr as "sir" while he is explaining central tenets of
Marxism, Carr equals him by remaining oblivious to the
Dadaist tendencies in his own style. Some moments after
his associative outburst about the war and his evening
clothes, Carr scolds Bennett for following his mention of
"spies, counterspies, radicals, artists, and riff-raff of
all kinds" (p. 30) with a second announcement that "Mr.
Tzara called, sir" (p. 30). Now safely back into the role
of Algernon, Carr reprimands Bennett for "taking up this
modish novelty of 'free association'" (p. 30). The time for
the first politico-aesthetic clash is now ripe, for Carr,
who freely associates while disapproving of free association,
is about to receive the prime advocate of the practice.
In lines borrowed straight from Earnest, Bennett an
nounces "Mr. Tzara" (p. 32), and Carr receives Tzara as
Algernon had received Jack. This Tzara is, as Stoppard
specifies, "a Rumanian nonsense" (p. 32), and he speaks
Jack's lines with a ridiculous foreign accent," "Plaizure,
plaizure! What else? Eating ez usual I see 'Enri?!"
(p. 32), he replies to Carr's query about what brings him
for a visit. He has just enough time to express his hope
that the guests indicated by the tea service include
-154-
Gwendolen I hopp!I luff 'er, 'Enri" (p. 32)before
Bennett announces the arrival of "Miss Gwendolen and Mr.
Joyce" (p. 32) Tzara's silly Rumanian accent is topped by
Joyce's speech, which is entirely in limericks. In fact,
Joyce's presence is so imposing, partly because he is
destined to play Lady Bracknell when he returns in -the third
version of this scene from Earnest and partly, I suspect, as
an early warning sign that he is going to commandeer the
play upon his return, that all the dialogue among the four
is in limerick form. This manic scene manages to introduce
Joyce as "A fine writer who writes caviar / for the general,
53
hence poor" (p. 33), a description borrowed from Hamlet,
and Tzara as an artist who "writes poetry and sculpts, /
with quite unexpected results" (p. 34), as well as bringing
up the topic of the play Joyce wants to put on, the play we
have, in effect, been watching for some time now. The
scene degenerates into a quadrilingual good-bye, "Avanti!
Gut'n tag! Adis! Au revoir! Vamanos!" (p. 33), echoing
the quadrilingual apology of the opening library scene,
before Carr signals its end by starting his memoirs, and
the scene, over again with, "Well, let us resume. Zurich
by One Who Was There" (p. 36).
After Bennett reinitiates the sequence by again an
nouncing the arrival of "Mr. Tzara" (p. 36), "TZARA, no
less than CARR, is straight out of The Importance of Being
Earnest" (p. 36). Stoppard continues the strategy of
-155-
undermining the differences between his characters by
giving them a common language, a common style. But Tzara
is not simply coopted into the witty banter of Earnest; Carr
unknowingly reciprocates by falling back into Dadaist free
association. Annoyed by Tzara's observation that he is
"eating and drinking, as usual" (p. 36), Carr responds
"stiffly," "I believe it is done to drink a glass of hock
and seltzer before luncheon" (p. 36) because drinking hock
makes one "feel much better after it" (p. 36). Tzara, sus
picious of the very concept of cause and effect, suggests
that Carr "might have felt much better anyway" (p. 36). Carr
predictably insists on a causal relationship, but the form
of his reply so thoroughly undermines its surface message
that his would-be rebuttal to Dadaism supports the same
principles he seeks to refute. "No, nopost hock, propter
hock" (p. 36), he argues, again relying on "chance" asso
ciation of sounds, even though he thinks himself opposed to
this "modish novelty" (p. 30). And, of course, the Latin
phrase he refers to, "posthoc, ergo propter hoc," is itself
a catch-phrase which designates the fallacy of assuming a
cause and effect relationship when only a temporal rela
tionship exists.
Instead of seizing the opportunity to point out that
Carr's apparent defense of causality ultimately demonstrates
Dadaist principles, Tzara takes Carr's statement at face
value, and the debate is on: "But, my dear Henry, causality,
-156-
[sic] is no longer fashionable owing to the war" (p. 36),
he rebuts. Round one features Carr defending the position
that the war did in fact have causes against Tzara's in
sistence that "everything is Chance, including design"
(p. 37). Neither debater is notably consistent, and Carr
again unwittingly undermines his stance by referring to
"chance" sound qualities to support his argument that the
war had perfectly logical causes. He believes that it was
caused by "something about brave little Belgium" (p. 36),
but Tzara (undermining his own position) names Serbia as
the cause. Carr rejects the Serbian explanation, not be
cause his understanding of recent history differs from
Tzara's, but because "The newspapers would never have risked
calling the British public to arms without a proper regard
for succinct alliteration" (pp. 36-37). Here, as in earlier
segments, Carr's dandyish preference for style over sub
stance coincides with his habit of privileging sound over
sense, which has become the mark of Dadaism through Stoppard's
transforming word-play. Carr is spared from humiliating
defeat in this debate only by Tzara's own remarkable incon
sistency: the apostle of nonsense as the salvation of the
world dismisses Carr's unreasonable reasoning with, "Oh,
what nonsense you talk" (p. 37) .
Round two begins after Tzara repeats "Dada" thirty-four
times and Carr returns Tzara's insult: "Oh, what nonsense
you talk" (p. 37). Carrtries to salvage some credibility
-157-
by reminding his opponent, "I was there, in the mud and
blood of foreign field, unmatched in the whole history of
human carnage" (p. 37). If the words have a familiar ring,
it is because they initiated his outburst in the "newspapers
and telegrams" sequence. And as before, the words trigger
some association with clothing. "Ruined several pairs of
trousers" (p. 37), Carr continues, and then catalogues the
"twill jodphurs with pigskin straps" (p. 37), "the sixteen
ounce serge, the heavy worsted, the silk flannel mixture"
(p. 37) and so on until Tzara, the Dada of free associa
tion, must bring him back to the point at hand. Tzara sug
gests that Carr could have spared himself the agony of
ruining so many irreplaceable pairs of trousers by spending
"the time in Switzerland as an artist" (p. 38), and with
this remark, the debate expands to include the political
responsibilities of artists. Carr reveals a love-hate
attitude toward artists, insisting first that they are
unspeakably self-centered"To be an artist in Zurich, in
1917, implies a degree of self-absorption that would have
glazed over the eyes of Narcissus" (p. 38)and then that
they are "gifted in some way that enables [them] to do
something more or less well which can only be done badly
or not at all by someone who is not thus gifted' (p. 38).
Lacking these gifts, Carr declares, "I couldn't be an
artist anywhereI can do none of the things by which is
meant art" (p. 38). When Tzara reassures him that "Art is
-158-
no longer considered the proper concern of the artist[ ]
He may be a poet by drawing words out of a hat" (p. 38) ,
Carr fails to recognize that he has been functioning as a
poet, in Dadaist terms, since the beginning of the play.
"But that is simply to change the meaning of the word Art"
(p. 38), he counters, before declaring all such redefini
tions irresponsible. Tzara's reply"You do exactly the
same thing with words like patriotism, duty, love, freedom,
kind and country, brave little Belgium, saucy little Serbia"
(p. 39)wins him both debating points, and as Whitaker
54
argues, audience sympathy.
Nevertheless, the debate must ultimately be declared
a draw, for neither Carr nor Tzara emerges as a clear-cut
winner, as the voice of Truth, and the lack of resolution
stems at least as much from the form of their arguments as
from the substance. We may be swayed both by Carr's argu
ment that "modern art" (p. 39) is often a product of "loss
of nerve and failure of talent" (p. 39) and by Tzara's
rejection of the traditional "sophistry that sanctifies mass
murder with the rhetoric of 'patriotism, duty, love> free
dom 1 ^^ but our ambivalence, even confusion, is fostered
by the characters' consistent stylistic inconsistency.
Tzara relies heavily on cause and effect to support his
arguments against causality, and while declaring himself
opposed to artistic tradition, he participates freely in
"that quintessential English jewel" (p. 51) Earnest. And
-159-
Carr, of course, repeatedly adopts the style of free asso
ciation Tzara advocates, even while arguing against Dadaism.
This constant switching to the style and rhetorical strategy
of the opponent so thoroughly undercuts the substance of
their arguments that it seems perfectly appropriate for the
scene to end as Carr finishes Tzara's sentence, "Or, to put
it another way" (p. 40) with the chant, "We're here because
we're here . because we're here [. .]" (p. 40). As
Werner notes, "Carr's droning repetition of the phrases . .
c r
seems as meaningless as a Dadaist chant," and in fact,
Tzara accompanies Carr's droning by chanting "'da-da' to the
same tune" (p. 40).
When the lights return to normal after another one of
Carr's chaotic outbursts, Carr and Tzara calmly begin the
"cucumber sandwiches" sequence of Earnest for the third and
last time. This final scene of Travesties' first act is
easily the most complex in the play, for it houses the con
tinuation of the contradictory debate between Carr and Tzara
as well as the crockery-smashing confrontation between Joyce
and Tzara in an elaborate structure built from the first act
of Earnest, the "Ithaca" section of Ulysses, tag-lines from
various Shakespeare plays, history, and other sources. If,
as Werner argues, "Stoppard unveils the limitations of the
57
twentieth century's most cherished systems of belief" in
Travesties, he also, as Hinden argues, begins "siding with
in this sequence. Joyce may suffer
Joyce on major issues
-160-
some personal attackshe is repeatedly shown trying to
remedy his penniless state by arranging permanent loans,
and his uncoordinated suit attracts much criticismbut his
qualifications as an artist are never successfully chal
lenged. Meanwhile, Tzara discredits his own position by
remaining as inconsistent as ever, but he emerges from in
consistency long enough to begin the assault on Lenin by
pointing, quite accurately, to "the contradiction of the
radical movement" (p. 46), the bourgeois artistic tastes of
political revolutionaries like Lenin. Thus, although the
first act's final scene retains the stylistic complexity of
earlier segments, the stylistic continuity belies the drastic
change of course contained within the scene, for well before
Cecily's unmercifully dull speech opens Act Two, Travesties
moves decisively toward a solid endorsement of Joyce and an
almost equally unambiguous condemnation of Lenin.
The sequence opens with Wildean banter which furthers
Wilde's plot line, for it reintroduces Cecily, the librari-
aness of Zurich, with whom Carr will fall in love to provide
the requisite second pair of lovers (Tzara has, of course,
already professed his love for Gwendolen) Cecily serves
another function as well, though, for when she is not help
ing Lenin assemble economic facts for his work on imperal-
ism, "she is working her way along the shelves (p. 42) ,
reading "the poets, as indeed everything else" (p. 42) in
alphabetical order. Cecily's unusual method of acquiring
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and ordering knowledge provides the basis for a series of
quick jokesTzara's mention of "Zimmerwaldists" (p. 45),
for example, prompts Carr to comment, "That sounds like the
last word in revolutionary politics" (p. 45)but it also
highlights a central Travesties theme, namely, as Cooke
explains, that "Formarrangement, order, contextcreates
59
meaning." Her method of assembling facts is even more
arbitrary than the methods used by Lenin, Joyce, and even
Tzara, and its very arbitrariness calls attention to the
point made by both the structure and content of Travesties,
that form and context are the creators of meaning.
With the mention of the Zurich Public Library, Tzara
brings up the topic of Joyce, and after explaining how the
Irish writer came to be living in Zurich, he embarks on a
contradictory condemnation of the man from Dublin. He first
slurs Joyce for wearing "the mismatched halves of sundry
sundered Sunday suits" (p. 42), suits he describes in such
detail that he sounds like Carr cataloguing the trousers he
ruined in the trenches. Then, he condemns Joyce's art as
"reeking of old hat, being second-hand fin-de-siecle slop"
(p. 42). Tzara's inconsistency blares at usfor who is a
Dadaist to complain about an author's drawing second-hand
material out of a hat?but he goes on to explain the crux
of his criticism, which, if anything, makes his position
even more shaky. The most serious flaw he finds in Joyce s
poems is that they are "hardly likely to start a revolution
-163-
the Dadaist, Tristan Tzara. Algernon's line from the
cigarette case scene in Earnest, "The truth is rarely pure
0
and never simple," though never stated, lurks in the
background of Tzara's convoluted explanation of his dual
identity. He explains, in a story we will hear again as
Lenin is firmly discredited in Act Two, that as "Lenin was
raging against the chauvinist moderates who didn't neces
sarily want to bayonet every man over the rank of NCO"
(p. 45), "someone at the bar piano started to play a
Beethoven sonata" (p. 45). In Tzara's view, Beethoven is
part of the tradition of Western culture which created
World War I: "The classicstraditionvomit on it! [. .
Beethoven! Mozart! I spit on it!" (p. 35), he proclaimed
in the manic limerick scene. But Lenin, in the midst of
declaring all participation in the war just cause for
execution, "went completely to pieces" (p. 45) upon hearing
the sonata, "and when he recovered he dried his eyes and
lashed into the Dadaists, if you please" (p. 45).
For Tzara, this cafe scene embodies "the contradiction
of the radical movement" (p. 46) because, he explains, "as
a Dadaist myself I am the natural enemy of bourgeois art
and the natural ally of the political left, but the odd
thing about revolution is that the further left you go
politically the more bourgeois they like their art" (p. 45)
As anyone who has ever suffered through an exhibition of
socialist realistic art knows, there is more than a grain
-162-
(p. 42). With perfect inconsistency, then, Tzara claims
that his cut and paste method spurs revolution, but when
another author cuts and pastes without bothering to announce
that the proletarian revolt is at hand, Tzara simply pro
nounces the writing bad.
Oddly enough, it is Carr who comes to Joyce's defense
when Tzara continues his condemnation by observing that
Joyce's helper, Gwendolen, "is so innocent she does not stop
to wonder what possible book could be derived from reference
to Homer's Odyssey and the Dublin Street Directory for
1904" (p. 44). For once, Carr expresses an inkling of
appreciation for the method of writing that he happens to
use as well. "I admit it's an unusual combination of sources,
but not wholly without possibilities" (p. 44), he retorts.
Carr's own combination of sources, The Importance of Being
Earnest and the history of ideas in Zurich during World
War I, is also unusual, but, as Travesties has shown, not
wholly without possibilities.
Rather than lingering on this point, however, the pair
modulates immediately to the cigarette case encounter be
tween Jack and Algernon in Earnest. This time, the lost
and found item is a library card belonging to Tristan Tzara,
but "made out in the name of Mr. Jack Tzara" (p. 44). As
Tzara explains, his "name is Tristan in the Meirei Bar and
Jack in the library" (p. 45) because he does not want his
library companions, especially Lenin, to know that he is
-164-
of truth in Tzara's observation. But Travesties is still
in the playful mode, still refraining from presenting its
own unqualified version of Truth, and Tzara's comments on
this apparent contradiction are not allowed to stand unre
futed. Carr responds with a counter-argument which is at
least as convincing as the one put forth by Tzara. "There
is nothing contradictory about it . ." (p. 46), Carr re
plies, because "Revolution in art is in no way connected
with class revolution" (p. 46). He maintains that "Artists
are members of a privileged class" (p. 46) and that "Art
is absurdly overrated" (p. 46) not only by artists but by
everyone else as well. Carr's argument culminates in an
impassioned speech directly borrowed from Artist Descending
61
a Staircase, Stoppard's 1972 radio play which also explores
the relationship between art and politics: "For every
thousand people there's nine hundred doing the work, ninety
doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky bastard who's
the artist" (p. 46) When Hayman asked Stoppard about using
identical arguments in the two plays, Stoppard replied
6 2
simply, "If it's worth using once, it's worth using twice."
Obviously, the argument appeals to Stoppard, as it inevitably
appeals to an audience comprised mainly of the "nine hundred
doing the work" (p. 46).
This dizzying, dislocating debate achieves new heights
of contradiction when Tzara, after repeatedly declaring
that anyone, no matter how untalented, is capable of being
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an artist, insists, quite literally, that artists are sacred.
"When the strongest began to fight for the tribe, and the
fastest to hunt, it was the artist who became the priest-
guardian of the magic that conjured the intelligence out of
the appetites" (p. 47, italics mine), he heatedly argues.
This is, of course, precisely the stance Joyce will espouse
in a few moments as he clashes with Tzara, and what is more,
Tzara uses terms to describe his position"magic" and
"conjure"which are identical to the ones Joyce will use
so effectively. Tzara's praise for the sacred artist's
abilities to conjure "the intelligence out of the appe
tites" (p. 47) absolutely defies his Dadaist desire "to make
the point that making poetry should be as natural as making
water" (p. 62). In spite of his professed radicalness, he
falls back on the traditional line that culture ("intelli
gence") is superior to nature ("the appetites").
Just when the intensity of this politico-aesthetic
debate has become almost overwhelming, Stoppard gives us a
welcome respite as Bennett again announces the arrival of
"Miss Gwendolen and Mr. Joyce" (p. 47). On this cue, the
play drops back to a slower pace as it averts its attention
temporarily from the intellectual conundrum which has
developed to attend to the necessities of plot. In rela
tively straightforward fashion, Joyce announces that he is
mounting a play and requests Carr's official support. He
then explains that if his "name is in bad odour among the
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British community in Zurich" (p. 49), perhaps it is because
of his pacifist poem, "Mr. Dooley." But nothing in the plot
requires that Joyce then recite all twenty-one lines of
this remarkably pedestrian poem, which is exactly what he
does.
The pace picks up only slightly after slowing to a near
halt during "Mr. Dooley," for as Joyce asks Carr to play the
leading role in his production of Earnest, the two remain
comfortably in their dominant personae, and the dialogue is
thus rather straightforward. Joyce asks for "a couple of
pounds" (p. 50) and then begins to persuade Carr to play
Algernon by presenting Zurich as "the theatrical centre of
Europe" (p. 51) where "culture is the continuation of war
by other means" (p. 51). This appeal to Carr's patriotic
duty piques the consular official's interest, and Joyce's
mention of "a repertoire of masterpieces" (p. 51) brings
out the philistine in Carr, who suggests "Gilbert and Sul
livan" (p. 51) or perhaps "Pirates of Penzancel" (p. 51).
Ultimately Carr accepts the role after hearing the details
of the stylish costumes the part requires, and Carr and
Joyce retire to discuss the play, as Algernon and Lady
Bracknell had retired to discuss music, leaving Gwendolen
and Jack/Tzara alone to form a romantic alliance.
With the exits of Carr and Joyce, the slow paced lull
gives way to one of the play's most amazing demonstrations
of the potential of collage. Tzara's profession of love
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for Gwendolen commences as "TZARA comes forward with rare
diffidence, holding a hat like a brimming bowl. It transpires
that he has written down a Shakespeare sonnet and cut it up
into single words which he has placed in the hat" (p. 53).
Gwendolen observes that Tzara's "technique is unusual"
(p. 53) but Tzara insists that "All poetry is a reshuffling
of a pack of picture cards" (p. 53) a claim that certainly
seems valid in light of the opening library sequence and,
indeed, the whole structure of Travesties. Tzara, however,
then asserts that "all poets are cheats" (p. 53). If bor
rowing is cheating, Stoppard is about to cheat extravagantly,
for the entire ensuing conversation between Gwendolen and
Tzara is composed of famous lines from numerous Shakespeare
plays and the thirty-second sonnet. Upon learning that the
hat contains scraps of the eighteenth sonnet, Gwendolen
recites the lovely poem, and then asks, "You tear him for
his bad verses?" (p. 54), a familiar query which now enjoys
a contextual pun. When she complains, quite justly, "These
are but wild and whirling words, my lord" (p. 54) Tzara
can only agree, "Ay, madam" (p. 54). Then Gwendolen looks
on her would-be lover, the Dadaist poet, and laments,
"Truly I wish the gods had made thee poetical (p. 54) ,
but Tzara must admit, "I was not born under a rhyming
planet" (p. 54). Stoppard sustains this wonderful pastiche,
this delightful "reshuffling," through eight exchanges of
dialogue, and I would venture to guess that few of s feel
-168-
cheated by his borrowing. To the contrary, this sequence
is perhaps his most eloquent and impressive testimony in
defense of his method.
Whitaker accurately observes that the dialogue between
Tzara and Gwendolen prepares us "to see a collaborative
meaning emerge once more from random bits and pieces"63 when
Gwendolen finally pulls the scraps of the sonnet from
Tzara's hat. We are not disappointed, for just as in the
opening scene, Tzara's would-be nonsense is transformed by
Stoppard's games into a poem appropriate to the context.
Tzara had explained when he offered the scraps to Gwendolen
that they come "from the well-spring where my atoms are
uniquely organized" (p. 53), which is presumably a decidedly
unromatic way of saying that the resulting poem will be an
expression of love uniquely his own. The "random" words
do express a desire, for, as Whitaker notes, "they have
become a free-verse poem of unmistakably phallic excite-
ment," and poor Gwendolen blushes to read, "see, this
lovely hot possession growest / so long / by nature's
course / so . longheaven!" (p. 54). Happily for
Gwendolen, when Tzara takes over the task of pulling the
words out of the hat, the temperature of the poem drops to
innocuous observations about the weather "summer changing,
more temperate complexion ..." (p. 55) and the pair
modulates easily to the Earnest frame as Gwendolen repeats
her lines from Wilde, "Pray don't talk to me about the
-169-
weather, Mr. Tzara. Whenever people talk to me about the
weather I always feel quite certain that they mean something
else" (p. 55).
The new lovers move quickly through the motions of con
firming their mutual admiration, but the rules of comedy
require an obstacle which blocks the full realization of
the union until the play's end. As in Earnest, the obstacle
is two-fold. In place of the "insuperable barrier"65 of
6 6
"Christian names" which deters Gwendolen and Cecily in
Wilde's play, the first obstacle in Travesties depends on
whether Tzara shares Gwendolen's "regard for Mr. Joyce as
an artist" (p. 55). To test their aesthetic compatibility,
Gwendolen gives Tzara a folder which she assumes contains
the manuscript of "The Oxen in the Sun" chapter from
Ulysses, but which in fact, due to an accidental swapping
of folders in the opening scene, contains a chapter from
Lenin's work on imperialism. They have no time to discover
the mistake (discovery must, of comic necessity, wait until
the final scene anyway) because Joyce reenters just as the
lovers are embracing to provide the second obstacle: Lady
Bracknell. Joyce booms, "Rise, sir, from that semi-
recumbent posture!" (p. 55), grabs his scrap-filled hat,
and exits in righteous indignation.
When Joyce, now "covered from head to breast in little
bits of white paper" (p. 56), reenters to question Tzara,
we witness the apparent continuation of the scene in the
-170-
same impressive collagestyle, for Joyce interviews Tzara
as Lady Bracknell had interviewed Jack, but in place of
Wilde's witty wackiness, the questions and answer resemble
Joyce's dry catechism in the "Ithaca" chapter of Ulysses
while at the same time suggesting Brechtian didacticism,
especially when Tzara incorporates quoted material into his
answers. As in the opening library scene, Stoppard plays
with the visual dimension and with the actual content of
the dialogue to complete his tri-level tribute to collage.
Throughout the interview, Joyce picks the "bits of paper
from his hair and from his clothing" (p. 60) and replaces
"each bit in his hat" (p. 60); he will perform visual magic
tricks with the scraps at the end of the scenevoil, a
carnation and a rabbitmuch as we know he performed a
verbal magic trick with the scraps from the opening scene
voil, "The Oxen in the Sun." The content adds the third
dimension, for in the midst of all the borrowing of styles
and conjuring from scraps, Joyce and Tzara intersperse in
their discussion of Dadaist methods of composition repeated
references to the problem of copyrights. The concept of
authorship as exclusive ownership has probably never seemed
more bizarre, more completely invalid, than it does in this
context.
Thus, the scene seems in every way a seamless continu
ation of what has preceded itthe stylistic density is
sustained, scraps continue as a visual motif, and the
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traditional model of authorship remains under fire. But
subtly, almost imperceptibly, Travesties is radically shift
ing course, for in place of the general unmasking of the
traditional concept of authorship, the interview moves toward
an increasingly specific critique of the inconsistencies in
the Dadaist attempt to revise it. But instead of simply
unveiling the limitations of Dadaism, this scene awards
every one of Tzara's lost debating points to Joyce. The
interview opens with matter-of-fact questions and answers
which provide an informative, if dry, summary of the found
ing of Dadaism by Hans, or Jean, Arp whose "duplicate"
(p. 57) name is the result of Arp's being "a native of
Alsace, of French background, and a German citizen by virtue
of the conquest of 1879" (p. 57) But as information about
Hugo Ball, another founder of Dadaism, is presented in the
form of quotes from Ball's diary, the partisan attack on
Dadaism begins as Stoppard has Joyce explore the irony of
a Dadaist's asserting copyrights.
Upon learning that Ball's diary is not "in the public
domain by virtue of the expiration of copyright protection
as defined by the Berne convention of 1886" (p. 58) Joyce
instructs Tzara to "Quote judiciously so as to combine
maximum information with minimum liability" (p. 58), and
then again, to "Quote discriminately from Ball's diary in
such a manner as to avoid forfeiting the goodwill of his
executors" (p. 58). Tzara obliges by doing his best to
-172-
avoid violating Dadaist Father Ball's ownership rights while
also borrowing from Ball's diary to explain the founder's
advocacy of borrowing indiscriminately to produce new
writing. While we may be obliged, in turn, to wonder who
owns the words from Ball's diary which Tzara guotes in
Stoppard's play, we are undoubtedly most struck by the
absurdity of a Dadaist's even bothering to claim copyright
protection. And the Dadaists sound ever more like a silly
lot of quacks as Tzara answers Joyce's query about the rela
tive merits of hats and coats as sources of Dadaist art with
the dry and untheoretical explanation that coats are
" Inferior to a hat in regard to the tendency of one or both
sleeves to hang down in front of the eyes, with the resultant
possibility of the wearer falling off the edge of the plat
form" (p. 59), but "Superior to a hat in regard to the
number of its pockets" (p. 59). Tzara continues to "Cor
roborate discreetly from any contemporary diarist whose
estate is not given to obsessive litigation over trivial
infringement of copyright" (p. 59) at Joyce's command, all
the while showing no sign of recognizing the irony of his
position. He offers a fact-filled diary quote followed by
his own recollection "of what was declaimed synchronously'
(p. 59) on the evening of March 30, 1916:
I began, "Bourn bourn bourn il deshabille sa chair
quand les grenouilles [. .]" Huelsenbeck began,
"Ahoi ahoi des admirals gwirktes Beinkleid
[. .]" Janeo chanted, "I can hear the whip
o'will around the hill at five o'clock[. . .]
The title of the poem was "Admiral Seeks House
To Let." (pp. 59-60)
-173-
The title may now be Travesties instead of "Admiral Seeks
House To Let, and we may now have simultaneous literary
styles rather than simultaneous languages, but what we have
just witnessed is nevertheless a brilliant simulacrum of the
Dadaist performance described in the interview.
But before we can take our hats off to Tzara to acknow
ledge this apparent tribute to Dadaism, Joyce has a few hat
tricks of his own which visually underscore a point which
has been lying in wait all along: the scraps of Dadaist
destruction have meaning and value only "because Stoppard
6 7
has transformed them with Joycean word-play." As the
idiom slips firmly back into Joyce's "Ithaca" mode (the
Brechtian-style quotations are now dropped), Joyce asks,
"Is it the case that within a remarkably short time per
formances of this kind made Dada in general and Tzara in
particular names to conjure with wherever art was dis
cussed?" (p. 60) and then casually, on the word "conjure,"
"he conjures from the hat a white carnation, apparently made
from the bits of paper" (p. 60). The moral is already
clearanybody with a pair of scissors can cut, but it takes
a real artist to perform the magic of pasting. Instead of
the familiar persuasive counterargument we have come to
expect from Stoppard, we witness a series of debilitating
blows to Tzara. First, Joyce "tosses the carnation at
TZARA" (p. 60)no subtlety in that insult--and then asks,
ibe this triumph?" (p. 60). At the
How would you descr
-174-
verbal level the question refers to the renown Dadaism has
achieved, but at the visual level, of course, it refers to
Joyce's triumphant carnation, which Tzara is "putting [. .]
into his buttonhole" (p. 60) when he offers his reply: "As
just and proper. Well merited. An example of enterprise
and charm receiving their due" (p. 60). The joke is on
Tzara as his words, intended as self-praise, attach them
selves instead to Joyce's artwork, now on display in the
Dadaist's buttonhole. Joyce proves himself the true "priest-
guardian of the magic" (p. 47) of Tzara's hypothetical
ancient tribe as he pulls silk hankies, then flags, from
the hat, all the while firing incriminating questions at
Tzara which undermine the significance of Dadaism. When,
for example, Joyce asks what Dada brought to art that had
not been previously brought in "Barcelona, New York, Paris,
Rome, and St. Petersburg" (p. 60)he produces a flag to
accompany the naming of each cityTtara can only respond
to this impressive wizardry with the decidedly lame answer,
"The word Dada" (p. 61). The question and answer session
come to an end as Joyce instructs Tzara to "Describe
sensibly without self-contradiction" (p. 61) how the word
Dada was discovered, an assignment we know to be impossible
given Tzara's past inconsistency, and then asks for details
on the factional rivalry which plagued the Dadaist move
ment.
-175-
Angry at the steady barrage of attacks, Tzara finally
lashes out at Joyce with a string of Irish slurs and then a
rebuttal: "You've turned literature into a religion and
it's as dead as all the rest, it's an overripe corpse and
you're cutting fancy figures at the wake" (p. 62), he
charges. Tzara's counterattack undoubtedly contains some
truthJoyce's writing, especially the fancy figures of his
Wake, requires the explication of a high priest of modern
ism much as the Latin Bible required a priest to reveal the
6 R
mysteries of the Sacred Word in medieval times but Tzara
destroys his credibility as he begins to destroy "whatever
crockery is to hand" (p. 62) as well. And as he childishly
smashes pots, he unwittingly sets the scene for Joyce's
eloquent "broken pots" speech, which more than any other
in the play contains the message of Truth.
Joyce begins, "You are an over-excited little man,
with a need for self-expression far beyond the scope of
your natural gifts" (p. 62), and while "This is not dis
creditable" (p. 62), "Neither does it make you an artist"
(p. 62). These words, like those that follow, are un
hampered by stylistic games or any hint of contradiction.
Nothing in the preceding scene or in the play as a whole
undermines Joyce's speech; unlike most of Act One, this set-
piece is an oasis of clear-cut referential language. An
artist is the magician put among men to gratify capri
ciouslytheir urge for immortality" (p. 62), he continues.
-176-
Temple and states come and go, but "If there is any meaning
in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in
the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of
nonentities" (p. 62)nonentities like Carr, who achieves
immortality in both Ulysses and Travesties. Art has no
immediate political obligations, Joyce in effect argues;
artists may justly celebrate even tyrants if this celebra
tion serves a larger purpose, for "What now of the Trojan
War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch?"
(p. 62), Joyce asks. "Dust" (p. 62), he answers. "A for
gotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for
new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots"
(p. 62), he continues, speaking from a stage littered with
the broken pots of Dadaist destruction, smashed in an effort
aimed at least in part at exposing the evils of capitalism
and imperialism, the same economic urges that started the
Trojan War. And who is not moved by Joyce's justification
of the Trojan War (capitalist motives and all) and of the
artist?
But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of
heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face
that launched a thousand shipsand above all, of
Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most
complete of all heroeshusband, father, son,
lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician,
inventor and adventurer. ..." (p* 62)
Anyone who feels any attachment to the Western tradition,
which is roughly everyone who bothered to attend the play,
is bound to hear the ring of Truth in Joyce's argument,
-177-
which, not coincidentally, is something of an "overdeter
mined" and eloquent restatement of Stoppard's own justifi
cation of art: "Art," he explained in his 1974 "Ambushes"
interview, "is important because it provides the moral
matrix, the moral sensibility, from which we make our judg-
6 9
ments about the world." And while he acknowledged the
"possibility of political art having a political effect in
close-up, in specific terms," he added, "though I can't
offhand think of an example of it happening."^
As critics are quick to point out, Joyce's speech was
not even a part of Travesties when rehearsals began; it was
71
"added at [Director] Peter Wood's urging." Werner goes
back to a still earlier stage of the play's composition and
72
notes that "Joyce wasn't even in the original plan," and
he takes this fact as a sign that "Travesties could hardly
have been intended as a forum for the propagation of his
esthetic message." While it is entirely possible that
Travesties was not intended as a tribute to Joyce, it is
just as clear that that is precisely what it turns out to
be. In immediate visual terms, Tzara is reduced to a child
throwing a temper tantrum and breaking everything in sight
while Joyce is elevated to the ranks of the artist-magician
who can transform the broken bits and pieces into whole
objects of beauty. But the visual dimension works as a
metaphor for their writing and retroactively discredits
Tzara. All the makers of meaning were presented as roughly
-178-
the same in the opening sceneall composed from scraps,
and all their writing needed an audience to provide a proper
context to turn the random scraps into meaningful utterances.
As Joyce's triumph over Tzara casts its shadow back onto
earlier scenes, though, we revise our appreciation of Tzara's
brilliant nonsense poems ("Eel ate enormous appletzara" and
the reshuffled eighteenth sonnet) and now give credit to
Stoppard for Joycean word-play. Tzara, then, is simply a
destroyer while Joyce and Stoppard are gifted reassemblers.
And from a still more distant perspective, we see the larger
equation: Stoppard's whole style in Travesties, his
catalogue of styles, his word-play, is a tribute to the
word-play and catalogue of style in Ulysses.
Though he hardly needs it, Joyce has the last word as
he instructs Tzara, in Bracknellian fashion, "to try and
acquire some genius and if possible some subtlety before
the season is quite over" (p. 63) With that, he bids the
speechless Tzara good morning, "produces a rabbit out of
his hat" (p. 63), and exits, "holding the rabbit" (p. 63).
While it could be argued that the plot of Earnest requires
that Joyce win his bout with Tzara just as Lady Bracknell
triumphed in her interview with Jack, it is important to
note that Tzara is never allowed an effective rebuttal to
Joyce. His earlier attacks on Joyce lacked credibility
because of their pervasive contradictions, and his one
chance to discredit Joyce in Act Two Tzara pronounces
-179-
that Joyce's writing "is graceless without being random;
as a narrative it lacks charm or even vulgarity; as an
experience it is like sharing a cell with a fanatic in
search of a mania" (p. 96)is more than a failure because,
due to the accidental swapping of folders, Tzara is unwit
tingly condemning Lenin's work on capitalism instead of
Joyce's "Oxen in the Sun" chapter, and poor Tzara, we recall,
admires Lenin. In spite of the battering he suffers from
Joyce, though, Tzara is not the real loser of Travesties.
That dubious honor belongs to Lenin, whose story is about
to be toldCarr warns us in his ramblings which end the
act, "now I'm on to how I met Lenin and could have changed
the course of history etcetera" (p. 64) in the driest,
most unplayful style imaginable. But before the curtain
falls on Act One, Carr returns once more to the topic of
Joyce and tells how he dreamed he had the Irish writer on
the witness stand, "a masterly cross-examination, case
nearly won" (p. 65) but when he "flung" (p. 65) the ques
tion at Joyce, "'And what did you do in the Great War?'"
(p. 65) Joyce answered, "'I wrote Ulysses1 [. . .] 'What
did you do?'" (p. 65). Joyce wins in Carr's dream even as
he won the actual court case over the money, and even as he
wins Travesties.
The audience leaves for intermission with all too few
questions to ponder, for in the closing moments of Act One
Travesties has subtly but radically changed course. It
-180-
began as an exploration of the limits of competing master
narratives, competing versions of Truth, much as Rosencrantz
is an exploration of the limits of competing theatrical
modes. But while Rosencrantz is able to withhold endorsement
of any single mode of representation and thus sustain its
questioning of Truth right through to the final curtain, the
presence of Joyce simply overwhelms Travesties. If Stoppard's
characters can find no effective rebuttal to Joyce, perhaps
it is because Stoppard himself can find no effective rebuttal
to this imposing Father of modernisma Father to whom
Stoppard owes an obviously large debt.
When the play resumes, it returns to the theme of the
folly of Truth, for above all else, Lenin's flaw lies in
his steadfast insistence that "Marx had shown the only way
forward" (p. 68). But this attempt to undermine the concept
of one Truth now has a hollow ring, for it is simply a theme
which is no longer supported by a structural ambivalence.
Instead of the constantly shifting ground of Rosencrantz,
which in effect demonstrates that play goes on in the absence
of Truth, Travesties settles on the firm ground of the
Joycean vision and simply tells us that Truth is folly. It
goes without saying that showing is more aesthetically
satisfying than simply telling, but it seems that in this
case at least, showing is also more politically effective
than telling. Rosencrantz offered us the rare and dislo
cating experience of proceeding in uncertainty, carrying on
-181-
in the absence of Truth, and this experience has the poten
tial to shake profoundly our whole Truth-centered conceptual
framework. But Travesties retreats back to the well-worn
and stable ground of Truth, and in doing so, it loses its
power as a critique of mastery, master narratives, Truth,
and the authority of authors. In "siding with Joyce on
74
major issues," Stoppard doubly restores essential com
ponents of the Author-Father-God model, for he writes with
authorial authority of the authorial authority of Joyce.
Even though the endorsement of Joyce works to restore the
authority of the "message" of the Author, however, the
traditional model of authorship is not simply placed back
on its pedestal whole and unchanged. Significantly, the
challenge to the concept of originality survives the play's
change'of course, for inasmuch as Joyce's artistic genius
resides in his ability to reassemble scraps of the Western
tradition into new work, Stoppard is able to endorse Joyce
without abandoning his critique of originality. Neverthe
less, because Travesties proves unable to sustain the open-
ended questioning of Truth which lay at the heart of the
Rosencrantz experience, Rosencrantz remains the more pro
foundly political, more potentially radical play, in spite
of the factor perhaps ultimately because of the fact
that Rosencrantz steers clear of the sort of patently poli
tical content which fills Travesties.
-182-
In spite of its regrettable turn toward Truth, however,
Act One remains theatrically effective, for it is richly
textured, intellectually stimulating, visually delightful,
and--simplyhighly entertaining, right through to its final
curtain. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Act
Two, which, quite apart from its Truth-centered problems,
fails as theater. Stoppard rather charmingly explained to
Hayman that he intended that Act Two open by boring us:
I thought,"Right. We'll have a rollicking first
act, and they'll all come back from their gin-and-
tonics thinking, 'Isn't it fun? What a lot of
lovely jokes!' And they'll sit down, and this
pretty girl will start talking about the theory
of Marxism and the theory of capitalism and the
theory of value. And the smiles, because they're
not prepared for it, will atrophy." And that to
me was like a joke in itself.7B
While the plan succeededaudience smiles most certainly
atrophy during Cecily's four page lectureStoppard quickly
realized that no one else found his joke funny. "I over
played that hand very badly," he admits, "and at the first
preview I realized that the speech had to be about Lenin
only ... I just blue-pencilled everything up to the men
tion of Lenin.Indeed, while the published version of
the text retains the entire lecture, Stoppard notes in his
stage directions that "The performance of this lecture is
not a requirement" (p. 66) and suggests that 'it could pick
up at any point, e.g. 'Lenin was convinced . orKarl
I It
Marx had taken it as an axiom .
(p. 66).
-183-
The new starting points he suggests cut at least half
of the lecture and spare us a considerable amount of bore
dom, but Act Two's problems are by no means confined to
Cecily's lecture. Whitaker provides a convenient catalogue
of the act's faults as he observes that "Reviewers have often
complained that the Lenin episodes in Act Two are simply
expository, that their documentary realism is at odds with
the notion of travesty, that they have no relation to The
Importance of Being Earnest, or that they cannot plausibly
77
be included in Carr's memory." And though Whitaker
attempts a generous defense of the act by presenting it as
a vital term in a dialectic which "reaches out to interro
gate its antithesis: the alleged importance of being in
deadly earnest," his defense is simply not convincing.
In the first place, he concludes his justification of the
act with a tacit admission that the dialectic fails: Lenin's
"merciless and self-contradictory violence stands in dark
contrast to [Joyce's and Tzara's] irreverant but celebratory
freedom."79 A true dialectic would have resulted in a
synthesis of the "celebratory freedom" of Act One and the
deadly earnestness of Act Two; no such synthesis occurs
because synthesis depends, as Whitaker observes a bit later,
on "clashes of opposed but almost equally plausible [italics
mine] arguments. No amount of wishful thinking can
transform the overt condemnation of Lenin into an argument
which even approaches the plausibility of Joyce s.
-184-
In any case, even if the dialectic had worked, other
problems remain. Reviewers are clearly correct to complain
that the Lenin episodes "have no relation to The Importance
of Being Earnest" and that "they cannot plausibly be in-
eluded in Carr's memory." Even Stoppard concedes the
second point: "Peter Wood's objection was unarguable: the
whole thing is within the framework of Carr's memory except
this bit. How do you get back people's belief if you
8 2
interrupt it?" The answer, as Stoppard knows, is that
you do not. But Stoppard resists suggestions that the
Lenins should have been incorporated into Earnest. "It
would have been disastrous to Prismize and Chasublize the
8 3
Lenins," for "that would have killed the play because of
84
the trivialization," he argues. Perhaps, but one notes
that neither Joyce nor the play suffers from the "trivial
ization" of turning Joyce into Lady Bracknell. Stoppard's
interview comments indicate that the exclusion of the
Lenins from the play of Earnest was motivated less by
respect and fears of trivialization than by an unequivocal
desire to damn Lenin. As he explained to Hayman:
What was supposed to be happening was that we have
this rather frivolous nonsense going on, and then
the Lenin section comes in and says, "Life is too
important. We can't afford the luxury of this
artificial frivolity, this nonsense going on in
the arts." Then he says, "Right. That's what
I've got to say," and sits down. Then the play
stands up and says, "You thought that was
frivolous? You ain't seen nothin yet. And
you go into the Gallagher and Shean routine, g^
That was the architectural thing I was after.
-185-
The problem with this plan is fairly obvious: in trying
to depict Lenin as unplayful and boring, Stoppard makes the
whole Lenin section unplayful and boring, and boring theater
is always bad theater.
As we sit through Act Two,we have to be thankful that
although Stoppard refused to incorporate the Lenins into
the play of Earnest, he did compromise in the revision
phase by bringing the Earnest frame back onstage through
the other characters. "In my original draft," he explained
to Hayman, "I took the Lenin section out of the play far
more radically than in the version you saw. I actually
stopped the play and had actors coming down to read that
8 6
entire passage from clipboards or lecterns." In the re
vised version, Cecily still lectures from "the front of the
stage" (p. 66), and she still translates the Lenins' revolu
tion conversation, "pedantically repeating each speech in
English, even the simple 'Nol and 'Yes! 111 (p. 70) Nadya
still addresses the audience "undramatically" (p. 79), and
Lenin still delivers his key speech "from a high rostrum"
(p. 85). But Stoppard punctuates the dull, undramatic
lecturing and reading with welcome intrusions of first
Carr, then Tzara, and finally the whole cast from Act One,
who bring with them the Earnest frame and its accompanying
jokes and frivolity.
Thus, Cecily's lecture on Marxism, capitalism, and the
theory of value, after firmly establishing Lenin's flaw as
-186-
unwavering "fidelity to Marx" (p. 68)"Marx had shown the
only way forward. To quote Marx was enough to settle an
argument. To question Marx was to betray the revolution"
(p. 68)is finally interrupted by the entrance of Carr,
"very debonair in his boater and blazer" (p. 70), who hands
Cecily "the visiting card he received from BENNETT in Act
One" (p. 71). Carr's entrance saves us from numbing exposi
tion about Lenin's work habits"He would work till the
lunch hour, when the library closed, and then return and
work until six, except on Thursdays when we remained
closed" (p. 70)by suddenly transforming the scene into
Earnest's meeting of Algernon and Cecily in the garden.
"You must be Cecily!" (p. 71), Carr exclaims, to which
Cecily replies, "Ssssh!" (p. 71). "You are!" (p. 71), Carr
responds with delight which equals our own at finally
hearing a joke.
Since Cecily is merely Lenin's misguided helper, not
the arch-villain himself, she is eligible to be inducted
into the Earnest frame, and after two abortive attempts to
win her over, Carr at last manages to tear Cecily out of
her Brechtian mode and away from her loyalty to Lenin.
"Ever since Jack told me he had a younger brother who was
a decadent nihilist it has been my girlish dream to reform
you and to love you" (p. 79), she admits as she enters
Earnest and leaves behind both Lenin and her Brechtian
The triple repetition of the scene works to
didacticism.
-187-
reimpose the control of Carr's faulty memory, for we
recognize that Carr's train is jumping its tracks again,
as it did in both the "newspapers and telegrams" seguence
and the "cucumber sandwiches" sequence of Act One. The
first version of the scene is primarily dedicated to re
storing humor and continuity, for unlike Cecily's lecture,
the dialogue between Carr and the librarian often reaches
out of the scene to connect with earlier jokes. Carr, for
example, tries to win Cecily's sympathy by telling her that
"an overly methodical education has left me to fend as best
I can with some small knowledge of the aardvark, a mastery
of the abacus and a facility for abstract art" (p. 72).
Stoppard gets a few extra miles out of the alphabetical
order joke as Cecily and Carr trade lines about anarchism,
Bolshevism, and Zimmerwaldism, naming the political move
ments as Cecily would have discovered them on the shelves.
Cecily's explanation that Lenin is certain that Western
agents are trying to prevent his return to Russia sets up
an old-fashioned jab at the British as well as reminding
us of Carr's remarkable incompetence as a consular official.
"The British are among the most determined, though the
least competent" (p. 72), she confides to Carr, who is, of
course, masquerading as Tzara. "Only yesterday the Ambas
sador received secret instructions to watch the ports
(pp. 72-73) she continues, just moments after having
informed us of the difficulties of Lenin's escape from
-188-
"this landlocked country" (p. 70). Stoppard taps the comic
potential of both Carr's consistent bungling and the mis
taken identity device he inherited from Wilde as he has
Cecily observe, "You are not a bit like your brother. You
are more English" (p. 73). "I assure you I am as Bulgarian
as he is" Cp. 73), Carr replies, unable to keep either the
Balkan states or the details of his assumed identity
straight. When Cecily, always the pedant, informs Carr
that Jack/Tzara "is Rumanian" (p. 73), he responds with his
usual unwarranted confidence, "They are the same place"
(p. 73).
Once Cecily and Carr settle in for the second version
of the scene, however, the jokes quickly vanish again, even
though the scene is ostensibly inside the playful Earnest
mode. Not only does Stoppard abruptly abandon the comic
mood called for by the Earnest frame, but he suddenly and
inexplicably transforms Carr from a bumbling fool lacking
even a rudimentary familiarity with the map of Europe into
a consistent and intelligent political analyst. As Carr
coherently and effectively shoots down Cecily's Marxist
arguments with witty, then eloquent versions of Stoppard's
own interview rebuttals to Marxism, we see the evidence
of Stoppard's having sacrificed the plausibility of his
character and the effectiveness of his architectural scheme
to the exigencies of presenting Truth. First, Carr suc
cessfully challenges Cecily's condemnation of socialist
-189-
politician Ramsay MacDonaldshe labels him "an economist
and opportunist" (p. 76)by asking, "But do you mean that
forcing up wages and voting their own chaps into power is
against the interests of the workers?" (p. 76). Then, he
rebuts her assertion that "Imperialism had introduced a
breathing space, but the inexorable working-out of Marx's
theory of capital" (p. 76) with, "No, no, no, no, my dear
girlMarx got it wrong" (p. 76). Finally, in a speech
whose Truth-value is matched only by Joyce's defense of the
artist, he delivers a cogent and unquestionably valid
historical analysis to support his contention that Marx
misread the evidence. Instead of behaving "according to
their class" (p. 77), Carr argues, the workers "showed
superior strength, superior intelligence, superior moral
ity . Legislation, anions, share capital, consumer
powerin all kinds of ways and for all kinds of reasons,
the classes moved closer together instead of further apart"
(p. 77).
Stoppard seems to have sorted out what his "answer
O O
would in the end be" if he were "given enough time to
think"89 every time he is asked why his plays are not
"political," but the Stoppard who does not know is a far
better playwright than the Stoppard who does know. Carr s
speech is too clearly a statement of Truth to need any
buttressing from external sources, but Stoppard's interview
statement accompanying his attack on Marx he got it
-190-
90
wrong" and on Lenin"in the ten years after 1917 fifty
times more people were done to death than in the fifty
91
years before 1917" is so uncharacteristic that it bears
quoting. "My plays are a lot to do with the fact that I
just don't know," he began in the 1974 "Ambushes" interview.
"Few statements remain unrebutted," he continued. "But I'm
not going to rebut the things I have been saying just now.
One thing I feel sure about is that a materialistic view
93
of history is an insult to the human race." In his un
qualified certainty, Stoppard is willing to break his con
trolling frame and send his senile, bumbling narrator on
stage to deliver an out-of-character, eloquent, coherent
version of the playwright's own rebuttal to Marxism. Per
haps the greatest unintended irony of the speech is the
moral Carr draws. "The critical moment never came" (p. 77),
he tells Cecily. "The tide must have turned at about the
time when Das Kapital after eighteen years of hard labour
was finally coming off the press, a moving reminder, Cecily,
of the folly of authorship [italics mine]" (p. 77). If
Marx's folly was presuming to know as he wrote, Stoppard's
critique is more than hollow.
Like Tzara's rebuttal to Joyce's key speech, Cecily's
refutation of Carr's critique of Marxism ultimately supports
what it aims to undermine. "Marx warned us against the
liberals, the philanthropists, the piecemeal reformers
from them but from a head-on collision,
change won't come
-191-
that's how history works!" (p. 77), she heatedly argues,
insisting as before that "Marx had shown the only way for
ward" (p. 68). But her-story, intended to illustrate Lenin's
"superior morality" (p. 77), damns the revolutionary more
surely than any other single attack in the play:
When Lenin was 21 there was famine in Russia.
The intellectuals organised reliefsoup kitchens,
corn seed, all kinds of do-gooding with Tolstoy
in the lead. Lenin didnothing. He understood
that the famine was a force for the revolu
tion [ . .] (p. 77)
What other tale could more effectively horrify and alienate
Western audiences, who so typically pride themselves for
their long tradition of liberal reform and "all kinds of
do-gooding"?
But now Stoppard's anxious question looms even larger:
"How do you get back people's belief if you interrupt
9 4
it?" And even more emphatically than before, the answer
is simply that you do not. The Earnest frame, whose seam
less pasting had previously been such a source of delight,
now often seem forced and contrived without the underpinning
a plausible Carr provided, and one senses the Earnest plot
fairly rushing to its conclusion. Carr wins Cecily's love
just by professing to agree with the contents of the folder
she gave him in the second version of the garden scene the
folder which she believes contains Lenin's manuscript, but
which, of course, actually contains Joyce's. Cecily crosses
over to the Earnest plot and style, and she and Carr embrace,
-192-
all in the space of one page of dialogue. Then, "NADYA
enters and comes down to address the audience, undrama
tically" (p. 79), and the play abruptly returns to its
unfriendly parody of Brecht's theater as Nadya stands on
stage and delivers a boring expository monologue chronicling
Lenin's preparation to return to Russia. Tzara's entrance
shifts the play back to Earnest for a moment, as Tzara/Jack
denies that Carr/Algernon is his brother, but while the
comic plot is more entertaining than Nadya's undramatic
exposition, it is simply spliced in and has no connection
with the Lenin story unfolding onstage.
The gap between the two plots grows wider when, after
more exposition accompanied by a Brechtian "projection
screen" (p. 81), Stoppard specifies that the stage be divided
into two separate playing areas: "The corner of the Stage
now occupied by TZARA and CARR is independent of the LENINS"
(p. 82) Tzara and Carr sit in one corner discussing the
merits of preventing Lenin's escape from Zurich while Nadya
provides the narration to accompany Lenin's statements from
their position at center-stage. And once again, Stoppard
allows Carr to step out of character and tell us what he
could not have possibly known in 1917: "You're an artist"
(p. 83) he observes to Tzara. "And multi-coloured micturi
tion is no trick to these boys, they'll have you pissing
blood" (p. 83) Just moments after that ominous warning,
we hear the "distant sound of [a] train setting off (p. 84) ,
-194-
represent the airbrushing in the theater, but he is adamant
that the maniacal tyranny captured in the photograph be
transferred to the stage. First he directs that "The image
on stage now recalls this photograph" (p. 85), and then in
remarkably emphatic and insistent language, he specifies
that "It is structurally important to the Act that the
following speech is delivered from the strongest possible
position with the most dramatic change of effect from the
general stage appearance preceding it" (p. 85) .
Lenin can no longer be said to be a character in the
play; he becomes "the orator" (p. 85), "the only person on
stage" (p. 85), and the audience becomes the crowd in the
public square. Stoppard explained to Hayman that as Lenin
delivers his harangue against freedom of the press--a sacred
cow for Westerners of virtually all political persuasions
he "keeps convicting himself out of his own mouth. It's
9 5
absurd. It's full of incredible syllogisms." Indeed it
is, as Lenin argues first that the press will be free, then
that the party will control it and will, of course, allow
no advocation of "anti-party views" (p. 85) Lest the
audience doubt the authenticity of the speech, Stoppard
had Nadya appear at its close to inform us that Ilyich
wrote these remarks in 1905 [. (p* 86). More Brechtian
exposition follows which confirms first Tzara's Act One
charge that political revolutionaries like Lenin have hope
lessly bourgeois artistic tastes and then Carr's prophetic
-193-
3-nci though Carr is now a more vestige of a character, the
context supplied by the play obligates us to sympathize
with Carr's belated decision to prevent Lenin's return to
Russia: "No, it is perfectly clear in my mind" (p. 84), he
decides too late. "He must be stopped. The Russians have
got a government of patriotic and moderate men[. . .] All
in all a promising foundation for a liberal democracy on
the Western model" (p. 84).
Though Lenin and Nadya have left Zurich and taken with
them any remote possibility that Carr's memory could now
include them, they reappear on stage to assure us that the
horrors Carr predicted all come true. As though he feared
giving -the audience any room to provide its own context for
interpreting the historical reality of the Russian Revolu
tion, Stoppard makes every conceivable effort to present
Lenin as a tyrannical monster. He first explains that
"There is a much reproduced photograph of Lenin addressing
the crowd in a public square in May 1920" (p. 84). Lenin
looks a bit like a maniac in the image, "his chin jutting,
his hands gripping the edge of the rostrum" (p. 84). In
case readers of the play are unacquainted with the Soviet
practice of airbrushing out revolutionary leaders who later
fell into disfavor, Stoppard notes parenthetically that
"This is the photo, incidentally, which Stalin had retouched
so as to expunge Kamenev and Trotsky who feature prominently
in the original" (p. 84). Stoppard may be unable to
-195-
warning that these boys will "have [artists] pissing blood"
(p. 83). Finally, the Beethoven sonata Tzara described in
Act One "is quietly introduced" (p. 89) to motivate Lenin's
last speech. "Amazing, superhuman music" (p. 89) he ob
serves. "It always makes me feel proud of the miracles that
human beings can perform" (p. 89). But there is no room
for human miracles in Lenin's totalitarian state, no room
for artistic expression: "I can't listen to music often.
It affects my nerves, makes me want to say nice things and
pat the heads of those people who while living in this vile
hell can create such beauty" (p. 89). And as the sonata
continues, reinforcing our faith in the unqualified goodness
of free artistic expression, Lenin, now a paranoid sadist,
exits to the vile hell he has created, amidst these last
self-damning words: "Nowadays we can't pat heads or we'll
get our hands bitten off. We've got to hit heads, hit them
without mercy, though ideally we're against doing violence
to people . ." (p. 89).
With Lenin at last safely removed, the play is free to
pick up the "celebratory freedom" it revelled in before the
Lenins spoiled the fun. "The 'Appassionata' swells in the
dark to cover the setting change to 'The Room'" (p. 89) and
to give the audience time to be emotionally moved and grate
ful that Lenin's iron fist cannot quash artistic freedom
in the West. The sonata then "degenerates absurdly into
'Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean'" (p. 89) and the play shifts
-196-
abruptly to a rhymed musical version of Earnest's tea
scene, in which Cecily and Gwendolen discover that they are
apparently engaged to the same man. Carr and Tzara enter
with their accidentally swapped folders, and their twin
admissions that they found the contents "Rubbish!" (p. 94)
and "Bilge!" (p. 94) quickly set the scene for the discovery
of the mistake and the comic happy ending.
But the rush toward the conclusion slows down as
"BENNETT enters with champagne for two" (p. 95) and Stoppard
returns for a brief period at the end of the play to the
kind of writing he does best. The jokes, in part because
they have no butt, are once again funny, and the language
is as dense and allusive as it was in Act One. Roughly
patterned after the muffin-eating episode immediately pre
ceding the comic resolution of Earnest, the scene opens as
Tzara repeats Cecily's observation that Bennett "has radical
sympathies" (p. 95). Carr's reply draws both substance
and style from Wilde, whose Algernon had once elegantly
complained about servants consuming household champagne.
"There is no one so radical as a manservant whose freedom
of the champagne bin has been interfered with" (p. 95),
Carr notes. But Tzara is not to worry because, Carr con
tinues, "I've put a stop to it" (p. 95). "Given him
notice?" (p. 95) Tzara asks. No, Carr replies, "Given him
more champagne" (p. 95). Tzara's response indicates that
he, like Bennett, has been fully coopted back into society:
-197-
"We Rumanians have much to learn from the English" (p. 95) ,
he comments approvingly. Then, seamlessly, Stoppard returns
to Carr's hopeless geography as the consular official ob
serves sympathetically to his Rumanian friend, "I expect
you'll be missing Sofia" (p. 95). Confused, Tzara corrects
him: "You mean Gwendolen" (p. 95). Carr "frowns; clears"
(p. 95) and sets things straight with "Bucharest" (p. 95),
finally naming the capital of Rumania. Carr's bumbling
continues as he replies to Tzara's "Oh, yes. Yes. Paris
of the Balkans ..." (p. 95) with "Silly place to put it,
really . ." (p. 95). And then, when Carr sips his cham
pagne, the jokes slide easily back to the cooptation of
Bennett as Carr sputters, "Is this the Perrier-Jouet, Brut
'89????'! I l" (p. 95), naming, of course, the brand Algernon
consumed under the guise of Earnest in Wilde's play. The
Perrier Jouet is, as Carr quickly realizes, "All gone . ."
(p. 95), the price paid to forestall the revolution and keep
social relations just as they are. Bennett's services are
clearly worth a few bottles of champagne, for he proves his
value again as he drops back into the familiar refrain of
Act One, "I have put the newspapers and telegrams on the
sideboard, sir" (p. 95) and proceeds to elegantly summarize
the news for his eminently uninformed master. Recycling
the "A, not-A" rhetorical strategy of his first news report,
Bennett recounts that "The Neue Zricher Zeitung and the
Zricher Post announce respectively the cultural high and
-198-
low point of the theatrical season[. . .] The Zeitung
singles you out for a personal triumph in a demanding role"
(p. 95). The rhetorical similarity between this cultural
report and Bennett's Act One war report also subtly recalls
Joyce's claim that in neutral Zurich "culture is the con
tinuation of the war by other means" (p. 51).
The connection, though, is probably too subtle for Carr,
but something in his free-associating mind triggers a link,
and he mutters "Irish lout" (p. 95) as Bennett exits, only
to return immediately to announce the arrival of "Mr. Joyce"
(p. 96). The play now hurries to its prearranged conclu
sion as Joyce scans the contents of Tzara's folder and
discovers that it does not contain his manuscript describing
"events taking place in a lying-in hospital" (p. 97). Just
as Lady Bracknell once boomed, "Prism! Where is that
9 6
baby?" Joyce now booms, "Miss Carr, where is that
missing chapter???" (p. 97). The folders are swapped,
followed by "a rapid and formal climax" (p. 97) and the
dance of comedy, which pairs Tzara and Gwendolen, Carr and
Cecily, but leaves Joyce and Bennett to dance independently,
awkward substitutes for Prism and Chasuble.
The dancers exit, but Old Carr and Old Cecily hobble
back on for a few closing words. Still a pedant after all
these years, Old Cecily tries to convince Old Carr that he
"never even saw Lenin" (p. 98) and was "never the Consul
(p. 98) and that his dates are all wrong--in short, that
-199-
the play we just watched has no historical validity. In an
obvious attempt to "get back people's belief"97 in "the
framework of Carr's memory," Stoppard gives Carr the last
words which deliberately recall the narrator's senile rambling
at the beginning of the play. "Great days . Zurich
during the war. Refugees, spies, exiles, painters, poets,
writers, radicals of all kinds. I knew them all" (p. 98),
he insists in defiance of Cecily's attempts to correct his
delusions. "I learned three things in Zurich during the
war. I wrote them down" (p. 98), he continues, still trying
to commit his memoirs to paper. "Firstly, you're either a
revolutionary or you're not, and if you're not you might
as well be an artist as anything else. Secondly, if you
can't be an artist, you might as well be a revolutionary . .
I forget the third thing" (pp. 98-99), Carr concludes as the
lights fade on Travesties.
With that, Carr leaves the play as he started it, a
confused old fool whose final senile rambling betrays no
hint of the mental astuteness he revealed when he first
courted Cecily in the library with coherent rebuttals to
her beloved Marxist ideology. We, too, leave this play
confused, wondering whether to believe in the Carr of the
opening and close of the play or in the Carr who so insight
fully revealed the errors of the Marxist way. If Carr s
credibility as a character has suffered from these implausible
flip-flops, Stoppard's credibility as a playwright has also
-200-
suffered, perhaps most obviously from Carr's unconvincing
swings, but from other radical shifts as well. We are given
a controlling frame which we invest with our belief, much
as we invest our belief in the Player's death by Guilden-
stern's hand in Rosencrantz. In both cases, the illusion is
broken, but the breaking of the illusions works toward
opposite ends in the two plays. When the Player gets up
after his convincing "death," we realize again that neither
playwrights nor the theater can bring us the Truth of death.
But when Carr stands up and effectively refutes Marxism
after his character has been defined by confusion and
ignorance, the aim is to turn the theater back into a forum
for bringing us Truth.
Of course, the most significant difference between the
two instances is simply that the Player's resurrection
worksand works brilliantlywithin the context of the play
while Carr's sudden coherence and insight remain irrecon
cilable and threaten to destroy the whole frame which makes
Act One possible. Carr's blatant inconsistency, the play's
most obvious flaw, is rooted in the dual nature of
Travesties itself. It began as a playful romp in Rosenerantz-
style uncertainty, for which Carr's senility and confusion
are ideally suited. But once the play turns from question
ing Truth to presenting Truth, Carr's memory no longer fits,
for its inaccuracy works at cross-purposes with the thrust
of Act Two, which seeks to present with certainty the
-201-
historical Truth about Russia in the 1920s in orden to
dispel any sympathy we might have felt toward Lenin and
his revolution.
The failed attempt at the end to reinstate Carr's memory
as the controlling frame should remove any lingering sus
picions that the dual nature of the play is somehow part of
a grand but subtle scheme whose point we are missing. If
anything, Stoppard's efforts to plaster over the crack which
has developed only call more attention to the gaping hole in
his architectural construct. Rather than trying to wish it
away, we can proceed more productively by accepting that
the flaw is there and then asking how and why it came to
be. Stoppard joins many of his critics in designating
Cecily's lecture as the beginning of the problem: "It was
99
a miscalculation," he admits, and then goes on to explain
the weakness as essentially a stylistic error. "What I was
trying to do was write a play which was an anthology of
different sorts of play and that was one sort. I mean dif
ferent kinds of style, different kinds of idiom.
This explanation is misleading on both counts, how
ever. In the first place, Travesties' problems begin with
Joyce's unrefuted speech in Act One, well before Cecily's
lecture, for once the play makes its decisive turn toward
Truth, the stylistic games lose their reason for being and
Carr becomes excess baggage. And we must steadfastly resist
any suggestion that the Brechtian style of the lecture and
-202-
the Lenin episodes is itself at fault. We know from ex
perience that the epic theater is by no means intrinsically
boring, and we need only look back to Bennett's Brechtian
reports on the Russian Revolution to realize that Stoppard
was perfectly capable of incorporating Brecht's idiom into
a playful and entertaining scene. It is not that Stoppard
confronted a style he could not play with; rather, he con
fronted subjects he could not play with.
Prodded by repeated interview questions-cum-accusations
about the apolitical nature of his plays, Stoppard finally
wrote a play that might qualify as "political" in the
limited sense that interviewers and even academic critics
so often use the term. But, ironically, the overtly poli
tical content of Travesties contributes directly to the
play's reinstatement of essential elements of the conserva
tive, Truth-centered model of authorship. Faced with the
competing visions of Joyce, whom he obviously admires, and
Lenin, whom he even more obviously detests, Stoppard ulti
mately proved unable to write from a position of not knowing,
proved incapable of creating the effect of playing in
uncertainty. Once he abandoned the distanced perspective
that had served him so well in Rosencrantz, to write instead
from an immediate, unfiltered perspective, Stoppard could
no longer sustain the play of questions which lay at the
heart of Rosencrantz's challenge to the Truth of authorship.
When Travesties shifts from exploring the limits of competing
-203-
visions of Truth to endorsing the Truth of the Joycean
vision, it becomes, in effect, yet another master narrative.
And when Travesties becomes a master narrative, not only does
it lose its power as a critique of mastery and Truth, but
it also begins to crack at the seams. Thus, in both aesthetic
and political terms, Travesties falls short of Stoppard's
earlier achievement in Rosencrantz, which, in spite of the
misguided attacks it has suffered at the hands of critics,
remains the more profoundly political and aesthetically
satisfying play.
Notes
Tom Stoppard, "First Interview with Tom Stoppard," in
Ronald Hayman, Tom Stoppard, Contemporary Playwrights Series,
3rd ed. (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1979),
p. 2.
2
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
(New York: Grove Press, 1967), p. 21.
3
Tom Stoppard, Travesties (New York: Grove Press,
1975) p. 62. All further quotations refer to this edition
and will be cited parenthetically within the text. Unless
otherwise indicated by brackets, all ellipses are Stoppard's.
^Tom Stoppard, "Ambushes for the Audience: Towards
a High Comedy of Ideas," Theatre Quarterly 4 (May-July
1974): 12-15. When Cecily explains to Carr that "Imperial
ism has introduced a breathing space, but the inexorable
working-out of Marx's theory of capital ..." (p. 76),
Carr replies, "No, no, no, no, my dear girl Marx got it
wrong. He got it wrong for good reasons but he got it wrong
just the same. And twice over. In the first place he was
the victim of an historical accident" (p. 76). Compare
Carr's argument to Stoppard's interview statement: Marx s
"theory of capital, his theory of value, and his theory of
revolution, have all been refuted by modern economics and
by history. In short he got it wrong" (p. 13). Similarly,
-204-
when Cecily announces that "the gap between rich and poor
gets wider" (p. 76), Carr argues, "But it doesn't" (p. 76).
In the same interview, Stoppard complains that playwright
David Hare includes in the published text of The Exhibition
"an epigraph in the form of a statistical table showing that
down the ages the top ten per cent of the population owned
eighty per cent of the property: (pp. 14-15). It bothered
Stoppard that Hare "only took the table down to I960 and
it so happens . that it goes on to show that by 1970 a
huge change had taken placea much less unequal distribu
tion" (p. 15). This interview, published as Travesties
opened in London, leaves little room for speculation about
where Stoppard stands on Marxism-Leninism.
Bertolt Brecht, "Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for
Instruction," in
Brecht on
Theatre,
(New York: Hill
and Wang,
1979) p
^Brecht, p.
71.
7
Brecht, p.
71.
^Brecht, p.
71.
9
Brecht, p.
71.
10
Craig Werner, "Stoppard's Critical Travesty, or, Who
Vindicates Whom and Why," Arizona Quarterly 35 (1979): 228.
^Werner, p.
228.
12Werner, p.
230.
^Werner, p.
230.
14
Werner, p.
235.
15Werner, p.
235.
16Thnmas Whitaker. Tom Stoppard (New York:
, p. 120.
1^Whitaker,
p. 120.
1 O
Whitaker,
p. 120.
"^Whitaker,
p. 121.
20
uWhitaker,
p. 108.
21John Simon, "Theater Chronicler," Hudson
(Spring 1976) : 79.
-205-
22
Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author," in Image-
Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wanq,
1977), p. 146.
23 .
Michael Hinden, "Jumpers: Stoppard and the Theater
of Exhaustion," Twentieth Century Literature 27 (SDrina
1981): 4.
24 .
Hinden, p. 4.
3^Hinden, p. 4.
^Hinden, p. 4.
27
Ian Donaldson, "'The Ledger of the Lost-and-Stolen
Office': Parody and Dramatic Comedy," Southern Review
(Adelaide) 13 i (1980): 47. ~
28
John William Cooke, "The Optical Allusion: Percep
tion and Form in Stoppard's Travesties," Modern Drama 24
(December 1981): 526.
29
Margaret Gold, "Who Are the Dadas of Travesties?"
Modern Drama 21 (March 1978): 59.
30Gold, p. 64.
33Gold, p. 64.
33Cooke, p. 528.
33Cooke, p. 528.
34Jim Hunter, Tom Stoppard's Plays (London: Faber and
Faber, 1982), p. 240, provides a full "translation" of
Tzara's opening poem:
Eel ate enormous appletzara
II est un homme, s'appelle Tzara
He is a man called Tzara
key dairy chefs hat he'lllearn oomparah
Qui des richesses a-t-il nonpareil
Who has unparalleled talent
III raced alas whispers kill later nut east.
II reste a la Suisse parce qu'il est un artist
He stays in Switzerland because he is an artist
noon avuncluar ill day Clara! ^
'Nous n'avons que l'art,' il declara.
'We have only art,' he declared.
-206-
3^Barthes, p. 148.
38Barthes, p. 148.
37
William Wordsworth, "Preface to Lyrical Ballads," in
Critical Theory Since Plato, ed. Hazard Adams (Atlanta:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971) p. 441.
38Gold, pp. 60-61.
39
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, in The
Norton Introduction to Literature, shorter 3rd ed., eds.
Carl E. Bain, Jerome Beaty, and J. Paul Hunter (New York:
W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1982), p. 708.
40
Cited in Whitaker, p. 113.
44Gold, p. 61.
42Hunter, p. 239.
43Stoppard, "First Interview," in Hayman, p. 10.
44Cooke, p. 535.
43Cooke, p. 535.
4 p.
DCooke, p. 535.
4^Cooke, p. 535.
48Cooke, p. 535.
^^Gold, p. 61.
50Whitaker, p. 123.
^Whitaker, p. 123.
52Wilde, p. 671.
53See Hamlet, 2.2.394-395, "the play, I remember,^
pleased not the million; 'twas caviary to the general.
54Whitaker, p. 120, argues that^Tzara's "moral and
political outrage wins our sympathy.
55Whitaker, p. 120.
^Werner, p. 235.
-207-
57
Werner, p. 228.
"^Hinden, p. 4.
~^Cooke, p. 528.
60Wilde, p. 675.
61
See Tom Stoppard, Artist Descending a Staircase, in
Albert's Bridge and Other Plays (New York: Grove Press,
1969), p. 105.
^^Stoppard,
"First Interview," in Hayman, p. 2.
^Whitaker,
p. 116.
^^Whitaker,
p. 116.
^~Vilde, p.
708.
^Wilde, p.
708.
^Whitaker,
p. 121.
6 8
In "The Literature of Replenishment: Postmodern
Fiction," the Atlantic, January 1980, p. 69, John Barth
observes, "But with Finnegans Wake or Ezra Pound's Canots
we need a guide because of the inherent and immediate dif'
ficulty of the text. We are told that Bertolt Brecht, out
of socialist conviction, kept on his writing desk a toy-
donkey bearing the sign Even- I must understand it; the high
modernists might aptly put on their desks a professor of
literature doll bearing, unless its speciality happened to
be the literature of high modernism, the sign Not even I
can understand it."
6 9
Stoppard,
"Ambushes," p. 14.
^Stoppard,
"Ambushes," p. 13.
71Whitaker,
p. 121.
72
Werner, p.
231.
73
Werner, p.
231.
74
Hinden, p.
4.
7 5
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in Hayman,
p. 9.
7 6
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in Hayman,
p. 9.
-208-
"^Whitaker,
p. 122.
7 8
Whitaker,
p. 124.
^^Whitaker,
p. 126.
^Whitaker,
p. 127.
^Whitaker,
p. 122.
^^Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
O O
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
84c, ,
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
8 5
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
8 7
See Stoppard, "Ambushes," pp.
12-13, and note
^Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
2.
89
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
2.
90
Stoppard,
"Ambushes," p. 13.
91
Stoppard,
"Ambushes," p. 12.
92
Stoppard,
"Ambushes," p. 13.
93
Stoppard,
"Ambushes," p. 13.
94
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
95
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
^Wilde, p.
715.
9 7
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
9 8
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
^Stoppard, "Second Interview with Tom Stoppard," in
Hayman, p. 143.
^^Stoppard, "Second Interview," in Hayman, p. 143.
CONCLUSION OR THE IMPORTANCE OF
BEING PLAYFUL
"I suppose that's the fate of all us art
ists [. . .] People saying they preferred
the early stuff."
Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing1
Because Stoppard is still writing plays and the direc
tion of his future work remains uncertain, it is far too
early to tell whether these words, spoken by Henry, the
playwright in Stoppard's most recent play, The Real Thing,
will ultimately prove true. The critical assessment of
Stoppard's work remains in the formative stage and continues
to be characterized by a deep split which divides his
critics into two opposed camps. If this split persists
after nearly two decades of criticism, perhaps it is be
cause Stoppard's canon is itself split: on one hand, we
find the early, derivative, playful plays which steer clear
of overt political content, and on the other, we have the
later, "realistic," socially committed plays. Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead remains, of course, the most out
standing example of "the early stuff," but a number of
shorter works such as The Real Inspector Hound and Artist
Descending a Staircase also retain the playfulness and
uncertainty which graced Rosencrantz. The Real Inspector
-209-
-210-
Hound in particular is reminiscent of Rosencrantz, for not
only is it free of any hint of overt political content, but
it is also openly derivative inasmuch as it is a broad
parody of Agatha Christie murder mysteries. And as in
Rosencrantz, the theatrical illusion is decisively dis
rupted as two drama critics, members of the on stage
audience, first critique the play and then get caught up
in its action. These early plays, scorned by members of
one camp as socially irrelevant, frivolous, and parasitical,
are warmly embraced by members of the other camp, who see
no reason to apologize for the plays' characteristic un
certainty and playfulness, or for the derivativeness that
makes so much of the playfulness possible. While critics
who favor the early plays never labelled them "parasitic,"
they have only recently begun to treat Stoppard's borrowing
as an essential element of a larger strategy. Michael
Hinden's reading of Rosencrantz (and other early plays)
as a tribute to "theatrical exhaustion" stands out as one
of the most coherent and intelligent attempts to incorporate
Stoppard's derivativeness into a more comprehensive reading
of the play.2 John Perlette also offers an invaluable
analysis of Rosencrantz as "Theatre at the Limit, for
his insistence on the intimate connection between the play s
form and its content pushes for just the sort of integrated
reading the play demands. But neither these two excellent
analyses nor the relatively few articles which proceed in
-211-
a similar direction have completed the work of revising
the critical assessment of Rosencrantz, for more than any
other Stoppard play, it has been the target of misguided
charges of "parasitism" and political irrelevance.
Unfortunately, just when Hinden, Perlette, and other
critics began to push for a revision of the "parasite" con
sensus on the early plays, Stoppard ceased his overt borrow
ing and started to write "original," socially committed
plays in the "realistic" mode. When the derivativeness
vanished, much of the playfulness and uncertainty dis
appeared as well, leaving straightforward dialogue which
often overtly addresses current social and political issues.
Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, for example, in spite of its
innovative incorporation of a full orchestra into the play's
main action, remains an essentially "realistic" play which
openly condemns the repression of free speech. It is set
in a Soviet mental hospital for political dissidents, and
its content leaves little room for speculating about where
Stoppard stands on Soviet repression. Night and Day, set
in an African country caught in the throes of revolution,
is likewise a "realistic" play which directly examines a
pressing issue: the proper role of the press in covering
such upheavals. Similarly, his television play Professional
Foul takes two British professors of philosophy to Czecho
slovakia (Stoppard's birthplace) where they are forced to
turn from the abstract theorizing of an academic conference
-212-
to fa.ce a real life" moral quandaryshould they risk
smuggling out the politically controversial doctoral disser
tation of one of the professor's former students, a Czech
citizen suffering persecution at the hands of the secret
police? For those critics who were uncomfortable with the
apparent irrelevance, lack of "seriousness," and "unorigin
ality" of Rosencrantz and other early plays, these later
works represent a welcome change to social commitment.
Carol Billman, for example, indicates her support of
Stoppard's turn toward relevance and commitment by observ
ing that Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, Night and Day, and
Professional Foul "truly represent social engagements on
Stoppard's part: these plays face squarely such issues as
4
governmental restriction of individual freedom."
While it might seem that Stoppard has made a firm
decision to abandon playfulness and derivativeness to write
"realistic" plays advocating social change, his most recent
play casts some doubt on such a conclusion, for The Real
Thing attempts a Rosencrantz-style exploration of the limits
of theatrical representation. Instead of death, love is
substituted as the thing which cannot be represented, whether
the mode of representation be Strindberg's naturalistic
theater or Ford's theater of "love in wigs and rhymed
couplets,"5 as the Player once described that style. Un-
forunately, the "realistic" frame Stoppard provides robs
the stylistic play of its potentially dislocating impact, for
after the opening scene, the characters are firmly grounded
-213-
in a stable context which allows the audience to account for
the intruding scripts in "realistic" terms. Furthermore, like
the transitional Travesties, which is caught halfway between
the early and late plays, The Real Thing also directly ad
dresses the relationship between art and politics and comes
down conclusively and emphatically on the side of the pure
artist whose only concern is excellence in craft. So, on
one hand, the play attempts a Rosencrantz-style exploration
of the theater's inability to bring us the Truth, and on the
other hand, it brings us the undisguised Truth about the
incompatibility of art and politics, reiterating the message
of the second half of Travesties. Of course, there is a
certain irony in Stoppard's using the traditional Truth-
centered, message-oriented mode which typifies his later
plays to deride Truth-centered, message oriented plays
just the sort of play that Brodie (The Real Thing's equiva
lent to Travesties' arch-villain, Lenin) attempts to write
i
from his jail cell.
Perhaps because The Real Thing tries to embody both
the early playful style and the later certain style, the
critical reaction to the play has been decidedly mixed, even
polarized. Depending on the critic, the style is reassur
ingly Stoppardian,"8 full of "witty puns, elegant jokes,
[and] comic misunderstanding,"7 or alternatively, "clear-
cut,"8 even "rather dull"9 because of its relentless pursuit
of its themes. It is, however, somewhat misleading to
speak of the critical reaction to the play, for if Stoppard
-214-
criticism as a whole is still in the formative stage,
criticism of The Real Thing remains in the embryonic phase.
Only two substantive articles have yet appeared, but the
widely diverging assessments they offer indicate that
Stoppard's latest play will leave his critics as deeply
divided as ever.
Centering his reading around the love relationships
which form one of the play's two main plots, Hersh Zeifman
sees The Real Thing as "Comedy of Ambush," very much in the
tradition of the early plays. In addition to the "reassur
ingly Stoppardian"^ style, he cites the "cunningly patterned
and allusive"11 first scene as "another Stoppardian signa-
12
ture." Zeifman briefly acknowledges that the play is
autobiographical: "Henry is a playwrighta playwright
with a reputation for being witty, clever, 'intellectual,'
much like Stoppard."13 But he does not give any indication
that he finds this remarkable, as it certainly is for a
playwright like Stoppard who had previously avoided auto
biographical revelations in favor of the distancing that
masks and layers of borrowed art provide. Furthermore,
Zeifman apparently overlooks the possibility that Henry's
autobiographical origins might work to lend his views a
special authority, for he reads the play as part of
Stoppard's early, playful tradition rather than as an
example of the later, message-oriented style. He asks,
"But is [Henry and Annie's] love 'the real thing'? What
is 'the real thing' when it comes to love?"14 Then, clearly
-215-
placing this latest play in the context of the uncertain,
early style, he asserts, "The rest of the play attempts to
answer these questionsor rather, as is typical of
Stoppard's plays, it bounces the questions around in a kind
of endless debate, with no single 'answer' shown to be
indisputably right. n1^
Not only does Zeifman see the content as open-ended,
but he also finds the form to be reminiscent of the dis
locating experience of early plays like Rosencrantz: "The
very structure of his newest playnot simply its thematic
content--dramatizes the difficulty inherent in determining
16
precisely what 'the real thing' is." "Once again," he
continues, "the form of a Stoppard play mirrors its theme."'*'
18
He describes "the Pirandellian opening" of the play, which
depicts Max discovering Charlotte's adultery, apparently
'the real thing,' but in fact a scene from Henry's latest
play, and observes, "Stoppard is deliberately shaking his
audience up." He continues by describing the series of
such "ambushes" which recur as the love relationships
develop and notes, "Stoppard uses this kind of structural
20
dislocation repeatedly in The Real Thing." Then, m
language which could easily be transferred to an analysis
of Rosencrantz with only a minor substitution of death
for "love," he asks, "Dramatists write constantly about
love, but can its 'real' essence ever accurately be cap
tured on-stage?"21 Thus, Zeifman undoubtedly sees The Real
Thing in the flattering light created by the early,
-216-
dislocating, playful works, and therefore declares Stop
pard's most recent play a success.
Richard Corballis, however, offers an almost dia
metrically opposed reading. Unlike Zeifman, he emphasizes
both the play's autobiographical origins and its second main
plot centered on the relationship between art and politics.
He notes the "remarkable similarities"22 between Henry and
Stoppard which "continue to emerge"23 throughout the play,
some trivial, like their shared love of cricket, but others
of unquestionable significance. Henry and Stoppard have
the same "attitudes to their work, for example,"2^ and when
"Henry argues vehemently that craftsmanship matters more
than content in the making of plays," he "echoes Stoppard
25
himself." After cataloguing other biographical links
between Stoppard and his character"both undergo divorce
before finding security in a second marriage (and the play
is dedicated to Miriam, Stoppard's second wife); neither has
26
much taste in music" Corballis explores one of the most
intriguing correlations between Stoppard and his character.
"Henry is goaded into a semblance of political commitment
when Annie persuades him to rewrite Brodie's play for
television,1,27 he observes. And while Corballis acknow
ledges "the political activism which has characterized
Stoppard's life and work since 1977," he questions the
parallel on the grounds that Stoppard's turn toward activism
"has been more whole-hearted than Henry's," as well as
"more durable."20 He draws a further distinction between
-217-
the real playwright and the character-playwright by noting
that 'the objects of Stoppard's political attentionsHavel,
Kohout, Bukovsky and the resthave always been more worthy
and substantial figures than Brodie, the straw man with
whom Henry is persuaded to involve himself."31 Corballis
concludes his extended discussion of the play's autobio
graphical roots by arguing that "this discrepancy between
Henry and Stoppard is enough to prove that The Real Thing
3 2
is not simply an autobiographical ramble," but he con
cedes that "a certain autobiographical input is undeniable
and it casts an interesting and unwonted shadow over the
33
play's conclusion."
Just as Corballis differs from Zeifman by giving more
attention to the "political art" strand of the play and to
its autobiographical roots, so he differs in reading The .
Real Thing as closer to the Truth-centered, message-oriented
style of Stoppard's later work than to the playful uncer
tainty of the early plays. He argues that "It analyzes two
important problems and comes to clear-cut decisions about
both of them."34 The first of the two problems he desig
nates, Annie's involvement in the "Justice for Brodie Com
mittee," is, as he argues, unambiguously resolved, for the
final scene discredits Brodie, and Annie's commitment to
this unredeemable thug, more thoroughly than even
Travesties' second half discredits Lenin. Corballis
i.35
sees a second problem in "Henry's theories about love,
36 and he argues that Henry
his "emotional sterility,
-218-
ultimately abandons his rigid, "clockwork" conception of
love to adopt a more flexible approach which is less static
idealistic, much as Annie abandons her idealized notion
of "Justice for Brodie." In both cases, "the play as a whole
comes down on the side of 'mystery' and repudiates 'clock-
37
work'" as it drifts "away from closed systems towards the
3 8
flux of reality." In Corballis's view, then, Stoppard
"has an important decision to make about his future work:
whether to pursue wit at the expense of morality ... or
3 9
to pursue the morality and minimize the wit." While he
expresses the hope that Stoppard "can rediscover the old
formula for leavening the moral 'mystery' with some engaging
4 0
'clockwork,'" he fears that Stoppard has sacrificed word
play and wit in The Real Thing to pursue moral themes
relentlessly: "Although some of the craftmanship is as
pleasing as ever, all this is as tinsel on the surface of
a play that plods its way, especially in Act Two, through
a succession of scenes which are both unduly static and
unduly similar in construction."^ Thus, he suspects that
Stoppard has taken to heart "the old accusation that his
4 2 .
plays 'don't really make clear statements,'" and in the
search for clarity of theme, "has produced a rather dull
i 43
play."
The two assessments differ so radically that one
wonders at first if Zeifman and Corballis are writing about
the same work. For Zeifman, The Real Thing is a playful
-219-
exploration of the theater's inability to represent love,
a series of comic "ambushes." For Corballis, it is a static,
autobiographical and dull play which minimizes comic games
to pursue morality. If Zeifman and Corballis read the play
as an example of two different types of theater, perhaps
it is because the play is itself divided. The love plot
does indeed seem close to Rosencrantz, for Stoppard revives
the strategy of employing different modes of representa
tion, different styles of theater, in an attempt to expose
the limits of what the stage can adequately represent. On
the other hand, the plot centered on the relationship between
art and politics bears a remarkable resemblance to Travesties1
second half, both in structure and in substance, and in
stead of questioning the theater's ability to bring us
Truth'and "reality," it delivers with certainty the message
that politics and art do not mix. But unlike Travesties,
which shifts from the playful mode to the message-oriented
mode at the halfway mark, The Real Thing blends the two
modes from the very beginning, for the love between Henry
and Annie depends upon a successful resolution of her mis
guided attachment to Brodie.
The play opens, as Zeifman observes, with a Pirandel
lian scene between Charlotte and Max which thoroughly
dislocates the audience. We expect exposition introducing
the characters and situation, but just when we have deter
mined that The Real Thing will focus on the impact of
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Charlotte's adultery, the scene shifts to a living-room
where a new and as yet unidentified man is sorting through
a pile of record albums. When Charlotte "enters barefoot,
wearing HENRY1s dressing gown" (p. 15), the audience im
mediately assumes that the man sifting through records is
the lover with whom she betrayed Max. But their dialogue
quickly establishes that Charlotte's new lover is in fact
her old husband, a playwright who is busily selecting the
eight records he "associate[s] with turning points" (p. 17)
in his life for a radio program which will feature his life,
work, and tastes in music and literature. He is having some
difficulty, though, because he is, as Charlotte later ex
plains, "a snob without being an inverted snob" (p. 24).
That is, while Henry likes pop music, he is afraid to admit
it because, as he explains, "I'm supposed to be one of your
intellectual playwrights. I'm going to look like a prick,
aren't I, announcing that while I was telling Jean-Paul
Sartre and the post-war French existentialists where they
had got it wrong, I was spending the whole time listening
to the Crystals singing "Da Doo Ron Ron'" (p. 17). In the
midst of discovering that the tune for which he has been
searching is the "Skater's Waltz,"he rejects that song
as "so banal" (p. 18)Max enters, explaining, "Henry
phoned . ." (p- 19)*
The ensuing dialogue establishes the stable frame for
the remaining trysts, for though Stoppard will
interpreting
-221-
work in segments of Strindberg's Miss Julie and Ford's
'Tis Pity She's a Whore, our expectations will never again
be so thoroughly dislocated, for the realistic frame he
provides for the characters hereafter remains consistent.
Not only is Henry a playwright, but Max and Charlotte are
both actors, and the opening scene, we learn, is taken from
Henry's latest play, House of Cards, in which Max and
Charlotte starCharlotte most reluctantly. As Henry's
wife she objects to the conclusion that the audience will
inevitably reach: "All those people out front thinking,
that's why she got the job" (p. 20). Then, introducing the
theme of the real versus the illusory which will run
throughout the play, she further objects to the audience's
"thinking that I'm her . coming in with my little suit
case and duty-free bag'It's me!ooh, it's her! so that's
what they're like at home" (p. 20). She protests that
Henry's play does not at all accurately represent their
domestic situation: "You don't really think that if Henry
caught me out with a lover, he'd sit around being witty
about placemats. Like hell he would. He'd come apart
like pick-a-sticks" (p. 22). That, she insists, is the
difference between plays and real life thinking time
(p. 22).
Max tries to defuse Charlotte's attack on Henry by
changing the subject to Annie, his wife: "Annie said she'd
come round if her committee finished early. She's on this
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Justice for Brodie Committee ..." (p. 22). Thus, before
the second scene is even half completed, Stoppard has intro
duced the second plot lineAnnie's work on the Justice
for Brodie Committee. Annie enters on cue with "a carrier
bag loaded with greengrocery" (p. 23), and while Charlotte
and Max are in the kitchen preparing vegetables and dip, we
discover that Henry and Annie are having an affair, that
Annie believes they should tell Charlotte and Max and end
the charade. When Henry protests, Annie introduces the
play's title by complaining, "You want to give it time
[. .] time to go wrong, change, spoil. Then you'll know
it wasn't the real thing" (p. 27). Before they can resolve
this difference in opinion, Max bursts into the living-room,
"bleeding from a cut finger" (p. 28). Henry offers him
his handkerchief, setting up the object which Max will dis
cover in Annie's car, leading him to conclude correctly,
as Othello had concluded mistakenly, that his wife has
betrayed him.
After Charlotte and Max reenter with the vegetables
and dip, Charlotte rudely questions Annie about her child
lessness and Henry retaliates against her bad behavior by
bringing up the one topic she has begged him not to men
tion: "I say, Annie, what's this Brodie Committee all
about. Charlotte was asking" (p. 31). Henry's plan back
fires, though, for as Annie reluctantly retells the story
of how she met Brodie on a train while travelling to an
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anti-missiles demonstration and persuaded him to join the
march during which he ignited the wreath to the Unknown
Soldier Henry's objections to such activism become the
target of an increasingly bitter attack. Max intones, "The
guts of it, the sheer moral courage. An ordinary soldier
using his weekend pass to demonstrate against their bloody
missiles" (p. 32). But Henry, perhaps more aware than Max
of the British role in developing the atomic bomb and of
NATO commitments, protests with the question, "Their? I
thought they were ours" (p. 32). When Max clarifies his
point, "No, they're American" (p. 32), Henry sarcastically
agrees, "Oh, yestheir . ." (p. 32). Henry likewise
questions Max's defense of Brodie, "He's a child" (p. 32),
by asking, "He kicked two policemen inside out, didn't he?"
(p. 33) Then Charlotte reveals that "when Henry comes
across phrases like 'the caring society' he scrunches up
the Guardian and draws his knees up into his chest" (p. 33)
Henry defends himself by asserting that "Public postures
have the configuration of private derangement" (p. 33) and
suggests that members of the Justice for Brodie Committee
are motivated not by altruism, but by "the desire to be
taken for properly motivated members of the caring society
(p. 33). Then, when Henry labels Brodie "an out-and-out
thug, an arsonist, vandalizer of a national shrine (p. 34)
Max protests that Brodie "got hammered by an emotional
backlash" (p. 34). Henry's rebuttal, "No, no, you can't
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[ ] I mean 'hammer' and 'backlash'" (p. 34) turns the
already heated discussion into a stormy verbal battle. Max
"puts down his glass definitively and stands up" (p. 34),
delivering his parting shots at Henry: "You may have all
the answers, but having all the answers is not what life's
about [. .] Brodie may not be an intellectual, like you,
but he did march for a cause" (p. 34). Annie, who cares
about people like Brodie, is, Max insists, "worth ten of
you" (p. 35).
This effective rebuttal of Henry's apparent political
apathy is, however, immediately undermined as Henry and
Annie take advantage of Charlotte's escorting Max to the
door to arrange a tryst for the afternoon. When Annie sug
gests meeting Henry at three, Henry asks, "What about Brodie?"
(p. 35). Annie's reply"Let him rot" (p. 35)foreshadows
the final scene's resolution of the Brodie problem, for
already her words suggest that Annie is not nearly as al
truistic and public-minded as Max would like to think. When
public altruism conflicts with private desires, Annie chooses
private desires.
Scene Three opens in a living-room whose "disposition
of furniture makes the scene immediately reminiscent of the
beginning of Scene I" (p. 35). In place of Charlotte s
breezy entry, it is Annie who now enters to greet Max. She
wants very much to listen to the radio program about Henry,
but Max wants to talk. In the first scene, Max asked
-225-
Charlotte, "How's Ba'l" (p. 10), referring to Basel in
Switzerland, the country Charlotte had purportedly visited
on her business trip. Now, Max asks Annie, "How's Julie?"
(p. 36), referring to Strindberg's Miss Julie, the play Annie
has purportedly been rehearsing. When Annie asks for
clarification as Charlotte had when Max brought up the
topic of her Swiss sale, Max replies, "Julie. Miss Julie.
Strindberg's Miss Julie. Miss Julie by August Strindberg,
how is she?" (p. 36). His words, of course, draw their
rhythms from the parallel speech Henry had written for him
in Scene One: "Good sale. Was the sale good? The sale in
Geneva, how was it?" (p. 12). The problem in the first
scene was Charlotte's passport, which Max had discovered
in her recipe box. The parallel object here is "Henry's
handkerchief" (p. 36), now "soiled and blood-stained"
(p. 36). Annie at first tries to dismiss the whole thing
"Well, give it back to him" (p. 36)but Max's syntax and
calm "theatrical" style from Scene One collapse as he
sputters, "I did give it back to him. When was he in the
car?" (p. 36). After a pause, he resumes, "It was a clean
handkerchief, apart from my blood. Have you got a cold?
It looks filthy. It's dried filthy. You're filthy"
(p. 36). When Annie confesses, Max tries to believe "It
didn't mean anything," (p. 37), but Annie tells him, I m
awfully sorry, Max, but I love him" (p. 37).
-226-
Thus, this scene coyly toes the line between the real
and the illusory, for Stoppard suggests simultaneously that
it is "the real thing" and that it is not. On one hand,
Max's inelegant sputtering supports Charlotte's contention
that "that's the difference between plays and real life
thinking time" (p. 22), time to compose an elegant response
to the discovery of adultery. Furthermore, the scene is
given the air of "realism" because both characters are firmly
grounded in the stable outside frame of the play. But on
the other hand, the cunning parallels between this scene
and the first suggest that Charlotte's distinction between
real life and plays may not be so great after all. The
"real" Max borrows the pattern of the "artificial" Max's
speech, and the handkerchief not only parallels the passport
from Scene One, but it inevitably recalls that most famous
of handkerchiefs from Othello. As he did in Rosencrantz,
Stoppard works in this scene to blur the distinction
between reality and illusion. If Stoppard does not now
-dislocate his audience's assumptions as thoroughly as he
once did in Rosencrantz, it is mainly because The Real
Thing, unlike Rosencrantz, establishes a solid context for
interpreting the various versions of love and provides
stable ground for the audience to stand on.
In spite of the multi-layered theatrical games within
it, Scene Four, which depicts Henry and Annie in the living-
room formerly occupied by Henry and Charlotte, remains
-227-
solidly grounded in the controlling "realistic" frame.
Stoppard specifies that "the disposition of door and furni
ture makes the scene immediately reminiscent of Scene 2"
(p. 37), but beyond the set and Annie's entrance, "barefoot
and wearing HENRY's robe" (p. 38), Scene Four does not bear
much resemblance to Scene Two. The scene opens with Henry
suffering writer's block"I can't write it. Let me off"
(p. 38)unable to compose the play about love that he
promised Annie as a gift. After some talk about their sex
life, Henry and Annie begin to read "without inflection"
(p. 39) the script of Strindberg's Miss Julie to help Annie
learn her lines. Stoppard selects a remarkably rich scene,
for their reading of Strindberg's dialogue culminates in
the question, "'Where did you learn to talk like that?
Do you spend a lot of time in the theater?" (p. 40). The
line reverberates beautifully, for it is not only borrowed
from Strindberg's play about love for Stoppard's play about
love, but it overtly suggests what Scene Three implied with
Max's Miss Julie speechitself borrowed from Henry's play.
That is, the emotion we call love may depend as much on art
as artistic representations of love depend on the "real
life" emotion. As Roland Barthes argues, Without the
always anteriorBook and Code, no desire, no jealousy.
[. # .] Paolo and Francesca love each other according to
the passion of Lancelot and Guinevere [. 1* itself a
lost origin, writing becomes the origin of emotion
As
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Stoppard's characters enter into the endless chain of links
in the code of love, the distinction between the "real"
love of Henry and Annie and the "artificial" love depicted
in plays blurs. But this blurring of "real" love and "arti
ficial" love undoubtedly falls short of Rosencrantz's
elimination of the distinction between "real" and "artifi
cial" death, mainly because we never doubt that Henry and
Annie are "realistic" characters completely contained within
the "realistic" mode. When other scripts intrude, they may
add textual interest and stimulate thought, but they never
disrupt or supercede the controlling frame.
Because we never really doubt the "realistic" terms of
the depiction of Henry and Annie's love, we are not pushed
by the structure of The Real Thing to question the ability
of the theater to adequately represent love. We may con
template the filtering of love through layers of art, but
the play does not demand the sort of radical revision that
Rosencrantz required, for in Rosencrantz there is no stable
ground. One mode replaces another and then another, and no
controlling frame provides a resting place. Perhaps because
we do believe in the representation of Henry and Annie's
love, Stoppard resorts to telling us that love cannot be
represented, whereas in Rosencrantz he showed us that death
cannot be represented. "I don't know how to write love"
(p. 40), Henry, the playwright announces after the Strind
berg reading. He continues,
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I try to write it properly, and it just comes
out embarrassing. It's either childish or it's
rude. And the rude bits are absolutely juvenile.
I can't use any of it. My credibility is already
hanging by a thread after Desert Island Discs.
Anyway, I'm too prudish. Perhaps I should write
it completely artificial. Blank verse. Poetic
imagery. (p. 40)
Then he declares love not so much unknowable, as was death
in Rosencrantz, but simply "unliterary" (p. 40). "It's
happiness expressed in banality and lust" (p. 40), he
insists.
Annie's disappointment that Henry has not been able to
write her play about love creates friction between the pair,
and they argue first about jealousywith Annie complaining
that Henry never expresses jealousyand then about Brodie--
with Henry challenging Annie's use of the term "political
prisoner" (p. 43) and punctuating the dialogue with sar
castic remarks about "Trotsky Playhouse" (p. 41). Henry,
however, does not want to fight with Annie, especially since
he must soon depart to pick up his teenaged daughter, Debbie,
from the riding stables, and he delivers a conciliation
speech which is interesting in itself but doubly so because
it has evoked such polarized readings from Stoppard's
critics. "I love love" (p. 44), he tells Annie.
I love having a lover and being one. The in
sularity of passion. I love it. I love the way
it blurs the distinction between everyone who isn't
one's lover. Only two kinds of presence in the
world. There's you and there's them. (p. 44)
Corballis cites this passage as evidence of Henry's "emo
tional sterility" (p. 45) and rigid, "clockwork" "theories
-230-
4 5
about love" and argues that "at the end of Scene IV we
find him expatiating complacently on the insularity of
46
passion." Zeifman's reading, on the other hand, is more
generous to both Henry and Stoppard. He describes the passage
itself as "moving, sincere"^ and furthermore, "seemingly no
4 Q
longer mediated by theatrical borrowing."
The reconciliation scene is, however, interrupted by
"the alarm on HENRY's wristwatch" (p. 44), which goes off
to signal that it is time to pick up Debbie. Corballis
4 9
reads Henry's "digital-watch-complete-with-alarm" as a
metaphor for his "clockwork" state of mind, for digital
watches were "the target of [. .] ridicule in the featured
scene from 'House of Cards,'"5^ Scene One of The Real Thing.
Zeifman, though, reads the watch in the larger context of
Stoppard's allusive play, arguing that "if theater keeps
ambushing 'real life,' so 'real life' constantly evokes
theater,"51 for after "Henry bravely risks his own 'voice'
by declaring his love for Annie," the alarm on the watch
53
startles us, "breaking [the] tender love scene" and
reminding us "that what we have been watching is indeed a
scene: a 'theatrical' moment deliberately created and then
shattered."5^ He observes that "We have heard that sound
beforespecifically, in the opening moments of Genet s
The Maids, where it similarly destroys the illusion of
reality."55 Zeifman's reading is not only more generous
than Corballis's, but also more comprehensive and perceptive,
-231-
for in the London production I attended, Henry's speech
was indeed every bit as moving and sincere as Zeifman de
scribes it, not at all the sort of sterile and complacent
passage Corballis suggests. Corballis's reading of Henry's
love for Annie suffers in general from his attempt to reduce
the complexity and allusiveness of the "love" plot to the
simplicity and straightforwardness of the "political art"
l
plot. While Zeifman can be faulted for ignoring the second
plot almost completely, his reading of the "love" plot easily
surpasses Corballis's.
When Act Two opens, Henry and Annie are two years
older, and in spite of Annie's attempts to instill in Henry
an appreciation of "good" musicclassical musicHenry
remains^ hopelessly attached to "Buddy Holly and Richie
Valens" (p. 46). But while he may not have much of an ear
for "good" music, his ear for "good" scripts remains, we
learn, as finely tuned as ever. It transpires that Brodie
has, at Annie's urging, written a television play explain
ing his "symbolic," hence "political," arson in the hope
that bringing his imprisonment to the attention of the
public will effect his release. Annie has asked Henry to
read the play and give his opinion, which he is reluctant
to do given the wretched state of the script. When pressed,
though, Henry volunteers to read some of it aloud for
Annie as well as for the audience. Brodie's script is,
as Corballis argues, "gauche and unmarketable," consisting
-232-
of patently awful exchanges about British trains not run
ning on time even though Britain is, Brodie contends, a
fascist country like Mussolini's Italy. Henry is justly
appalled by both the "extremely silly and bigoted" (p. 49)
content and "the problem that [Brodie] can't write" (p. 49).
The debate which follows is reminiscent of the repeated
debates within Travesties about the relative merits of craft
and political motivation in producing art. Annie takes the
position that the author and his motivations take prece
dence over writing ability. She rebuts Henry's accusation,
"if it wasn't Brodie you'd never have got through it"
(p. 49), by arguing, "But it i_s Brodie. That's the point"
(p. 49). She further charges that Henry is "bigoted about
what writing is supposed to be like" (p. 49). She con
tinues with the rather credible argument that "You judge
everything as though everyone starts off from the same
place, aiming at the same prize. Eng. Lit. Shakespeare out
in front by a mile, and the rest of the field trying to
close the gap" (p. 49). Henry rejects her argument, though,
by replying that "writing rotten plays is not in itself
proof of rehabilitation. Still less of wrongful convic
tion" (p. 50), and that any sympathy the public might have
felt for Brodie will vanish after "they've sat through his
apologia" (p. 50) because "it's half as long as Das KapitajL
and only twice as funny" (p. 51).
-233-
Their debate, which is absolutely central to the
"political art" plot, continues for several minutes of
playing time, and as it approaches its culmination, it
begins to bear an ever increasing resemblance to the sub
stance, and finally the structure, of the confrontation
between Tzara and Joyce in Travesties. When Annie charges
that Henry is "jealous of the idea of the writer" (p. 51),
that he wants "to keep it sacred, special, not something
anybody can do" (p. 51), her argument recalls Tzara's posi
tion that "making poetry should be as natural as making
57
water," for both would like to make authorship more "demo
cratic," something anyone, no matter how untalented, can do
Annie asks Henry, "What's so good about putting words
together?" (p. 51), unknowingly setting herself up for the
play's most convincing rebuke, for like Joyce, Henry is a
gifted reassembler of words. She is, however, allowed one
last credible argument before her position is destroyed by
her husband's unquestionably superior counter-argument.
"You teach a lot of people what to expect from good writing
(p. 51), she begins, "and you end up with a lot of people
saying you write well" (p. 51). Brodie, she continues,
"really has something to say, something real" (p. 51), un-
li]^0 Henry, who has "to think up something to write about
just so [he] can keep writing" (p. 51).
Even Henry concedes that her argument is persuasive
"Jesus, Annie, you're beginning to appal me. There's
-234-
something scary about stupidity made coherent" (p. 51)
but he immediately asks for his cricket bat, which will
serve a function akin to the scrap-filled hat Joyce conjured
from while rebutting Dadaism. If anything, Henry's cricket
bat is an even more effective visual metaphor than Joyce's
hat, for it is free of any hint of the sham, the cheap
trickery, that one inevitably associates with magicians'
hats. "This thing here" (p. 52), he begins, "which looks
like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular
wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the
whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor" (p. 52). "If
you get it right" (p. 52), he explains, "the cricket ball
will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all
you've done is give it a little knock" (p. 52). Plays are
like cricket bats, Henry maintains. In a well-crafted play,
ideas, when given "a little knock" (p. 52), will "...
travel ..." (p. 52). But Brodie's play is merely "a lump
of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket
bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel
about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about
shouting 'Ouch!'" (p. 52). Well-crafted plays, like well-
sprung cricket bats, are not "better because someone says
[they are] better" (p. 52): they are simply better because
they work. Like Joyce's speech on the Trojan War, Henry's
cricket bat speech has the unmistakable ring of Truth.
-235-
And just as Joyce argues that the job of the artist
is to gratify men's "urge for immortality,"58 so Henry
ultimately rests his case by citing the immortalizing func
tion of art: "If you get the right [words] in the right
order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which
children will speak for you when you're dead" (p. 54). But
Henry's position does not really need the reinforcement of
Joyce's speech in Travesties but buttress its credibility,
for in addition to the highly effective cricket bat metaphor
and the dependable immortality argument, Henry offers a
stunning rebuke to the content of Brodie's play which serves
to erase any doubts about the Truth value of his stance. He
charges that Brodie announces "every stale revelation of the
newly enlightened" (p. 53) and proceeds with a short list:
"war is profits, politicians are puppets, Parliament is a
farce, justice is a fraud, property is theft . It's
all here" (p. 53). He describes reading Brodie's play as
an experience like that of "being run over very slowly by
a travelling freak show of favourite simpletons" (p. 53).
Annie, though not speechless as Tzara was after Joyce's
rousing finale, can only respond by pulling Henry's latest
script out of his typewriter and reading aloud the movie
adventures of "Kronk and Zadok" (p. 55), two science fiction
spaceship pilots. Henry interrupts her reading to rebut,
"That's not words, that's pictures[. . .] Anyway, alimony
doesn't count" (p. 54). Before she leaves, though, Annie
-236-
reminds Henry, "You never wrote" (p. 55) my play, the one
he promised her as a gift, the one about love. Though
Henry concedes this point"That's true, I didn't. I
tried" (p. 55)and in conceding lends credence to Annie's
charge that he cannot write about important things, real
things, his admission of failure does little to undermine
the credibility of his larger defense of craft. In a certain
sense, it even supports his argument that writers should
privilege craft over content, for the one time he tried to
start with content, with the topic of love, he failed. A
critic willing to venture into the treacherous realm of
autobiographical revelation might even suggest that Stop
pard's own voice can be heard here, tentatively admitting
the mistake of certain later plays, the mistake of trying
to start with a topic, an issue, and in doing so, sometimes
sacrificing the very elegance of craft that the real life
playwright, no less than his character-playwright, values
so highly.
The scene ends as Henry offers to follow Annie to
Glasgow while she rehearses 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, but
though she argues that she is going to stay in London
to "get Brodie's play off the ground" (p. 55), the follow
ing scene opens with her "sitting by the window of a moving
train" (p. 55) bound for Glasgow, proving that Henry has
won on this issue as he so clearly won the argument about
art. Billy, the actor who will play Giovanni opposite her
-237-
Annabella, enters the train compartment, and in a Scottish
accent like Brodie's, first asks, "Is this seat taken?"
(p. 55), and then comments, "You'd think with all these
Fascists the trains would be on time" (p. 56). Billy is,
of course, drawing his lines from Brodie's play, which he
has also read. Annie is suitably startled by his line about
Fascists"Jesus, you gave me a shock" (p. 56)but while we
may join her in being temporarily dislocated by the intrusion
of Brodie's script, the dialogue quickly ushers us back to
the solid ground of the controlling, "realistic" frame.
Zeifman argues that "this scene reverses the Pirandellian
59
trick of the opening scene," for while we think we are
watching a scene from a playBrodie's play, from which
6 0
Henry has just finished reading," the scene is in fact
"'really' happening." While Zeifman is accurate in noting
the reversal, it is somewhat misleading to equate the
thorough dislocation of Scene One with the relatively minor,
short-lived dislocation in this train scene, for in a matter
of only four lines of dialogue the confusion is sorted out
as Brodie's play is unambiguously identified as a play ,
within the larger, stable play. As Billy begins to flirt
boldly with Annie, though, finally dropping into his lines
from 'Tis Pity She's a Whore to express his attraction for
Annie/Annabella, the scene subtly foreshadows the final
scene's resolution of the nagging Brodie problem. Annie
has tried throughout the play to maintain the impression
-238-
that Brodie's participation in the anti-missiles demonstra
tion was motivated by the right reasonspublic, altruistic
reasons. But the private desires motivating Billy in this
train sceneand Billy will act the part of Brodie when the
arsonist's play is finally airedare, we will learn in the
play's closing moments, precisely the same kind of desires
that had motivated Brodie to follow Annie to the march.
Stoppard separates the train scene, which ends with
Billy courting Annie through the mediation of 'Tis Pity She' s
a Whore, from its parallel scene, in which Billy/Giovanni
and Annie/Annabella will again exchange Ford's passionate
dialogue, with a straightforward domestic scene. While
Annie is away in Glasgow, Henry visits Charlotte's home to
say good-bye to his daughter, Debbie, who is "going on the
streets" (p. 61) in Henry's phrase, though she insists that
she is merely going "on the road, not the streets" (p. 61).
The scene is decisively grounded in the "realistic" mode,
and while it is not a notably playful scene, it does serve
several thematic ends. Henry's conversations with both
Charlotte and his daughter firmly establish him as "the
last romantic" (p. 65), not just in matters of love, but,
as Henry reveals, in "work, music, literature, virginity,
[and] loss of virginity" (p. 67) as well. Charlotte's
warning, "You've still got one to lose, Henry" (p. 67),
points to the metaphorical loss of virginity he will ex
perience when Annie threatens his romantic ideals by having
-239-
an affair with Billy. Charlotte's search for the playbill
listing the name of the actor who played Giovanni opposite
her Annabella,.and who also, not coincidentally, took her
virginity, points just as clearly to Annie's upcoming affair.
And when the 'Tis Pity She's a Whore scene opens, it
fulfills the expectations created in the "realistic" domestic
scene, for Annie and Billy are indeed embarking on an affair.
Zeifman argues that this scene from Ford raises the ques
tion, "who are we watching make loveAnnabella and Giovanni,
6 2
or Annie and Billy?" He maintains that "the 'artificial'
and the 'real,' theatre and life, have begun to overlap and
6 3
merge, to bleed into one another." Though his reading of
the love plot is on the whole perceptive, in this particular
case his interpretation suffers, I think, from forcing the
Rosencrantz model onto a scene which is not, in fact, dis
locating and in the end does very little to blur the dis
tinction between plays and real life. The Ford scene is,
after all, perfectly plausible in the "realistic" terms of
the controlling frame: Annie and Billy are both actors,
and like Charlotte and the actor who once played Giovanni
to her Annabella, they find the rehearsal situation an
inviting opportunity to strike up an affair. Rather than
breaking the outside context, then, the Ford scene meshes
smoothly with the "realistic" frame of the play.
Likewise, the following scene, though repeating the
pattern of discovered adultery from Scenes One and Three,
-240-
works more to reinforce the air of "realism" surrounding
Henry and Annie's relationship than to call it into ques
tion. As in Scene Three, Annie enters breezily, drops off
her coat, and again faces a barrage of questions, this time
from Henry instead of Max. After discovering that Henry
has rifled through her belongings just as Max had once
rifled through Charlotte's in House of Cards, Annie tells
Henry, "You should have put everything back. Everything
would be the way it was" (p. 70), echoing Max's Scene One
lines, "You should have just put [your passport] in your
handbag. We'd still be an ideal couple" (p. 13). But aside
from the patterning effect of these parallels, the scene
proceeds in a very "realistic" fashion, for just as
Charlotte had predicted in Scene Two, Henry does not in
"real life" respond to the discovery of adultery with ele
gant speeches about Rembrandt placemats. As Henry's normally
polished syntax shows signs of strain, the scene increasingly
supports rather than undermines the distinction Charlotte
made between "plays and real life" (p. 22). Henry's
desperate questioning of Annie stands in sharp contrast to
Max's composed, even flippant speeches in Henry's play,
encouraging the perception that Henry's relationship with
Annie, unlike the relationship depicted in House of Cards,
is in fact "the real thing."
After a very brief scene depicting the filming of
Brodie's play, during which we learn that Henry has
-241-
apparently given in to Annie's demands and rewritten the
piece, the play shifts back to Annie and Henry for another
highly "realistic" domestic scene. The expectation created
by the play's openingthat we would witness a "realistic"
portrayal of the impact of adultery on marriageis finally
fulfilled in The Real Thing's penultimate scene, for we do
indeed get a glimpse of Henry's attempt to behave well while
Annie carries on her affair with Billy. Billy and Brodie
are, as Corballis observes, "almost composite personali-
64
ties," and the evidence that Annie is tiring of her affair
with Billy points toward the play's conclusion, when Annie
will reject Brodie outright, and, in rejecting him, pre
sumably remove Billy from her life as well. Perhaps the
most interesting passage in this scenewhich by itself
probably deserves the "rather dull"^ evaluation Corballis
gives to the play as a wholeis Henry's explanation of why
he rewrote Brodie's play. He tells Annie, "I write in
order to be worth your while[. . .] Without you I
wouldn't care" (p. 77). But because he loves Annie, he
explains, "I change my socks, and make money, and tart up
Brodie's unspeakable drivel so he can be an author too,
like me" (p. 77). He notes, however, that his rewrite does
not seem "to have done him much good" (p. 77) and suggests
that maybe "the authorities saw that it was a touch meretri
cious" (p. 77). Then, recalling Debbie's mention of
"meretrix, a harlot" (p. 62), he contemplates aloud the
-242-
Latin root of the term "meretricious""Meretrix, meretricis.
Harlot" (p. 77). His suggestion that he has prostituted
himself by rewriting "Brodie's unspeakable drivel" (p. 77)
might tempt a critic given to drawing autobiographical con
nections to suggest that, as in the cricket bat scene,
Stoppard's own voice can be heard speaking through Henry,
expressing some regret, however tentative, that he ever
compromised his position that craft must take precedence
over "the desire to be taken for [a] properly motivated"
(p. 33) member "of the caring society" (p. 33).
The final scene emphatically reinforces the impression
that Henry has prostituted himself, for when the contro
versial Brodiealternatively a "political prisoner" (p. 42)
or "an out-and-out thug" (p. 34)finally makes an appear
ance, he conforms completely to Henry's "thug" description.
Lenin may have received a severe thrashing in Travesties'
second half, but the portrayal of Lenin looks almost subtle
in comparison to this devastating denunciation of Brodie.
After watching a videotape of Henry's revised version of
his play, Brodie admires Henry's video machine and notes,
"I'll have to nick one sometime" (p. 80). But Brodie is
not just a thief, he is also disgustingly sexist, as his
increasingly lewd comments about Annie reveal, and a bigot
as well, as his slur against homosexuals indicates. Stop
pard adds to these character flaws arroganceBrodie main
tains that his play was better before Henry "wrote it
-243-
clever" (p. 81)and ingratitude, for he informs Henry, "I
don't owe you" (p. 81), because, as he sees it, the rewrite
did nothing to secure his release: "I'm out because the
missiles I was marching against are using up the money they
need for a prison to put me in" (p. 81). Finally, Brodie's
revolting behavior prompts Annie to reveal that when she met
him on the train, "he didn't know anything about a march"
(p. 82), that he was merely impressed to meet the actress
who had starred in his favorite childhood television series.
"By the time we got to Liverpool Street he would have
followed me into the Ku Klux Klan" (p. 82), she admits.
Annie only reveals the obvious about Brodie, who has
by this time been reduced to a mere caricature, a one
dimensional, black-hatted villain. But her explanation for
standing by him for so long, "What else could I do? He was
my recruit" (p. 82), not only reveals the truth about her
self, but also serves to complete the vindication of Henry,
who, we recall, had wisely argued in Scene Two that "Public
postures have the configuration of private derangement"
(p. 33). Annie's pose of public altruism is shattered,
for, as Corballis argues, the scene confirms "that her
loyalty was a matter not of abstract principle but of per
sonal guilt."66 She signals the end of her loyalty to this
unqualified thug as she "picks up [a] bowl of dip and
smashes it into his face" (p. 82).
-244-
If there has been all too little subtlety in both the
characterization of Brodie and the conclusion of Annie's
attachment to him, at least Brodie's parting shot at Henry
restores some degree of depth to this rather bombastic
scene. In mock sympathy, he confides to Henry, "I don't
really blame you. The price was right" (p. 82), using the
same terms of prostitution to describe the revision that
Henry himself had earlier used. As he recalls Annie's visit
while he was in prison, Brodie indicates that he fully
understands why Henry sold himself to gain Annie's favors:
"There was a thrill coming off her like she was back on the
box, but there was no way in[. . .] You know what I mean"
(p. 83). With that, Brodie makes his exit, neatly solving
the Brodie problem and, we must assume, the Billy problem
as well.
While The Real Thing, like Travesties, banishes the
villain who threatens art before moving into its happy end
ingnot only do Henry and Annie embrace in reconciliation,
but Max, who last appeared in Scene Three, calls to say he
is engaged to be marriedthe structural similarity between
the two plays' resolutions is overshadowed by the vast
stylistic differences between them. In Travesties, Stoppard
had revived the playful, derivative style for one last dance
before the final curtain, but the conclusion of The Real
Thing remains firmly and unambiguously grounded in the
straightforward "realistic" mode which has, except perhaps
-245-
for the brief Miss Julie reading in Scene Four, increasingly
dominated the play since the close of the dislocating open
ing scene. If the conclusion of The Real Thing bears little
stylistic resemblance to the resolution of Travesties, it
bears still less to the uncertain, thoroughly dislocating
play of styles which ushers in Rosencrantz1s last curtain.
The stylistic differences between The Real Thing and Rosen
crantz profoundly affect the substance of the two plays as
well, for while Rosencrantz's final dance of styles refused
closure, creating doubts about the theater's ability to
bring us the "reality" of death, The Real Thing1s unambiguous
"realism" creates just the opposite effect. In spite of
Henry's speech announcing "I don't know how to write love"
(p. 40), Stoppard's latest play leaves us firmly convinced
that love can be adequately represented on the stage, that
the "realistic" mode is up to the task of bringing us the
Truth about love, certainly, but about the incompatibility
of art and politics also. While Stoppard's Rosencrantz-
6 7
style games in Act One may be "as pleasing as ever," I
fear that Corballis is correct to conclude that they are
simply "tinsel on the surface of a play that plods its
ft fi
way" toward a clear-cut, "realistic" resolution.
If The Real Thing seems to plod rather than to dance,
perhaps it is because we judge it in relation to the early,
sparkling Stoppard style instead of simply comparing it to
other "realistic" plays. As a "realistic" play, it is at
-247-
plays. Henry's qualms about "politically committed" plays
may be evidence of Stoppard's own reservations, but such
connections are always suspect, especially with a play
wright who has previously proven as slippery as Stoppard,
and the unambiguous "realism" he adopts to present these
qualms weighs heavily against the conclusion that Stoppard,
like his character-playwright, will never compromise him
self again by writing "committed" plays.
As much as those critics who prefer "the early stuff"
might wish it otherwise, The Real Thing must finally be
seen not so much as a tentative but promising return to
the delightful, playful tradition of the early plays, but
as another example of the message-oriented style which
characterizes his later work. This strikes me as most
regrettable, for Stoppard's early plays, especially Rosen-
crantz, are not only more theatrically effective than the
"rather dull," "realistic," later plays, but potentially
more politically effective as well. By firmly avoiding
overt political content in Rosencrantz, Stoppard created
room to play with the larger concepts of Truth, "realism,"
and "originality," key concepts which (to borrow a phrase
from the playwright himself) form "the moral matrix, the
moral sensibility, from which we make our judgments about
9
the world." As he playfully challenged Truth and
"realism" in Rosencrantz, Stoppard gently nudged us toward
a revision of the notions that authors write to bring us
-246-
least moderately successful, for Henry and Annie's love is,
on the whole, quite convincing, and though the caricatured
Brodie threatens the credibility of the "political art"
plot, this second strand clearly survives the threat, and
Henry's cricket bat speech retains its aura of Truth. But
Stoppard's own construction of the play invites critics to
measure The Real Thing against Rosencrantz, his most dazzling
achievement, for he attempts to revive for his treatment of
love the strategy that had served him so well before as he
explored the limits of the theater's ability to bring us
the "reality" of death. And compared to Rosencrantz's sus
tained challenge to the Truth of competing modes of repre
sentation, The Real Thing's sporadic stylistic games seem
rather unimpressive, to say the least.
Because it provides such conflicting evidence,
The Real Thing offers at best only a cloudy indication of
Stoppard's future work. While we might be tempted to read
both the revival of the dislocating stylistic games and
Henry's convincing condemnation of "political art" as signs
that Stoppard, after a bout with activism, will return to
the apparently apolitical, playful style of early works,
we must pause to note that The Real Thing's stylistic games
are mere window dressing on an otherwise "realistic" play,
and further, that Henry's condemnation of "committed" but
poorly crafted art remains firmly in the Truth-centered,
message-oriented mode of Stoppard's own later, "committed"
-249-
Stoppard has more recently abandoned his structural
challenges to this decidedly unprogressive model to pursue
a more limited, thematic expose of the folly of "political
art." While these later plays may be easily accessible
precisely because they conform to traditional ideas about
how authors should write and how theater should function
they do not even approach the genuinely dislocating, pro
foundly political achievement of the structurally playful,
boldly derivative, and delightfully uncertain early plays.
Notes
'Torn Stoppard, The Real Thing (London: Faber and
Faber Limited, 1983)/ p. 62.
2
Michael Hinden, "Jumpers: Stoppard and the Theater
of Exhaustion," Twentieth Century Literature 27 (Spring
1981): 1-15.
3
John M. Perlette, "Theatre at the Limit: Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead," forthcoming in Modern Drama.
^Carol Billman, "The Art of History in Tom Stoppard's
Travesties," Kansas Quarterly 12 (Fall 1980): 52.
^Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
(New York: Grove Press, 1967), p. 63.
Hersh Ziefman, "Comedy of Ambush: Tom Stoppard's
The Real Thing," Modern Drama 26 (June 1983): 140.
7
Zeifman, p. 140.
O
Richard Corballis, Stoppard: The Mystery and the
Clockwork (New York: Methuen, 1984), p. 139.
9Corballis
, P.
148
''^Zeifman,
P-
140.
11
Zeifman,
P*
140.
-248-
the Truth, that art exists merely to mirror life. The
blending and clashing of openly borrowed theatrical styles
not only caused us to question the ability of any single
mode of representation to bring us the Truth about "reality,"
but it also implicitly challenged the model of originality
in authorship, for Rosencrantz is an undisguised "tissue of
quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.
Rosencrantz1s implicit challenge to originality becomes
explicit in the first half of Travesties as Stoppard not
only borrows boldly and pervasively again, but depicts his
Author-Fathers assembling master narratives from borrowed
scraps as well.
In issuing a sustained challenge to the traditional
concept of authorship, Stoppard worked in Rosencrantz and
the first half of Travesties to topple a model whose
political affiliations are profoundly conservative. Draw
ing its structure from both the biblical tale of the crea
tion and the model of masculine reproduction, the tradi
tional view of the author reinforces a theocentric, exclu
sively masculine world view. But by refusing the white robe
and beard of the God-like Author, Stoppard strived in early
plays to make room for texts which clearly have no single,
legitimate Father, which do not seek to provide the One
legitimate theoretical discourse. Unfortunately, in
response to repeated misreadings of his refusal of mastery
as aimless frivolity and reprehensible "parasitism,"
-250-
^2Zeifman, p.
140.
13_ _
Zeifman, p.
140.
14
Zeifman, p.
140.
^Zeifman, p.
141.
16 *
Zeifman, p.
141.
17
Zeifman, p.
141.
^Zeifman, p.
141.
19
Zeifman, p.
141.
2^Zeifman, p.
141.
21
Zeifman, p.
143.
22Corballis,
P.
138.
22Corballis,
P-
138.
24
Corballis,
P-
138.
2~*Corballis,
P-
138.
2^Corballis,
P-
139.
2^Corballis,
P-
139.
2^Corballis,
P-
139.
2^Corballis,
P-
139.
2^Corballis,
P-
139.
2^Corballis,
P-
139.
22Corballis,
P-
139.
22Corballis,
P-
139.
74
^Corballis,
P-
139.
^Corballis,
P-
146,
2^Corballis,
P-
143.
"^Corballis t
P-
146.
-251-
^Corballis, p. 146.
"^Corballis, p. 148.
40
Corballis, p. 148.
^"''Corballis, p. 147.
^Corballis, p. 148.
^Corballis, p. 148.
44
Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller
Hill and Wang, 1974), pp. 73-74.
^Corballis, p. 143.
^Corballis, p. 143.
4 7
Zeifman, p. 145.
48
Zeifman, p. 145.
^Corballis, p. 143.
^Corballis, p. 143.
^Zeifman, p. 145.
"^Zeifman, p. 145.
^Zeifman, p. 146.
^Zeifman, p. 146.
^Zeifman, p. 146.
^Corballis, p. 140.
57
Tom Stoppard, Travesties (New York: Grove
1975), p. 62.
5 8
Stoppard, Travesties, p. 62.
so
Zeifman, p. 143.
^Zeifman, p. 142.
6 1
Zeifman, p. 142.
^Zeifman, p. 145.
(New York
Press,
-252-
^Zeifman, p. 145.
64
Corballis, p. 145.
^Corballis, p. 148.
^Corballis, p. 140.
^7Corballis, p. 147.
^Corballis, p. 147.
6 9
Tom Stoppard, "Ambushes for the Audience:
a High Comedy of Ideas," Theatre Quarterly 4 (May1
1974): 14.
70
Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author,"
Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill
1977), p. 146.
Towards
July
in Image-
and Wang,
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L
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Barbara Stephenson was born in Miami, Florida, in
1958, but she grew up far from the city lights in rural
central Florida. She received her education in the Florida
public schools. After delivering a high school Valedictory
address in 1976, she received her A.A. from Lake-Sumter
Community College in 1977, earning a perfect grade point
average in spite of the haste. Upon graduating with high
honors from the University of Florida in 1979, with a B.A.
in English and Latin American area studies, she travelled
in Europe for three months before returning to the Univer
sity of Florida to begin graduate work in English. She
received her M.A. in the spring of 1981, studied ancient
Greek drama in Greece that summer, and then returned to
the University of Florida yet again to embark on doctoral
studies in English. After completing her dissertation,
Ms. Stephenson will work for the United States Department
of State as a Foreign Service Officer specializing in
political affairs.
-258-
I certify that I have read this study and that in my
opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality,
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Sidney R. Homan, Chairman
Professor of English
I certify that I have read this study and that in my
opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality,
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Richard B. Kershner, Jr.
Associate Professor of English
I certify that I have read this study and that in my
opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality,
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
John M. Perlette
Associate Professor of English
I certify that I have read this study and that in my
opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality,
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
I certify that I have read this study and that in my
opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality,
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
David L. Shelton
Associate Professor of Theater
This dissertation was submitted to the Graduate Faculty of
the Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts
and Sciences and to the Graduate School and was accepted
as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy.
December, 1985
Dean, Graduate School
LD
1780
1985
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IN DEFENSE OF PLAY: A REASSESSMENT OF
TOM STOPPARD'S THEATERS
By
BARBARA JEAN STEPHENSON
A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
1985
for my husband, Matthew Furbush, who made this,
and so many other dreams, come true
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe sincere thanks to several friends for their help
on this project: to Ms. Cathy Griggers, for working so
closely with me in the early, theoretical stages; to Mr.
Scott Barnes, for proving a cheerful and able proof-reader
at the end; to Dr. David Shelton, who graciously joined my
committee at a late date, bringing with him an impressive
knowledge of the theater; to Dr. Robert Thomson, for sharing
his enthusiasm about Stoppard as well as his books; to Dr.
Jack Perlette, for his remarkably careful comments and sug
gestions and for introducing me to critical theory years
ago; to Dr. Brandon Kershner, who invariably proved more
than willing to share his immense knowledge and keen cri
tical insights, and whose special friendship made possible
many informal discussions which directly shaped large sec
tions of this dissertation. In particular, though, I am
deeply grateful to my director, Dr. Sidney Homan, for pro
viding time to complete this project, for arranging that
wonderful meeting with Stoppard, for sharing his insights,
but most of all, for teaching me to love the theater as
iii
he does.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii
ABSTRACT V
INTRODUCTION 1
Notes 43
ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD OR TOM STOPPARD
DOESN'T KNOW 50
Notes 124
TRAVESTIES OR TOM STOPPARD SORTS IT OUT 131
Notes 203
CONCLUSION OR THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING PLAYFUL 209
Notes 249
BIBLIOGRAPHY 253
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 258
IV
Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate
School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
IN DEFENSE OF PLAY: A REASSESSMENT OF
TOM STOPPARD'S THEATERS
by
Barbara Jean Stephenson
December 1985
Chairman: Sidney R. Homan
Major Department: English
Tom Stoppard's first major play, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead, ignited a divisive critical contro
versy that has persisted until the present. Though the play
enjoyed long initial runs and continues to be performed and
anthologized, it has faced bitter charges of theatrical
"parasitism" and political irrelevance. Only recently have
critics begun to develop an effective rebuttal to these
charges, but even as the hostile critical consensus began
to be replaced by more perceptive readings of Stoppard's
early, playful derivativeness, the author, apparently in
response to the attacks on his overt borrowing and perceived
irrelevance, started to write serious, "original," plays
directly addressing social and political issues.
I defend the early, playful works, especially Rosen
crantz arguing that their overt derivativeness and resis
tance to closure constitute a structural challenge to a
highly conservative model of authorship, a challenge
v
complemented by the content of the plays. After investi
gating the theological and exclusively masculine roots of
the traditional concept of the author, I argue that inasmuch
as this model works to preserve both patriarchal authority
and a theocentric world view, Stoppard's efforts to topple
itby defying "originality" and refusing to present
authorial Truthcan only be read as politically progressive.
The bulk of this study, however, is devoted to close
readings of Rosencrantz, Travesties, and The Real Thing.
I contend that the open-ended and boldly derivative Rosen
crantz is not only Stoppard's most theatrically effective
play, but his most profoundly political achievement as well.
I read Travesties as a transitional play, for while its
first half explicitly challenges "originality" in author
ship, the second half takes a regrettable turn toward Truth,
sacrificing both the play's critique of authorial authority
and its theatrical effectiveness. Although Stoppard attempts
in The Real Thing to revive the play of styles which graced
Rosencrantz, I find that the "realistic" controlling frame
reduces the potentially dislocating impact of these games,
so that the play unfortunately remains closer to the style
of Stoppard's later, socially "committed" plays than to the
delightfully derivative, playfully uncertain style of
Rosencrantz.
vi
INTRODUCTION
When the curtain rises on Tom Stoppard's Travesties,
James Joyce, Tristan Tzara, and Lenin are seated in a
Zurich library during World War I, writing. Tzara works
in the best Dadaist fashion by cutting paper, word by word
into a hat and reading the nonsense results. But Tzara's
nonsense poem, beginning "Eel ate enormous appletzara"^
happens to make sense as awkward French, "II est un homme,
2
s'appelle Tzara," more sense, it seems, than the phrases
Joyce dictates to his aide, Gwendolen, from the scraps of
paper he pulls not from a hat, but from his pockets:
"Morose delectation . Aquinas tunbelly . Frate
porcospino" (p. 19). Meanwhile, Lenin is searching for
material to use in his work on imperialism in the books
brought to him by Cecily, the librarian, when his wife,
Nadya, enters to announce a "revolutsia" (p. 19) in St.
Petersburg. Upon Nadya's reassurances that the news is
true--"Da, da, da!" (p. 20), she affirms in Russian, sound
ing, of course, like Tzara "explaining" Dadaism--Lenin
hurriedly gathers his papers so that he may rush to attend
to the revolution, dropping one of them in the process.
After Joyce picks up Lenin's dropped paper and reads it
-1-
-2-
aloud, the scene is taken over by Henry Carr, a British
consular officer, who begins orally "writing" his memoirs
of Zurich during the First World War. But in Carr's faulty
memory, which controls the play, his recollections of sharing
Zurich in the late 1910s with Joyce, Tzara, and Lenin are
dominated by his obsession with his own "personal triumph
in the demanding role of Ernest, not Ernest, the other one"
(p. 21), in fact, Algernon of The Importance of Being
Earnest, the play performed by members of the English speak
ing community in Zurich under the management of James Joyce.
Political revolution, artistic revolution, art assembled
from scraps of papereven before this brief opening scene
is over, Travesties has introduced many of the issues which
have become central to Stoppard criticism. What is the
proper relationship between art and politics? Can writing
produced by pulling scraps of paper from a hat properly be
called art? Or is such derivative writing inferior to
"original" art which stems solely from the creative genius
of the artist? Is there a connection between pulling art
out of a hat and fostering political revolution? In
Travesties, only Tzara sees such a connection, for Dadaists
contend that political revolution requires a smashing of
the great traditions of art, performed by cutting master
pieces into scraps. Joyce finds art politically neutral,
yet he produces his writing by pulling scraps of paper from
his pockets, assembling the already written Odyssey and the
-3-
Dublin Street Directory for 1904 into Ulysses, just as
Tzara produces his writing by pulling scraps of paper from
his hat, reassembling the already written Shakespearean
sonnets into his nonsense poems, which, in Stoppard's hands,
sometimes turn out to make sense after all. Not only does
art come out of a hat, Travesties indicates, but so does
all writing, for Lenin makes his book on imperialism by
gathering existing writing on economics and placing it in
a new context. And no doubt Carr's attempts to write a
history of Zurich during World War I illustrate Tzara's
contention that "history comes out of a hat too" (p. 83).
If Travesties does not provide the final word on the
relationship between art and politics, it does point un
equivocally to the inevitable derivativeness of all writing.
Not only does Stoppard make this point repeatedly and
emphatically within the playscissors, hats, and pockets
form a recurring motif, and characters discuss copyrights
and the relative merits of pockets and hats as sources of
art--but Stoppard's own construction of Travesties also-
underscores the point yet again: Travesties itself comes
out of a hat, for the play is a collage of The Importance
of Being Earnest, excerpts from Lenin's Collected Writings,
snippets from Ellmann's biography of Joyce, bits from Eliot
and Shakespeare, segments of songs, and numerous other
sources. What is true of Travesties is true of other major
Stoppard plays as well. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
-4-
Dead likewise comes out of a hat, a hat containing most
notably Hamlet, and, unmistakably, Waiting for Godot. And
like Travesties, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead ex
plores the concept of authorship within the play as well.
Even The Real Thing, one of Stoppard's most "realistic"
plays, incorporates Strindberg's Miss Julie and Ford's 'Tis
Pity She's a Whore into the play's larger exploration of
authorship and the validity of "political" art.
All writing may be derivative, but few writers call
more attention to the derivativeness of their writing than
Stoppard, for he does not just quietly borrow as so many
writers before him did: Stoppard flaunts his borrowing,
making it a central issue in his plays, borrowing even title
characters from Hamlet, easily the most well-known play in
English. In choosing such a strategy, Stoppard challenges
the traditional model of the God-like Author who creates
his original masterpiece out of nothing, for the model
cannot peacefully coexist with such foregrounding of the
derivativeness of art. Furthermore, the model of author
ship Stoppard challenges is, as we shall see, inherently
conservative, for it is both an exclusively masculine model,
tightly linked to male procreation, and an essentially
theological model, inasmuch as the mythic account of God
creating the universe out of nothing heavily shapes and
structures it.
-5-
Given his intense focus on derivativeness as a central
fact of writing, and given the conservative political affili
ations of the model of authorship challenged by this focus
on derivativeness, the critical response to Stoppard seems
particularly ironic. Critics attack Stoppard precisely for
his derivativeness, condemning him as a "parasite" who
borrows from other, more "original" writers to make his
derivative, hence inferior, plays. Then, apparently over
looking the political implications of his challenge to the
traditional model of authorship, they complain that his plays
are apolitical or politically conservative and should,
therefore, be devalued. These complaints, remarkable in
themselves, are even more remarkable for their unusual
vehemence and characteristic tone of moral indignation, for
we are accustomed to thinking, albeit wrongly, of critical
judgments, and the critical tools employed in making such
judgments, as morally and politically neutral, and thus
unlikely to incite passion.
The tone of the debate surrounding Stoppard's worth as
a playwright has been so passionate, in fact, that David
Bratt resorted to battlefield imagery in his excellent
scholarly review of Stoppard criticism, depicting supporters
and detractors as members of two warring camps trading heated
blows. Centering his overview on the issue of derivative
ness, Bratt explained that the anti-Stoppard camp rallies
3
around the "charge that Stoppard lacks a voice of his own"
-6-
and is therefore reduced to "borrowing more or less ir-
4
responsibly from his betters." Robert Brustein set the
tone for the debate in 1967 when he derided Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead as a "theatrical parasite, feeding off
Hamlet, Waiting for Godot, and Six Characters in Search of
and Author.He condemned the play as "derivative"^ and
asserted, "Stoppard does not fight hard enough for his in
sightsthey all seem to come to him, prefabricated, from
other plays.Lurking behind Brustein's complaint is the
Romantic notion that an author must suffer miserably, "fall
upon the thorns of life," so to speak, if his writing is
to enjoy any authority. Christopher Nichols responded to
Rosencrantz with a subdued version of Brustein's complaint,
stating that "despite the ballyhoo, I found no deep search,
9
no stinging innovation" in the play. Art must not only be
a deep search, he apparently assumed, but it must also
sting if we are to embrace it as authentic.
The most outraged response to Stoppard's borrowing in
Rosencrantz was to come in 1970 when C.O. Gardner, writing
in response to R.H. Lee's critical analysis of the play,
"The Circle and Its Tangent,"^ argued that Lee's article
was misguided because "it takes seriously, not to say
solemnly, a play which does not merit serious critical
attention."^ "The thing is in fact a swill," he asserted,
"composed of second-hand Beckett, third-hand Kafka, and the
12 .
goon show," so the only proper critical response is to
-7-
ignore this "thing" completely in the hope that it will
disappear. Again, of course, we see a Romantic vision of
authorship structuring the condemnation. Rosencrantz is a
cheat, "a swill," because Stoppard filters the play through
layers of art rather than going straight to life for
material to produce an unmediated vision based on authentic
experience.
The legacy of Brustein's famous charge against Rosen
crantz has continued to haunt Stoppard criticism in general,
and we find critics filing the same complaint of derivative
ness against later Stoppard plays. John Simon, for example,
summed up Stoppard's stage plays to date by depicting them
as parasites: "What they all [Enter a Free Man, Rosencrantz,
Jumpers, After Magritte, The Real Inspector Hound, and
Travesties] have in common to some degree is what I have
at various times described with images culled from the
animal and insect worlds, where the eggs or larvae of one
species may be unconsciously hatched by the efforts, or fed
13
by the very organisms, of another species." Simon went
14
on to describe "this parasitic quality" of Stoppard's work
with an elaborate parasite/host-organism metaphor that
continued for the duration of the article.
Taking a slightly different tack, Philip Roberts con
demned Stoppard for lack of seriousness in an article
entitled "Tom Stoppard: Serious Artist or Siren?" He
criticized The Real Inspector Hound and After Magritte,
-8-
saying, "In both, what appears central is the opportunity
for wit, parody, and metaphysical dalliance to do with the
nature of perception."'*'^ And then, managing a sidelong
reference to the disease imagery which forms a motif in
Stoppard criticism, he charged, "The plays reel away from
16
seriousness as from a contagious disease." Though the
terms of the attack differ, the assumptions underlying
Roberts's condemnation are drawn from the same Romantic
notion of authorship that informed earlier complaints; that
is, "serious" art, art worthy of our deepest consideration,
stems not from wit and intellectual games, but from a
somber, preferably painful engagement with the stuff of
life.
Robert Brustein's "A Theater for Clever Journalists"
picked up the disease motif referred to by Roberts and used
so extensively by Simon. Reviewing Night and Day, Brustein
said the following of Stoppard: "He has insinuated himself
into the affections of smart people like a heartworm,
usurping whatever place might once have been reserved there
17
for genuine artists" (italics mine). Returning again to
the issue of seriousness that recurs in Stoppard criticism,
Brustein asked, "Can anyone really take Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern seriously after seeing the plays on which it
was based, Six Characters in Search of an Author and
Waiting for Godot?" (italics mine). Brustein tried to
dismiss Stoppard with the following pronouncement: "As a
-9-
1 9
dramatist, Stoppard is a dandy." The intended insult
likely stems from the idea that a dandy is concerned only
with appearances and surfaces while a "genuine artist" (to
use Brustein's term) shares his experiences of real life
in all their emotional richness.
Joan Juliet Buck's article on Stoppard's The Real Thing
revealed the same set of underlying assumptions about the
role of a genuine artist. Her combination interview-play
review featured in bold print, "The theater's foremost
20
gamesman takes on 'The Real Thing,'" a statement which
implies that the game-playing and derivativeness that
characterize Stoppard's early work are not as authentic as
the love relationships portrayed in The Real Thing. As
Buck told it, she spent her two-hour interview with Stoppard
trying to get him to discuss how his personal experiences
found their way into his latest play. Stoppard tried re
peatedly to redirect the questioning before saying, "There's
something wrong with the question . there must be some
false premise in it, and it's probably to do with your
21
underestimating the mechanical level of writing a play."
Stoppard closed the interview by reiterating his
doubts about the validity of the prevailing view of the
author, a view which sees the author creating art not from
other art, but from gut-wrenching life experiences:
The main trouble with the premise is that none
of these thoughts is a consideration while writing
a play. It's all kind of fake, and the interview
makes you fake by allowing retrospective ideas to
-10-
masquerade as some form of intention. One of the
problems is that writers don't think about their
work in that external way.22
While Stoppard makes every effort, both in interviews
and through his plays, to emphasize the derivative nature of
writing, critics and interviewers somehow overlook or mis
read this challenge to the traditional model of authorship
and condemn Stoppard for not conforming to the very model
of original creation his work seeks to dismantle. Such a
misreading is far from unprecedented, though, for we recall
that Beckett's Waiting for Godot met with early hostility
as critics complained that the play did not have much of a
plot. But just as the lack of traditionally defined plot
is vital to Godot1s point about the disintegration of
linear movement in a world without a Creator, so Stoppard's
lack of traditionally defined originality is vital to his
challenge to the traditional concept of the author as the
creating God of his work. Far from being the overriding
weakness in his work, Stoppard's open derivativeness may
be his most important contribution to the canon.
By recognizing Stoppard's celebration of borrowing as
a challenge to the traditional concept of authorship, we
put ourselves in a strong position for rebutting the second
major complaint against Stoppard, the complaint that his
plays are apolitical or politically conservative and thus
not as worthy as other, more "politically relevant" plays.
In filing this complaint, critics overlook the political
-11-
implications of his challenge to a conservative critical
model and focus their attention on Stoppard's outspoken
23
denunciation of Marx ("he got it wrong" ) and Lenin ("in
the ten years after 1917 fifty times more people were done
24
to death than in the fifty years before 1917" ) and on the
absence of any endorsement of Marxist or socialist prin
ciples in his plays. Because so many critics currently rely
on a rather simplistic equation of Marxism and political
progressivism, the perception "that Stoppard is a political
25
reactionary" has become one of "two fairly often voiced
2 6
anxieties" about Stoppard's reputation.
Kenneth Tynan's New Yorker Profile, for example,
centers around a vague disapproval of what Tynan perceives
as Stoppard's conservative politics. Noting that "Stoppard
27
is a passionate fan" of cricket, Tynan generalizes
"Cricket attracts artists who are either conservative or
nonpolitical." Tynan also divides British dramatists
since the 1960s into two groups, the "heated, embattled,
socially committed playwrights, like John Osborne, John
2 9
Arden, and Arnold Wesker" and the "cool, apolitical
3 0
stylists" like Stoppard. Echoing Tynan's evaluation of
Stoppard's politics, though not his disapproval, Joan
Fitzpatrick Dean, author of Tom Stoppard: Comedy as a
Moral Matrix, says, "Stoppard's plays tend toward the
right.in his 1982 Tom Stoppard's Plays, Jim Hunter
attempts to dismiss summarily this perception of Stoppard's
-12-
politics by pointing out that "the intellectual orthodoxy
of live theatrein sharp contrast, usually, to the box
office orthodoxytends in any age to be radical, and in
3 2
Western capitalist countries to be socialist." Stoppard,
he continues, voices moderate political opinions and so
should not be labeled reactionary. While Hunter's conclu
sion that Stoppard is no reactionary is undoubtedly correct,
his contrast between the box office and intellectual ortho
doxies of live theater seems, in effect, to concede that
Stoppard's plays are essentially conservative. In making
this concession, Hunter basically accepts the superficial
and misleading conception of "political art" put forward
by detractors.
The same flaw mars the reasoning of critics who argue
that Stoppard's work has gotten progressively better as he
has turned from the open derivativeness and game playing
of early plays to more serious concerns like "politics,"
for these critics also overlook the political implications
of his challenge to originality in authorship and simply
assume that art overtly endorsing political goals is in
herently valuable and should be embraced. Tynan, for
example, notes approvingly in his Profile that "There are
signs . that history has lately been forcing Stoppard
33
into the arena of commitment." In Beyond Absurdity: The
Plays of Tom Stoppard, Victor L. Cahn also nods his approval
of the shift in the content on Stoppard's plays as his
-13-
career has continued. Cahn traces a transition from resig
nation to involvement on the part of the characters who
populate Stoppard's plays. He says, for example, "Stoppard's
growing concern with political matters reaches new inten-
34
sxty m Every Good Boy Deserves Favor," a 1978 play set
in a cell in a Soviet mental hospital for political dis
sidents. Cahn concludes his book by praising the "dig-
35
nity" of later Stoppard plays which show characters
O
"struggling, not surrendering," characters who "seek faith
in rationality . faith in human emotions . faith in
relationships with other people . faith in their
37
humanity." Undoubtedly, then, Cahn shares the assumption
that a direct treatment of political topics makes for a
better play.
As recently as 1983, critics were still avidly praising
Stoppard for his enlarged commitment to social issues.
Carol Billman concludes her useful article on the manipula
tion of history in Travesties by noting approvingly that
many of Stoppard's more recent plays, such as Professional
Foul, Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, and Night and Day,
"truly represent social engagements on Stoppard's part:
these plays face squarely such issues as governmental
3 8
restriction of individual freedom." Bobbie Rothstein
devotes her entire article to praising "The Reappearance
of Public Man" in Professional Foul. She observes that
"Stoppard's current work implies that a retreat by the self
-14-
from the public world is untenablea stance diametrically
opposed not only to absurdism, the most important current
3 9
in postmodern writing, but also to his own earlier work."
She applauds Professional Foul because its characters take
a stand and condemns Jumpers because its characters ignore
pressing philosophical and political issues within the play.
4 0
She says the "New Stoppard" has "shifted gears from the
41
playful play of words to more serious intellectual drama,"
again using the term "serious" to indicate approval. To
shift gears, Rothstein explains, Stoppard has had to reach
"somewhat backwards in dramatic history for characters who
4 2
are publicly committed to action in the political sphere."
I would never want to argue that the shift these critics
perceive has not in fact occurred. Like those who argued
that Stoppard's early plays are derivative, and like those
who said Beckett's plays lack plot, these critics are
rightmany of Stoppard's later plays have indeed adopted
more overtly political themes. Rothstein is also correct
in pointing out that Stoppard has, paradoxically, had to
reach somewhat backwards in dramatic history to make his
ostensibly progressive change, for characters who struggle
against the odds and end up making the world a better place
to live are most at home in a teleological world that un
folds linearly, with man at the helm, always ultimately
realizing his preordained destiny in the great scheme of
things. My question at this point, though, is whether this
-15-
great leap backwards to overt political content in the form
of socially committed characters does, in fact, constitute
an improvement in Stoppard's playwriting, and whether, in
the end, such political content even makes a play more
politically valuable or effective.
Stoppard expressed similar reservations about the value
of writing plays on politics in a 1974 Theatre Quarterly
interviewbefore he started producing the plays critics
praise as politically important. The interviewer broached
the topic by saying, "You clearly don't feel yourself part
of a 'movement' either, and your plays could hardly be
43
called social or political." Then, he posed the follow
ing, fairly typical question to Stoppard: "Does this mean
you have no strong political feelings, or simply that
44
they're not what you want to write plays about?" Stoppard's
response"Look, can we clear a few decks to avoid confu-
4 5
sion?" likely revealed his irritation at being misunder
stood and unjustly maligned yet again. He continued by
listing ten recent plays that he "assume[d] all [went] into
46
[the] political bag," before offering his instructive
explanation of the relationship between plays and politics.
"There are political plays which are about specific situa
tions, and there are political plays which are about a
general political situation, and there are plays which are
political acts in themselves, insofar as it can be said
that attacking or insulting an audience is a political
-16-
4 7
act." But Stoppard challenged the idea that simply using
political content, such as setting a play in South Africa,
makes a play political: "There are even plays about politics
4 8
which are about as political as Charley's Aunt."
Stoppard is not alone in questioning the value of overt
political content in art, but it is highly ironic, given the
context of his remarks, that his critical comrades, so to
speak, include many Marxist literary critics. In Marxism
and Literary Criticism, for example, Terry Eagleton issues
a strikingly similar warning against "the 'vulgar Marxist'
mistake of raiding literary works for their ideological
4 9
content," for "the true bearers of ideology in art are
the very forms, rather than the abstractable content, of
the work itself.With Stoppard's work, there is for
tunately no need to insist upon a rigid (and ultimately
untenable) separation of form and content, for the content
of his plays reinforces the point made by the method of
construction he chooses: both undermine the traditional
concept of the author. If we can move beyond the prevail
ing, simplistic definition of political art (i.e., art
explicitly endorsing specific political causes equals
politically progressive, hence valuable art), we can begin
developing the kind of analysis needed to correct some of
these remarkable oversights in Stoppard criticism. This
analysis requires a careful investigation of the model of
originality in authorship, for we cannot begin to grasp the
-17-
import of Stoppard's challenge to this misleading and
highly conservative critical tool without a thorough under
standing of what interests are represented by the model,
what values are reinforced by the modelin short, what is
at stake here. In the course of this investigation, we also
gain a clearer understanding of the critical response to
Stoppard--particularly of the remarkable vehemence and tone
of moral indignation which characterize this responsefor
we begin to see that the traditional concept of originality
in authorship does indeed involve morals in a profound way.
As a first step, let us turn to an early, but still highly
influential model of creation to discover the roots of the
traditional view of the Author.
The groundwork of the traditional concept of the
author and the valorization of originality in artistic
creation is laid in Genesis, the first book of the First
Book, the book that describes the original act of creation.
The first words of the Holy Book read, "In the beginning
51
God created the heavens and the earth." The sole male
deity of the Judeo-Christian tradition created light, dark,
Heaven, Earth, land, oceans, plants, animals, the sun, the
moon, the stars, and man himself. He created all this by
52
His word: "And God said." The New Oxford Annotated Bible
notes that "Creation by the word of God expresses God's
absolute lordship and prepares for the doctrine of creation
out of nothing."53 The story of the creation links God with
-18-
the Word or "logos" (the original Greek word meaning,
according to the OED, not only "word," but also "speech,"
"reason," "discourse," and often used to designate Jesus
54
Christ, the Son of God ). It also provides artists with
a model of creation, reminding them that the original way
to create is ex nihilo.
Here, then, is our culture's sacred model of the act
of creation. Predictably, this model pervades and struc
tures traditional critical thinking about the role of
authors, positing the author as the sole origin of his work
as God is the sole origin of the world. As Sandra M.
Gilbert and Susan Gubar explain in their discussion of the
concept of authorship in The Madwoman in the Attic, "the
patriarchal notion that the writer 'fathers' his text just
as God fathered the world is and has been all-pervasive in
55
Western literary civilization." This "metaphor of
literary paternity" that Gilbert and Gubar describe is
shaped by the biblical account of the creation and points
to the intricate links between God, the Author, and the
Father in much received critical thinking. Beginning more
than a thousand years after the Genesis account, Gilbert
and Gubar trace the metaphor of literary paternity in the
West from the classical Greek period until the present and
find that "the mimetic aesthetic that begins with Aristotle
and descends through Sidney, Shakespeare, and Johnson im
plies that the poet, like a lesser God, has made or
-19-
engendered an alternative mirror-universe."^ They point
to "the network of connections among sexual, literary, and
57
theological metaphors" in medieval philosophy that con
tinues to influence thought even in the twentieth century
and conclude that "in patriarchal Western culture, therefore,
a text's author is a father, a progenitor, an aesthetic
patriarch whose pen is an instrument of generative power
like his penis.
Because Gilbert and Gubar seek primarily to examine
the ways in which the traditional model of authorship has
been used to exclude women writers from the canon, their
approach is specifically feminist, and as such, it tends to
minimize historical variations on the model in the interest
of presenting the larger remarkably consistent, and exclu
sively masculine tradition of authorship. But one such
variation is of particular relevance to the charge of
derivativeness that serves as a cornerstone of Stoppard
criticism. Before the Romantic era, authors borrowed freely
from existing writings and made no effort to cover the
tracks of their borrowing. Their critics, in turn, expected
such borrowing and would never have attacked their work for
lacking "originality" in the sense that the term is used
today. But economic changes coinciding with the ascendancy
of Romanticism brought a new emphasis on "originality," and
borrowed art came to be seen as not only artistically
inferior, but as tantamount to theft as well. In both
-20-
their poetry and their criticism, Romantic poets placed a
premium on art which created the impression of being an
unmediated representation of life. Skill in craft became
secondary to the authenticity of transferring real life
experiences and emotions directly to the page. To use
Wordsworth's famous formulation of the Romantic credo, poetry
should be "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings
59
. . recollected in tranquility."
While critical theorists have long since demonstrated
that Romantic poetry is far from unmediated, popular criticism
continues to value the impression of originality very highly,
in part because, as Michel Foucault argues, the notion of
originality is supported by bourgeois economic values. He
explains that literature "was not originally a product, a
thing, a kind of goods; it was essentially an actan act
placed in the bipolar field of the sacred and the profane,
\
the licit and the illicit, the religious and the bias-
fi 0
phemous." We only began to think of texts as having
61
authors when "authors became subject to punishment" for
writing transgressive, illicit, blasphemous tests. When
"a system of ownership for texts came into being . at
the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nine-
r n
teenth century," "literary discourses came to be accepted
only when endowed" with an author or owner. Once authors
and their works were "placed in the system of property that
A
characterizes our society," "once strict rules concerning
-21-
author's rights, author-publisher relations, rights of
reproduction, and related matters were enacted,"65 borrow
ing became a scandal. To avoid charges of theft, authors
had to make great efforts to feign originality, to cover the
tracks of their borrowing.
In spite of all the energy writers have expended trying
to cover up the scandal of borrowing, few critical theorists
have been fooled. Especially in the twentieth century,
literary theorists have actively worked to demonstrate that
all writing is borrowed, that the concept of originality is
grounded in untenable assumptions. As Gilbert and Gubar
summarize, "That writers assimilate and then consciously
or unconsciously affirm or deny the achievements of their
predecessors is, of course, a central fact of literary
history, a fact whose aesthetic and metaphysical implica
tions have been discussed in detail by theorists as diverse
as T.S. Eliot, M.H. Abrams, Erich Auerbach, and Frank
Kermode."66
Even as notoriously conservative a critic as T.S.
Eliot, for example, writes in "Tradition and the Individual
Talent" of the widespread but misleading "tendency to in
sist, when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work
6 7
in which he least resembles anyone else." Eliot explains
that if we put such prejudices aside, "we shall often find
that not only the best, but the most individual parts of
his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors,
-22
Q
assert their immortality most vigorously." Great poetry,
Eliot maintains, has little to do with a "realistic" trans
lation of personal emotions into poetry: "It is not in his
personal emotions, the emotions provoked by particular events
in his life, that the poet is in any way remarkable or
69
interesting." Instead, great poetry is that which makes
most full use of the tradition of poetry, drawing existing
works into a new fusion of writing.
J. Hillis Miller and Bertolt Brecht go considerably
further than Eliot in exposing the baselessness of the
traditional concept of originality in authorship. Miller
approaches the issue by demonstrating the inevitability of
derivativeness in art. In "The Critic as Host," he states
that "The poem, however, any poem, is, it is easy to see,
parasitical in its turn on earlier poems, or contains
earlier poems as enclosed parasites within itself, in
another version of the perpetual reversal of parasite and
70
host." Thus, Miller more than defuses the charge of
parasitism by celebrating borrowing in artistic creation.
Brecht, on the other hand, broaches the topic by challenging
the traditional God-like authority of the author, saying,
"People are used to seeing poets as unique and slightly
unnatural beings who reveal with a truly god-like assurance
things that other people can only recognize after much sweat
71 .
and toil." As a practicing playwright, Brecht is m much
the same position that Stoppard found himself in when he
-23-
tried to convince Joan Juliet Buck that dramatists do not
write plays because they have some special, omniscient
understanding of life. Stoppard's mundane alternative to
the god-like playwrightthe writer as a craftsperson with
a facility for language and dramatic structurecertainly
pales in comparison to the "unique and slightly unnatural
beings" of the popular view of the author, but Stoppard
apparently felt compelled to admit that playwrights are not
gods. Brecht follows his comment about god-like authors
with a similar admission: "It is naturally distasteful to
have to admit that one does not belong to this select band.
7 2
All the same, it must be admitted."
Roland Barthes follows suit in viewing the God-like
Author and the privileging of originality as erroneous
critical notions and offers brief comments on the political
implications of revising these concepts. In his explora
tion of the traditional concept of Authorship, Barthes
describes the old conception of the Author as being "in the
same relation of antecedence to his work as a father to his
7 3
child," using the metaphor of masculine procreation noted
by Gilbert and Gubar. Barthes contrasts the outdated
Author (a term he capitalizes to emphasize the traditional
link between the Author and God) to the contemporary
scriptor, who is seen as a weaver of codes, essentially a
collage-maker, rather than as the originator of his writing.
Like Eliot and Miller, Barthes acknowledges the impossibility
-24-
of originality in art, describing the text as "a tissue of
quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture,"7^
and not drawn, as the old view had it, from the life ex
periences of the Author. As Barthes explains, "We know now
that a text is not a line of words releasing a single
'theological' meaning (the 'message' of the Author-God) but
a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings,
75
none of them original, blend and clash."
This revised view of the author demands a revision of
the critical activity, for if the Author is no longer seen
as the origin of his text, he can no longer provide the key
to determining its "meaning." "Once the Author is removed,"
Barthes explains, "the claim to decipher a text becomes
quite futile. To give a text an Author is to impose a limit
on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close
7 6
the writing." During the reign of the Author, the critic
sought to discover the Author beneath the work, thereby
"explaining" the work. But when the work is accepted as
a collage of existing writings, accepted as having many,
ultimately untraceable "origins," the critic can no longer
close the text by discovering its "single 'theological'
77
meaning (the 'message' of the Author-God)." Barthes
describes the revised task of the critic: "In the multi
plicity of writing, everything is to be disentangled, nothing
deciphered; the structure can be followed, 'run' (like the
thread of a stocking) at every point and at every level,
7 8
but there is nothing beneath."
-25-
Inasmuch as it contributes to a decentralization of
authority, Barthes sees "truly revolutionary" implications
in this revised critical activity: "In precisely this way
literature (it would be better from now on to say writing),
by refusing to assign a 'secret,' an ultimate meaning, to
the text (and to the world as text), liberates what may be
called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is
truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in
the end, to refuse God and his hypostasesreason, science,
79
law." In Barthes's view, the authority vested in the
Author by the old model shuts out the reader, reducing him
or her to passively discovering the secret message encoded
in the text by the Author-God. Barthes's primary goal in
advocating "the Death of the Author" is to restore the
active role of readers, for under the revised model, readers
rather than writers are the locus of meaning: "The reader
is the space on which all the quotations that make up a
8 0
writing are inscribed without any of them being lost."
In spite of his primary concern with restoring the
active role of readers, Barthes also sees a role for writers
in bringing about this desired revision. "Though the sway
of the Author remains powerful (the new criticism has often
done no more than consolidate it), it goes without saying
that certain writers have long since attempted to loosen
O I ^
it." He cites the case of Mallarm, in whose work "it is
8 2
language which speaks, not the author." Certainly Stoppard
- 26-
numbers with Mallarm among those scriptors whose texts
illustrate that writing is always a collage of other texts
rather than some sort of direct transference of life ex
periences into art. Unfortunately, the critical response
to Stoppard illustrates just as vividly that "the sway of
the Author remains powerful," for there has been all too
little recognition of Stoppard's strides in dismantling
the concept of the Author/Father/God and all too much con
demnation of his plays for not rendering life experiences
"realistically" on the stage. This misreading has in turn
led critics to overlook the possibility of there being
"truly revolutionary" implications in Stoppard's demysti
fication of the Author.
In his thought provoking essay, "The Discourse of
Others: Feminists and Postmodernism," Craig Owens also
investigates the political ramifications of dismantling the
"crisis of cultural authority, specifically of the authority
8 3
vested in Western European culture and its institutions"
as the sine qua non of postmodernism and proceeds to raise
some compelling questions about the work of Sherrie Levine
that we might just as appropriately raise about Stoppard's
work. Levine takes photographsWalker Evans's photographs
and Edward Weston's photographsand redisplays them, much
as Stoppard takes Shakespeare's Hamlet, Beckett's Waiting
for Godot, and Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and
replays them. Owens asks about Levine's work:
-27-
Is she simply dramatizing the diminished possi
bilities for creativity in an image-saturated
culture, as is often repeated? Or is her refusal
of authorship not in fact a refusal of the role
of creator as "father" of his work, of the paternal
rights assigned the author by law?^4
Though Owens argues that such a refusal of authorship has a
different meaning when performed by a woman instead of a
man"when women are concerned, similar techniques have very
8 5
different meanings" it seems to me that Stoppard's bla
tant borrowing amounts to a refusal of authorship quite
similar to Levine's: regardless of their respective genders,
the strategies of both seem equally clear-cut refusals of
mastery.
Owens explores the political dimension of mastery as
he contrasts modernism and postmodernism. He characterizes
modernism as the era of the grands recits or master narra
tives such as Marxism which sought to be the "single
O
theoretical discourse," thought to provide the final
answer. In the postmodern era, "the grands recits of
modernitythe dialectic of the Spirit, the emancipation
of the worker, the accumulation of wealth, the classless
8 7
societyhave all lost credibility." Owens is clearly
not sad to observe the passing of master narratives, for
he finds their effect far from liberating; in fact, he finds
them enslaving and imperialistic:
For what made the grands recits of modernity
master narratives if not the fact that they were
all narratives of mastery, of man seeking his
telos in the conquest of nature? What function
-28-
did these narratives play other than to legitimize
Western man's self-appointed mission of transform
ing the entire planet in his own imageP^S
The desire of Western man for domination and control has
been palpably challenged in the twentieth century by "the
emergence of Third-World nations, the 'revolt of nature'
and the women's movementthat is, the voices of the con-
8 9
quered." At least two options are open to those faced
90
with the "tremendous loss of mastery" which characterizes
the postmodern era: "therapeutic programs, from both the
91
Left and the Right, for recuperating that loss" or the
more gracious and politically progressive, not to mention
inevitable, acceptance of this loss of mastery, even refusal
of mastery, as both Stoppard and Levine have done.
Owens's essay is invaluable for the light it sheds not
only on the specific critical response to Stoppard but also
on the larger, currently fashionable, but facile assumption
that adherence to Marxism serves as proof of political
progressivism. Owens's stinging indictment of the arrogance
underlying master narratives, of the arrogance of mastery
itself, helps provide the sort of perspective needed to go
beyond easy assumptions about what makes art political and
ask more enlightening questions about what is truly pro
gressive. It goes without saying that Stoppard's politics
appear far less suspect when viewed in light of Owens's
remarks, for the blatant borrowing that characterizes
Stoppard's work seems more a deliberate refusal of the
-29-
mastery of authorship than a sign of incompetence and
inferiority. This reading of Stoppard's borrowing as a
refusal of mastery is buttressed by the playwright's re
peated insistence that he does not write to present the
final truth to his audience. "I write plays because writing
dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting your
self. I'm the kind of person who embarks on an endless
leapfrog down the great moral issues. I put a position,
9 2
rebut it, refute the rebuttal, and rebut the refutation."
Stoppard goes so far as to designate his lack of certainty
as the dominant characteristic of his work: "What I think
of as being my distinguishing mark is an absolute lack of
93
certainty about almost anything." Thus, it seems clear
that Stoppard is intent upon refusing the white robe and
beard of the God-like Author who creates his original master
piece out of nothing and presents his audience with the
final "Truth."
While Owens's exploration is extraordinarily useful in
understanding the political implications of refusing Author
ship, we still might feel compelled to wonder about the
remarkable vehemence of the attacks on Stoppard's work. Why
do critics so often assume a tone of moral indignation when
they discuss the derivativeness of his work? Why do disease
and parasite metaphors form such recurring motifs in the
condemnations? Why does the critical hierarchy favoring
originality over derivativeness continue to carry so much
-30-
weight in spite of an entire body of critical and creative
writing which establishes the impossibility, indeed the un
desirability, of originality in art? What is at stake
here ?
What is at stake when an author borrows as boldly as
Stoppard does is something more than a specifically Romantic
notion of authorship. Such blatant borrowing is also more
than a mere transgression of property rights. Far from
being a relatively recent historical development> the aver
sion to derivativeness, the fear of copies, reaches all the
way back at least to its codification in the second and
third chapters of Genesis, where we find, in fitting proxi
mity to the first chapter's sacred tale of creation, the
still very influential story of the dangers of copied art.
As virtually every Westerner over the age of five knows,
"the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man be-
94
came a living soul." In contrast to Adam, who was
sculpted by God Himself, Eve is a mere copy made from
original man. "The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall
upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and
9 5
. . made he a woman." To underscore the difference
between Adam, God's original art work, and Eve, the copy,
Genesis presents Eve as a bodily creature while Adam is
specifically described as possessing a soul. When God
96
breathed life into Adam, "man became a living soul" (my
-31-
italics) ; but we search in vain for mention of Eve's soul
and find instead Adam's pronouncement: "This is now bone
of my bones and flesh of my flesh: and she shall be called
Q 7
Woman because she was taken out of man."
The connection between the manner of creation and the
relative status of the work in question is highlighted by
the Hebrew myth of Lilith, whose story is part of Jewish
lore, though not part of the authorized scriptures. Lilith
was Adam's first wife, but like him she was created by God
from the dust of the earth, and was not, therefore, copied
from the original. Since she was made in the same way as
9 8
Adam, Lilith "considered herself his equal" and "objected
9 9
to lying beneath him." When Adam tried to force Lilith
into submission, she ran away and refused to return even
after God vowed to put a hundred of her demon babies to
death every day until she submitted. Though the main func
tion of the Lilith myth is undoubtedly to illustrate the
dangers of autonomous woman, it also points clearly to the
importance of the means of creation in determining the
status of what is created. When man and woman are both
created by God from the dust, as in the Lilith myth, both
are original creations and there is no relationship of
superiority and inferiority.
While the second chapter of Genesis points to the in
herent superiority of original art (Adam has a soul while
derivative Eve is only body), the third chapter goes further
-32-
by warning of the dangers of giving in to the enticement
of a mere copy, the enticement of Eve, for it was Eve who
listened to the serpent and caused the fall of humanity.
The Scriptures describe the fall in terms of succumbing to
desire: "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for
food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to
be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof,
and did eat."^^ when Eve, the derivative one, gave in to
sensual desire and the desire for knowledge, she enabled
culture to invade the inside of Eden, originary nature. But
the fall was not complete until Eve offered the fruit to
Adam, and man, made by God in his own image, succumbed to
the enticement of derivative woman, thereby corrupting the
soul of man forevermore.
In this manner, the widely disseminated myth teaches
that derivativeness is inferior to originality just as the
body is weaker than the soul and woman is inferior to man.
But derivativeness is more than just inferior to origin
ality; it is a constant danger that threatens to corrupt
the soul and elicit God's wrath. Given the power of the
tale in Western culture, and given the countless reitera
tions of the values embodied in the tale, it is no wonder
that the prejudice against derivativeness is so pervasive
and persistent.
Thus, one of the legacies of the Adam and Eve myth is
a powerful revulsion to derivativeness which manifests
-33-
itself in critical values. This deep-seated mistrust of
derivativeness clearly operates in Stoppard criticism,
fueling disease and. parasite metaphors, feeding indignant
insistencies that Stoppard's derivative work should be
excluded from the canon, kept out of the garden of original
theater. The tone of moral indignation found in so much
anti-Stoppard criticism begins to make sense when we recog
nize that original and derivative have never been innocent
critical terms, devoid of mcrai and political implications.
Instead, the terms are caught up in an entire structure of
morals and values which are situated at the heart of the
Western tradition.
Jacques Derrida refers to this structure as the "meta
physics of presence" or "logocentrism." Translator Barbara
Johnson summarizes Derrida's view that Western thought "has
always been structured in terms of dichotomies or polari-
101
ties": original versus derivative, soul versus body,
man versus woman, good versus evil. The terms do not, how
ever, enjoy equal status. As Derrida explains: "In a
traditional philosophical opposition we have not a peaceful
coexistence of terms but a violent hierarchy. One of the
terms dominates the other (axiologically, logically, etc.),
102
occupies the commanding position." In the original/
derivative hierarchy, it is originality which dominates and
commands, drawing its power from a whole framework of sup
porting oppositions in which good, man, and soul occupy
commanding positions over evil, woman, and body.
-34-
These hierarchies are instances of the "metaphysics
of presence" or "logocentricism" because the first terms
in the above list or pairsoriginal, soul, man, good--are
seen as being in a position of relative proximity to
presence, to God, to logos, or to a source. Derrida explains
that "all the terms related to fundamentals, to principles,
or to the center have always designated the constant of
presence . consciousness or conscience, God, man, and
103
so forth." While the first or favored terms have in
common the constant of presence, the second terms in the
list--derivative, body, woman, evilare devalued because
they ..re defined by their removal from presence. The Adam
and Eve myth provides a vivid manifestation of this
phenomenon: man, possessor of a soul, was made directly
by God and is, therefore, defined by his nearness to the
source, to logos, while bodily woman, the disfavored member
of the pair, was made from Adam and is thus defined by her
removal from the presence of God, the source. "Original"
art is likewise favored because it is seen as stemming
immediately from the Author-source while derivative art
is disfavored because it is seen as being removed from the
Author-source inasmuch as it is "copied" from other art.
Derrida and other deconstructionists, including many
feminist critical theorists, seek to dismantle such
philosophical and critical hierarchies. Perhaps the first
step in deconstructing a hierarchy is "to work through the
-35-
structural genealogy of [the] concepts in the most scrupulous
104
and immanent fashion" in order to demonstrate "the sys
tematic and historical solidarity of the concepts and
gestures of thought that one often believes can be inno-
105
cently separated." By tracing, for example, the original/
derivative hierarchy back to its codification in the Book of
Origins, we reveal the complicities between the favoring of
originality over derivativeness and the favoring of man,
soul, and good over woman, body, and evil. While we are
accustomed to thinking of originality and derivativeness as
merely innocent critical terms, terms without moral or
political significance, deconstruction brings the recogni
tion that the original/derivative hierarchy cannot be
innocently separated from the hierarchies which support
it--and these supporting hierarchies (man/woman, soul/body)
have moral and political implications which are impossible
to overlook.
In On Deconstruction, Jonathan Culler focuses on the
importance of this kind of recognition in his discussion of
the impact of deconstruction on literary criticism: "By
disrupting the hierarchical relations on which critical
concepts and methods depend, [deconstruction] prevents con
cepts and methods from being taken for granted and treated
as simply reliable instruments. Critical categories are
not just tools to be employed in producing sound interpre
tations but problems to be explored."
Rather than
-36-
accepting critical tools as reliable instruments, decon
struction often works by "revealing the interested,
ideological nature of [the impositions]"^ Qn which critical
concepts and methods depend. In this manner, Culler explains,
deconstruction "can be seen as a politicizing of what might
otherwise be thought a neutral framework." An important
distinction must be made here. A deconstructive move does
not suddenly transform a neutral, apolitical discourse into
a politicized one. Instead, deconstruction encourages the
recognition that literary criticism has always been inter
ested and ideological, even though these political implica
tions have long been ignored. In "The Conflict of Facul
ties," Derrida explains that while many people will be
incapable of tapping the political potential of deconstruc
tion, this political potential is nevertheless there:
deconstruction is "at the very least, a way of taking a
position, in its work of analysis, concerning the political
and institutional structures that make possible and govern
our practices, our competencies, our performances. . .
This means that, too political for some, it will seem
paralyzing to those who only recognize politics by its most
familiar roadsigns. "
Fortunately, many feminist critical theorists have
avoided both traps. Recognizing the obvious political
implications of logocentrism's disfavoring of women, they
have worked to reveal the ways in which the metaphysics of
-37-
presence, or to use the Derridean term they prefer,
"phallogocentrism unites an interest in patriarchal author
ity, unity of meaning, and certainty of origin."110 These
are precisely the concerns which have been so central to
the critique of Stoppard's work: according to the tradi
tional view, the derivativeness of Stoppard's plays makes
their origin highly uncertain, thereby disrupting their
unity of meaning and reducing their patriarchal authority.
Feminist critical theorists have simply not accepted the
traditional view of authorship implied in such an assess
ment. Instead, they "investigate whether the procedures,
assumptions, and goals of current criticism are in complicity
111
with the preservation of male authority."
Their investigation of this complicity has followed
many avenues, but perhaps none is more pertinent to an
assessment of Stoppard's work than the investigation of the
assumptions underlying the traditional view of the author.
From a feminist perspective, the all-encompassing concern
with certainty of origin in authorship seems symptomatic of
a transference to the critical realm of masculine anxieties
about procreation and legitimacy. Culler summarizes
Dorothy Dinnerstein's observation that "fathers, because
of their lack of direct physical connection with babies,
have a powerful urge to assert a relation, giving the child
112
their name to establish a genealogical link." In addi
tion, men have traditionally made great "efforts to control
-38-
the sexual life of women to make sure that the children
1 1 T
they sponsor really do come from their own seed."
Patriarchal criticism adopts these bio-sexual concerns,
treating the text as the author-father's child, assigning
the author-father legal rights to the text, and as is clearly
seen in Stoppard criticism, treating any text of uncertain
origin as a bastard-text.
Undoubtedly, then, the traditional model of authorship
is interested on many, if not all levels, and the interests
it represents are too clear to require further comment.
Recognizing that the model is indeed interested and ideo
logical, we move closer to understanding why the model re
mains so powerful even though so many critical theorists
have shown it to be a highly misleading critical tool. As
Eliot realized, the tendency to praise what is "original"
and "individual" in art leads us to overlook the very thing
that made the work "great"the work's incorporation of
existing writing. By continuing to insist on originality
in art, by clinging to a theological npdel of authorship,
critics misrepresent the process of artistic creation, for
earthly authors have never created ex nihilo. The one truly
original act of creation is mythic, and critics could pro
ceed more productively if this mythic model were placed
aside.
Furthermore, a look at the canon indicates that the
standard of originality has always been inconsistently
-39-
applied, revealing that critics have, perhaps necessarily,
been of two minds on the issue. Oedipus Tyrranos, for
example, has long been highly valued even though we know
that Sophocles wrought the play from widely known material.
We value the play as much for its incorporation of cultural
values, made possible because the play is derivative, as
for its excellent craft. Similarly, we know that Shakespeare
made Hamlet from earlier versions of Hamlet, that Beckett
and Brecht draw heavily on existing theatrical traditions
to make their plays. "Stylistically speaking, there is
nothing all that new about the epic theatre," Brecht ex
plains. "Its expository character and its emphasis on
virtuosity bring it close to the old Asiatic theatre.
Didactic tendencies are to be found in the medieval mystery
plays and the classical Spanish theatre, and also in the
114
theatre of the Jesuits." With the possible exception of
medieval mystery plays, the sources Brecht names are all
relatively unfamiliar to most of us, suggesting that we do
not readily recognize these sources when we watch a per
formance of a Brecht play. Similarly, due to historical
distancing, we may not readily recognize the sources
Sophocles and Shakespeare used. This distance from or
unfamilarity with sources makes it possible for us to join
the critics, the keepers of the canon, in forgetting, will
fully or otherwise, the highly derivative nature of plays
we value. This "forgetting," in turn, allows us simul
taneously to value derivative plays and to value originality
-40-
in art. If we could cast aside the blinders imposed by the
theological model of authorship, we might resolve this
contradiction by seeing that derivativeness is far more
essential to the art we value than originality.
We might see further that the insistence on originality
poses a far greater threat to the garden of theater, to the
canon, than the misplaced fear of derivativeness. Though
we are indeed fortunate that, through the process of "for
getting," many plays have escaped censure for derivative
ness, the canon remains at risk nevertheless, for as long
as critics insist on the phallogocentric model as the sole,
legitimate model, we risk exclusion of any play that does
not conform to this rigid, interested prescription. Since
the model is exclusively masculine, it works toward the
exclusion of all non-masculine authors. Another look at
the canon reveals the paucity of women playwrights, and we
recognize that the model works first to discourage women
from writing (lacking a penis, she cannot hope to effec-
115
tively wield a pen, the patriarchs have often repeated ),
and then, for those few who overcome an entire tradition
and write anyway, it works to cast their writing as suspect,
illegitimate, or parasitic.
Moreover, the model works to exclude male authors such
as Stoppard who choose an authorial strategy other than the
single, legitimate one prescribed by the model. Of course,
Stoppard's plays have not in fact been shut out of the
-41-
canonthey are widely anthologized, frequently performed,
and constantly written about. But the plays have been
accepted in spite of widespread, lingering suspicion that
their derivativeness is a weakness that detracts from their
artistic merit. Robert Egan accurately describes the evolu
tion in the critical response to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead by noting that although "we are well beyond Robert
Brustein's early charge of 'theatrical parasitism,'" "several
studies that have since appeared echo Brustein's definition
(though without the pejorative sense) of Stoppard's play in
terms of Beckett's."^^^ The same sort of evolution can be
traced in the critical response to other Stoppard plays: in
general, while critics no longer openly denounce the plays
as inferior theatrical parasites, they still tend to
apologize for Stoppard's derivativeness, tend to explain
away the open borrowing as an unfortunate weakness in
otherwise worthy plays.
What has been lacking in Stoppard criticism, though,
is the vital next step in this evolution, namely, the
recognition that Stoppard's borrowing is a thing greatly
to be desired. Far from being an unfortunate weakness,
Stoppard's derivativeness is an integral part of his multi
level challenge to the traditional model of originality, a
model that is politically conservative, morally suspect,
and highly misleading as a critical tool. Because Stoppard
so vividly foregrounds his borrowing, he forces us to come
-42-
to terms with the inevitable derivativeness of all writing.
We cannot watch or read a Stoppard play and leave with our
functioning ambivalence intact: the plays do not allow us
the convenient process of "forgetting" that art is deriva
tive. Not only are we confronted with unmistakably borrowed
materialundisguised segments from Hamlet, The Importance
of Being Earnest, Eliot's poetry, and whatever else was in
Stoppard's hat when he assembled the play in questionbut
we are also, via the content of the plays, drawn into ex
tended consideration of the nature of authorship. Rosen-
crantz and Guildenstern Are Dead asks us to consider the
authors role in determining the fate of characters as the
usually buried metaphor equating the playwright with God,
the source of fate, is exhumed, opened up for investigation.
In Travesties, we face squarely the question of the origin
of art, as "authors" with widely diverging political views
all nevertheless make their art in the same wayby pulling
it out of a hat. The Real Thing coyly tempts us to identify
Henry, the character-playwright, with Stoppard, the "real"
playwright, and then pulls the rug out from under us
repeatedly as the play discredits the view of authorship
implicit in such identification.
By reading Stoppard's open derivativeness as a challenge
to the traditional model of authorship, we gain a more
integrated understanding of the relationship between the
form and content of his plays, and we move, not incidentally,
-43-
toward a more productive, less prejudiced set of critical
tools. Moreover, we lose nothing in the process, for in
leaving behind the theological, phallocentric model of
authorship, we assign to the scrap heap a model that has
always been highly misleading, has always misrepresented the
process of artistic creation. And as we scrap this outdated
model, we also move closer to dismantling the related
original/derivative hierarchy that has likewise always been
more a morality laden pair of blinders than a useful tool
for assessing the value of art.
Notes
Tom Stoppard, Travesties (New York: Grove Press,
1975), p. 18. All further quotations refer to this edition
and will be cited parenthetically within the text. Unless
otherwise noted, ellipses are Stoppard's.
2
Jim Hunter, Tom Stoppard's Plays (London: Faber and
Faber, 1982), p. 240. Hunter provides a full "translation"
from nonsense to French to English of Tzara's opening
four-line poem.
David Bratt, Introduction to Tom Stoppard: A
Reference Guide (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1982), p. xviii.
4 . .
Bratt, p. xviii.
^Robert Brustein, "Waiting for Hamlet," New Republic,
4 November 1967, p. 25.
^Brustein, "Waiting," p. 26.
7
Brustein, "Waiting," p. 26.
8Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind," in The
Norton Introduction to Literature, shorter 3rd ed., eds.
Carl E. Bain, Jerome Beaty, and J. Paul Hunter (New York:
W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1982), p. 497.
-44-
9
Christopher Nichols, "Theater: R & G: A Minority
Report," National Review, 12 December 1967, p. 1394.
^Or.H. Lee, "The Circle and Its Tangent," Theoria: A
Journal of Studies in the Arts, Humanities and Social
Sciences 33 (October 1969): 37-43.
11C.O. Gardner, "Correspondence: Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead," Theoria: A Journal of Studies in
the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences 34 (May 1970): 83.
^Gardner, p. 83.
13
John Simon, "Theater Chronicle," Hudson Review 29
(Spring 1976): 79.
^Simon, p. 79.
"^Philip Roberts, "Tom Stoppard: Serious Artist or
Siren?" Critical Quarterly 20 (Autumn 1978): 86-87.
^Roberts, p. 87.
1 7
Robert Brustem, "Robert Brustein on Theater: A
Theater for Clever Journalists," New Republic, 5 January
1980, p. 23.
18
Brustein, "Clever Journalists," p. 23.
19
Brustein, "Clever Journalists," p. 23.
2 0
Joan Juliet Buck, "Tom Stoppard: Kind Heart and
Prickly Mind," Vogue, March 1984, p. 454.
2^"Buck, p. 514.
22Buck, p. 514.
23Tom Stoppard, "Ambushes for the Audience: Toward a
High Comedy of Ideas," Theatre Quarterly 4 (May-July
1974): 13.
24Stoppard, "Ambushes," p. 12.
2~>Hunter, p. 197.
2^Hunter, p. 197.
27Kenneth Tynan, "Profile: Withdrawing with Style from
the Chaos," New Yorker, 19 December 1977, p. 43.
28
Tynan, p. 43.
-45-
29
Tynan, p. 42.
30
Tynan, p. 42.
31
Joan Fitzpatrick Dean, Tom Stoppard: Comedy as a
Moral Matrix (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1981),
p. 108.
33Hunter, p. 197.
33Tynan, p. 45.
34 .
Victor L. Cahn, Beyond Absurdity: The Plays of Tom
Stoppard (Rutherford, N.J.: Farleigh Dickinson Univ. Press,
1979), p. 143.
33Cahn, p. 155.
3^Cahn, p. 155.
3^Cahn, p. 155.
O
Carol Billman, "The Art of History in Tom Stoppard's
Travesties," Kansas Quarterly 12 (Fall 1980): 52.
39
Bobbie Rothstein, "The Reappearance of Public Man:
Stoppard's Jumpers and Professional Foul," Kansas Quarterly
12 (Fall 1980): 35.
40
Rothstein,
p. 40.
41
Rothstein,
p. 40.
42
Rothstein,
p. 43.
^3Stoppard,
"Ambushes,"
P-
11.
44
Stoppard,
"Ambushes,"
P-
11.
4 5
Stoppard,
"Ambushes,"
P-
11.
46
Stoppard,
"Ambushes,"
P-
11.
4 7
Stoppard,
"Ambushes,"
P*
12.
48
Stoppard,
"Ambushes,"
P-
12.
49
Terrv Eagleton, Marxism
and Literary Criticism
(Berkeley: Univ.
of California
Press, 1976), p. 24.
50Eagleton, p. 24. Eagleton is summarizing and con
curring with an argument made by Georg Lukcs.
-46-
51
Genesis 1:1, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, revised
standard version, eds. Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977).
52Genesis 1:3, 1:6, 1:9, 1:11, 1:20, 1:24, and 1:29,
The New Oxford Annotated Bible.
53
The New Oxford Annotated Bible, footnote, p. 1.
54
I use the definitions offered by the Compact Edition
of the Oxford English Dictionary.
"^Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in
the Attic (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1979), p. 4.
^Gilbert and Gubar, p. 5.
57
Gilbert and Gubar, p. 5.
5 8
Gilbert and Gubar, p. 6.
5 9
William Wordsworth, "Preface to Lyrical Ballads," in
Critical Theory Since Plato, ed. Hazard Adams (Atlanta:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971), p. 441.
60Michel Foucault, "What Is an Author?" in Textual
Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism,
ed. Joseu Harari (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1979),
148.
^Foucault,
P-
148.
^2Foucault,
P-
148.
6 3
Foucault,
P-
149.
^ ^Foucault,
P-
149.
^Foucault,
P-
148.
^Gilbert and
Gubar, p. 46.
67T.S. Eliot,
"Tradition and
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971), p. 784.
^Eliot, p. 784.
^Eliot, p. 787.
70J. Hillis Miller, "The Limits of Pluralism. III. The
Critic as Host," Critical Inquiry 3 (Spring 1977): 446.
-47-
71
Bertolt Brecht, "Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for
Instruction," in Brecht on Theatre, trans. John Willet (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1964), p. 73.
^Brecht, p. 73.
^Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author," in Image-
Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang,
1977), p. 145.
74
Barthes,
P*
146.
^Barthes f
P-
146.
^Barthes,
P*
147.
77
Barthes,
P-
146.
"^Barthes,
P-
147.
"^Barthes,
P-
147.
soa
Barthes,
P-
148.
^ "'"Barthes,
P.
143.
82n .
Barthes,
P-
143.
8 3
Craig Owens,
"The Discourse of
Others: Feminists and
Postmodernism" in The Anti-Aesthetic:
Essays on Postmodern
Culture, ed. Hal
Foster (Port Townsend, Washington:
Bay
Press, 1983), p.
57
84^
Owens, p.
73
8 5~
Owens, p.
73
86^
Owens, p.
64
8 7
Owens, p.
64
. Owens refers to
Jean-Francois
Lyotard,
La condition postmoderne (Paris: Minuit, 1979), p. 8.
88
89
90
Owens, pp. 65-66.
Owens, p. 67.
Owens, p. 67.
91
Owens, p. 67.
^Mel Gussow, "Stoppard Refutes Himself, Endlessly,
New York Times, 26 April 1972, p. 54.
-48-
93
Cited in Ronald Hayman, Tom Stoppard, Contemporary
Playwrights Series, 3rd ed. (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1979), p. 40.
94
Genesis 2:7. All further biblical references are to
the Kind James Version.
^Genesis 2:21-22.
96 T -7
Genesis 2:7.
^Genesis 2:23.
^Gilbert and Gubar, p. 35.
9 9
Gilbert and Gubar, p. 35.
100^
Genesis 3:6.
^'''Barbara Johnson, Translator's Introduction to Dis
semination by Jacques Derrida (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1981), p. viii.
1 n 2
Jacques Derrida, Positions, quoted by Jonathan
Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after
Structuralism (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1982), p. 85.
101
Jacques Derrida, L'ecriture et la difference, quoted
in Translator's Preface to Of Grammatology by Jacques
Derrida, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1976), p. xxi.
104Jacques Derrida, Positions, quoted in Culler, p. 86.
1 QC
Derrida, Of Grammatology, pp. 13-14.
49^Culler, p. 180.
4^^Culler, p. 166.
49^Culler, p. 156.
109Derrida, "The Conflict of Faculties," quoted in
Culler, p. 156.
110Culler,
P-
61
111Culler,
P-
61
112Culler,
P-
60
-49-
113
Dorothy Dinnerstem, The Mermaid and the Minotaur:
Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise (New York: Harper &
Row, 1977), p. 80.
*14Brecht, pp. 75-76 .
115Gilbert and Gubar demonstrate in the introduction
to The Madwoman in the Attic the consistent linking of the
pen with the penis. See pages 3-16.
116
Robert Egan, "A Thin Beam of Light: The Purpose of
Playing in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," Theatre
Journal 31 (March 1979): 59.
ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD OR
TOM STOPPARD DOESN'T KNOW
Dislocation of an audience's assumptions is an
important part of what I like to write.
Tom Stoppard^
Even before the curtain rises on Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead, Stoppard has begun the process of
dislocating his audience's assumptions, for the very title
indicates a central, "dislocating" fact about the play, the
fact that has been at the heart of the critical controversy
surrounding Stoppard's first major stage success: the play
is derivative. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are drawn, not
from life, but from art. And once the curtain rises, this
dislocation of assumptions continues unabated as we realize
that Stoppard is not only replaying Hamlet, but is incor
porating essential elements of Waiting for Godot as well.
Stoppard's borrowing operates at virtually all levels, from
the all-encompassing frame of Hamlet, to repetitions of
Hamlet as the play-within-the-play, to the Beckettian
scenario of two men waiting on a vacant stage, to specific
echoes of lines from Hamlet, Godot, and other works. This
blatant and pervasive borrowing specifically dislocates
-50-
-51-
assumptions about originality in art, for Stoppard clearly
makes no effort to pretend that Rosencrantz is an unmediated
representation of life. Such an implicit challenge to the
primacy of originality in art in turn raises questions about
the concept of authorship and the nature of representation
(what do authors do if not look at life and then represent
it in art?), questions which, not coincidentally, have a
direct bearing on the major thematic issues explored within
the play.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, modelled after Vladimir
and Estragn, caught up in the script of Hamlet, develop an
interest in sources and origins, and as we join them in
trying to determine where they came from, the derivativeness
of the play intensifies the futility of our joint search,
for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, like the play, have no
single origin. The play's derivativeness intervenes in the
same way as we participate in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's
search for their end, their fate. Stoppard juxtaposes the
Renaissance tragic vision of Hamlet (death is part of a
grand design) with the modern absurdist vision of Godot
(death is as meaningless as life), unmasking both, reveal
ing them as artificial constructs based upon different
assumptions about life, neither of which is endorsed as a
uniquely valid way of representing reality. This juxta
position leaves us, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, with
no firm ground to stand on as we try to explain their
-52-
deaths. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern die because, as the
2
Player explains, "It is written" no God, not even an
absent Godot, only an implied author passively assembling
an already written story. Thus, the whole concept of fate
is thoroughly undermined as Stoppard refuses us the stable
ground of a fixed theatrical mode which corresponds to life;
the end of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is refracted and
reflected through layers of art which may not at all be
rooted in a valid relationship with life. Lest we try to
push aside the realization that both the origin and the end
of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are art, not life, Stoppard
foregrounds debates, discussions, and demonstrations con
cerning the possibilities and limitations of illusion and
representation. Guildenstern tells a series of stories
espousing the virtues of believing in an illusion which is
clearly at odds with reality; the Player teaches several
lessons concerning the conventions of the theater; and we
see "death" performed repeatedly in a variety of theatrical
modes only to hear the performance critiqued by the onstage
audience immediately afterwards. In the end, the deaths of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become an opening into the
question of how the theater works, and the assumptions
audiences traditionally rely on to frame their responses
are completely dislocated.
While it seems clear that Stoppard's blatantly deriva
tive authorial strategy is a uniquely well-suited vehicle
-53-
for exploring the issues raised within the play, surprisingly
enough, critics are only beginning to ask the rather old-
fashioned New Critical question of how the form works with
the content of Rosencrantz. Critics have for the most part
overlooked the relationship between the outside and the
inside, addressing either the derivativeness of the play or
its content, but only rarely asking whether the two work
together in any special way. Early reviewers often focused
on Stoppard's derivativeness, and they found nothing to
admire. Robert Brustein's complaints are easily the most
well-knownhe labelled the play a "theatrical parasite,
feeding off Hamlet, Waiting for Godot, and Six Characters
3
in Search of an Author" and rechristened it "Waiting for
4
Hamlet" but his was by no means a lonely, dissenting
voice. C.O. Gardner joined the chorus of condemnations,
denouncing the play as "a swill, composed of second-hand
5
Beckett, third-hand Kafka, and the goon show," and, as
g
such, thoroughly unworthy of "serious critical attention."
Likewise, Christopher Nichols found the play's stage suc
cess surprising since he saw "no stinging innovation"^ in
Rosencrantz. According to the early critical consensus,
then, the derivativeness of Stoppard's play constituted an
artistic weakness of the most grave nature, a weakness of
sufficient magnitude to relegate the play to the ash-heap.
Instead of fading into oblivion, however, Rosencrantz
is, as Robert Egan observes (borrowing one of the play's
-54-
own lines), "gathering weight as it goes on."8 As the play
began to show signs of becoming a "modern classic,"9 the
critical response slowly grew more accommodating, but the
legacy of Brustein's charge has continued to haunt the play.
Normand Berlin saw some good in the play, arguing in
"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: Theater of Criti
cism" that "what Stoppard does best" is "to help us realize
'how remarkable Shakespeare is.'"10 But while Berlin thought
the play might succeed as criticism of Hamlet, he thought
it largely failed as a play, agreeing whole-heartedly with
Brustein's assessment: "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead is a derivative play, correctly characterized by
Robert Brustein as a 'theatrical parasite.'"11 After re
peating Brustein's version of the play's genealogy, he
elaborated, "Stoppard goes to Shakespeare for his charac
ters, for the background to his play's action, and for some
direct quotations, to Pirandello for the idea of giving
extradramatic life to established characters, to Beckett
for the tone, the philosophical thrust, and for some comic
routines." Berlin's move toward some sort of critical
accommodation is clearly a small step, for while it is true
that criticism is an important part of Rosencrantz, Berlin
sees this critical element as strictly limited to an eluci
dation of Hamlet rather than as an exploration of the
tragic genre and even of the nature of theater, and more
importantly, he retains the assumption that criticism is
-55-
itself basically parasitical, so that Stoppard's play about
art is less worthy than a play about life.
As the play continued to gather more weight, critics
largely dropped the condemnations of Stoppard's borrowing
as they embarked on detailed source studies, treating
Stoppard's borrowing in much the same way they might treat
Chaucer's or Shakespeare's borrowing in the pre-Romantic
period, before criticism began to place such a premium on
"originality" in art. Margarete Holubetz, for example,
argued that the fake death scene in Webster's The White
Devil is very close to, and may have served as a source for,
13
the fake death scene in Rosencrantz while Ruby Cohn, in
Modern Shakespeare Offshoots, detailed the evidence of
Stoppard's thinking about two bit-players from Hamlet
"through the absurdist twilight of Beckett's Godot." ^ "In
performance," she observed, "the Godot quality of Stoppard's
couple is evident in their music-hall exchanges, their
games, their boredom, their lack of memory, and their
general uncertainty about their condition^^ Cohn accu
rately noted other similarities between Godot and Rosen
crantz : "In both plays, two friends ask each other ques
tions, tell each other stories, play with puns, clichs,
16
pauses, repetitions, and impersonations." Cohn found
that, "more obviously than Beckett, Stoppard introduces
17
philosophy into the music-hall patter of his pair," and
she deemed this philosophical dimension valuable. But her
-56-
summary of Stoppard's use of source plays contained hints
that the earlier bias against the borrowing in Rosencrantz
was still at work: "Extremely skillful in dovetailing the
Hamlet scenes into the Godot situation, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead is a witty commentary rather than a
theatrical exploration into either great work." While
the source plays are great, her comments suggested, the
derivative Rosencrantz is merely witty.
Ronald Hayman and Jill L. Levenson similarly wrote of
Stoppard's play in terms of source material, observing the
borrowing without condemning it, and even, in the case of
Levenson, praising the derivativeness as a source of textual
richness. Noting that "the public was ready for a depar
ture from the mould of working-class anti-hero that John
19
Osborne had established in 1956," Mayman argued that
"Stoppard appeared at the right moment with his beautifully
engineered device for propelling two attendant lords into
2 0
the foreground." "Stoppard," Hayman continued, "was not
the first playwright to incorporate generous slabs of
Shakesperian dialogue into a modern text, but he was the
boldest and the cleverest."21 Writing in Shakespeare Survey,
Levenson began by observing that
As soon as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
Dead appeared in performance, reviewers and
academic commentators recognized its derivation
not only from Shakespeare's Hamlet, but also
from Beckett's Waiting for Godot. They have
noticed other influences as well: Pirandello,
-57-
T.S. Eliot, Wilde, Kafka, and Pinter have left
theatrical or literary traces, and Ludwig
Wittgenstein's late Investigations provide
philosophical bearings.
In Levenson's view, Stoppard's borrowing served as both "a
means for solving practical problems of composition" and
a source of allusions and reverberations that make the text
richer. Hamlet provided Stoppard with "a familiar text
whose interpretation he could share with his audience,"24
and his many other sources worked with Hamlet as threads
which converge or, to use Levenson's preferred image, "trans-
25
parencies stacked on top of one another." Levenson saw
Stoppard's borrowing as a major source of "the wit which
2 6
has continually engaged Stoppard's audiences," a wit
which "arises not only from his verbal ingenuity but also
from the meeting of pointssometimes whole linesin the
27
transparencies."
Undoubtedly, these more recent studies of Stoppard's
use of sources are far more productive than the earlier
blanket condemnations of Stoppard's theatrical parasitism,
but we need at this point to take heed of William E. Gruber's
words of caution about accepting even this more fruitful
approach as an adequate frame for discussing Stoppard's
play, which Gruber believes "has no clear theatrical prece
dent."2^ Reviewing the commentaries of Cohn, Hayman, and
Thomas Whitaker, Gruber observes, "Such language 'skillful
in dovetailing,' 'beautifully engineered,' 'clever pastiche'
condemns while it praises, subtly labeling Stoppard's play
-58-
2 9
as a derivative piece of workmanship." He continues with
a most accurate comment about the critical response to art
in general: "We tend to mistrust anything which is not
3 0
obviously new, not wholly original." And I could not
agree more with Gruber's observation that "Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead ought to cause us to acknowledge some
inadequacies in the vocabulary we currently use to discuss
31
plays," for "a workshop vocabulary proves unable to explain
what occurs when the script of Hamlet mingles with the
32
script of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." The
scope of this problem becomes acutely apparent when we
read, for example, Richard Corballis's conclusion to the
Rosencrantz chapter in his 1984 Stoppard: The Mystery and
the Clockwork. Seeking to praise the play at the end of a
chapter which fruitfully examines Stoppard's conflation of
Hamlet and Godot, Corballis must, in the absence of more
appropriately descriptive terminology, resort to a vocabu
lary that does not at all describe how Rosencrantz works:
33
"Stoppard," he writes, "created an original masterpiece."
In spite of these "vocabulary" problems--and I submit
that this weakness in critical terminology is rooted in an
underlying conceptual problem that cannot be entirely re
solved by a mere substitution of wordsthree studies that
have appeared since 1979 (including Corballis's) repre
sent major strides in the evolution of the critical response
to Rosencrantz. All three critics, Robert Wilcher, Corballis,
-59-
and Michael Hinden, treat Stoppard's borrowing as an integral
part of the play, praising his incorporation of a Renais
sance world view, via Hamlet, into the absurdist vision of
Godot.
Robert Wilcher's 1979 "The Museum of Tragedy: Endgame
and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," the earliest of
the studies, may be most properly classified as a transition
essay, for Wilcher retains a central feature of older
approaches to the play, namely, the viewing of Stoppard's
play in terms of Shakespeare's. "My chief purpose," he
states, "is to see what light is thrown on the plays of
Beckett and Stoppard by reading them in the context of
Hamlet in particular and of the tradition of tragic art
34
alluded to by Hamm [in Endgame] in general." But Wilcher's
reading clearly goes beyond the view of Brustein and com
pany, who see Rosencrantz as an inferior parasite feeding
off great plays, and beyond that of Berlin as well, for
Wilcher reads the play as a window onto the entire tradition
of tragedy rather than as a commentary only on Hamlet, and
he does not work from the assumption that the play's cri
tical function is essentially parasitical. Instead, he
suggests that his study of the relationship between the
tradition of tragedy and Rosencrantz and Endgame may "have
some bearing upon the death or survival of tragedy in the
modern age."^~* Thus, Wilcher sees the contemporary plays
as potentially life-giving rather than as life-sapping
parasites.
-60-
Wilcher begins by observing that "tragedy is no longer
O
viable as an art-form in the mid-twentieth century" since
the ethical conventions and Providential world order they
rely on are no longer part of a broadly shared cultural con
sensus. Rosencrantz, he argues, raises "the question of the
relation of modern drama to the tragic art of the past quite
37
explicitly." Since Stoppard cannot rely on the shared
Providential world view which previously provided the basis
for the structure of tragedy, he substitutes the script of
Hamlet as an alternative "for a cultural consensus about
3 8
the nature and meaning of the universe." By incorporating
39
"fragments of Shakespeare's play" into the action,
Stoppard presents "the script as a viable theatrical alter-
40
native to Destiny or Grade."
But Stoppard's substitution is not designed to keep
alive a mode of theater that has outlived its usefulness;
it works instead as an expansion of the insights Pirandello
offered about the theater. The traditional "distinction
between the reality of life and the unreality of the stage
41
has been blurred and inverted in the twentieth century"
so that, after Pirandello, all the world is no longer a
4
stage, "but the stage is itself a world with its own laws."
Whereas in the Renaissance tragedy reflected a shared view
of the world as essentially orderly, in the twentieth
century, only art is orderly, and the orderly world of the
stage reflects only the order of art, not of life, which is
-61-
viewed as fundamentally chaotic. Stoppard's play differs
from Pirandello's in that Stoppard does not have to "tell us
the story in which his Characters [are] trapped as he [goes]
43
along." He "can rely on his audience's knowledge of the
44
source play, Hamlet."
Thus, Wilcher argues, "The universe of the modern
characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, is not the Renais
sance macrocosm of Prince Hamlet, Shakespeare, and the
Elizabethan-audience, but Hamlet the playand it is impor
tant to stress again that it is not a view of the world but
a familiarity with Hamlet that is shared by Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, Stoppard, and the twentieth-century audience."
By using Hamlet as a "formal equivalent for the agreement
46
between dramatist and audience on which tragedy depends,"
Stoppard's presentation of the deaths of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern becomes an opening onto the workings of tragedy
and of the theater as a whole. Why, Wilcher asks, "should
Shakespeare bother to tell us what happened to two insig
nificant attendant lords?"47 "Such is the fate of those
who inhabit the world of the stage," we realize, "where
48 ...
aesthetic laws apply as well as moral ones." The divinity
that shapes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern' s ends, unlike the
Divinity that shapes Hamlet's end, does not extend beyond
the world of the stage. While the death of Hamlet reaches
out of the play to confirm a world view, the deaths of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, no less in Shakespeare's
6 2-
play than in Stoppard's, are mandated by the order of art,
which requires that there be no loose ends. While Wilcher
suggests that Stoppard's confirmation of the order of art
allows us to "still share a belief in the creative power of
49
the artist" m an age "when we may doubt the existence of
50
a Creator or a Providence," I believe Stoppard's extension
of Pirandello's strategy may have the opposite effect. In
stead of reinforcing the Author/Father/God topos, Stoppard
unmasks the model, revealing that the deaths of Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern never had any connection to Providence,
that Shakespeare was not so much presenting Divinity at work
as simply tying up a thread in the plot in order to produce
a well-made, orderly play.
In his 1980 "Extending the Audience: The Structure of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" (which he revises
slightly for his book on Stoppard), Richard Corballis begins
with a different emphasis but treats Stoppard's use of
Hamlet in much the same way as Wilcher. Noting that critics
who do not accept Brustein's assessment of the play tend
to accept Berlin's, Corballis dissents, arguing that "al
though the 'overt' themes of the play may look derivative,
'forced and jejune' on the page, I have always found them
highly effective and even moving in the theatre."^ He
similarly rejects the consensus that Stoppard communicates
his themes "by sheer 'rhetoric'" and suggests that
"Stoppard has contrived a very sophisticated strategy for
-63-
53
the presentation of his ideas." This strategy is, of
course, Stoppard's incorporation of Hamlet into the "mani-
54
festly bizarre" world of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Corballis also finds inadequate the standard explanation
of Stoppard's use of Hamlet--"Stoppard's play turns
55
Shakespeare's inside out" so that the bit-players,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, move to the center, usurping
Prince Hamlet and pushing him to the peripheryfor it
"implies that Stoppard tinkered (albeit ingeniously) with
an (or should I say the?) established dramatic masterpiece
for no better reason than that 'it was there.
For Corballis, "the play is based upon a much more
57
substantial foundation than this"; namely, "the inversion
of the Hamlet action is merely a symptom of a thoroughgoing
58
inversion of conventional assumptions about life."
Corballis essentially argues that, "as a result of 'the
death of tragedy' in modern times, Hamlet had to be re-
defined." Stoppard redefines tragedy by juxtaposing the
disorderly world of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with the
orderly world of Hamlet so that the modern couple is "por
trayed as an extension of the audience and therefore as
'real' people"^ while "the Hamlet characters . are
made to appear all the more artificial, stagy, and 'un
real. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern begin the play as
spectators of Hamlet, but as they are gradually drawn into
the script, the "fortuitous" gives way to the "ordained
-64-
(Corballis borrows a line from Guildenstern here) as their
random, Beckettian world is taken over by the Providential
world of Hamlet, which "comes to symbolize the 'ordaining'
power over which Stoppard's protagonists struggle to impose
a measure of personal control."
Corballis explains that the Players work at first as
a link "between the real world of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern
and the audience and the artificial, stage-world of
6 3
Hamlet," but "they make one decisive shiftlate in Act 1
64
from the 'real' to the 'artificial'" so that they serve "to
develop the abstract antithesis between the world of Hamlet
and the world of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern into a dramatic
confrontation full of fear and menace."^ In Corballis's
view, the contrast between these two worlds "constitutes
6 6
the core of Stoppard's play," for the Hamlet "world (un
like the 'real' world of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) has
form and meaning; and death (which so perplexes Rosencrantz
6 7
and Guildenstern) is an accepted part of its design."
While Corballis's reading provides insight into the
function of the Hamlet script, I am not comfortable with
his classification of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as "real"
(even though he calls the term into question by using
quotation marks), for they seem every bit as stagy and
artificial as the Hamlet characters, perhaps more so, since
they are doubly derived from art (and thus emphatically
removed from life), existing as the conflation of
-65-
Shakespeare's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Beckett's
Vladimir and Estragn. The Renaissance world view under
lying Hamlet seems, from the perspective offered by
Rosencrantz, no more an artificial construct than the
absurdist world view underlying Godot. Rather than endorsing
the absurdist view as more real than the Renaissance view,
Stoppard seems instead to juxtapose two equally artificial
(or two equally "real," for that matter, since the dis
tinction is no longer clear) modes of theaterwithout
endorsing eitherin order to undermine the concept of
"realism." If we at first respond to Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern as "real" and to the Hamlet characters as
artificial, it is, we begin to realize, because we have
been taught since the mid 1950s to respond to absurdism as
a valid representation of life, as more "realistic" than
preceding theatrical modes. But once again, Stoppard's
overt derivativeness intervenes to undermine any comfortable
assumptions we might attempt to rest on, for the repeated
attention given within the play to theater as only a set
of conventions works with this juxtaposition of two incom
patible dramatic modes to render the notion of "realism"
untenable.
In his 1981 "Jumpers: Stoppard and the Theater of
Exhaustion," Michael Hinden makes regrettably brief com
ments about Rosencrantz which support just such a reading.
Like Corballis, he begins by disagreeing with the critical
-66-
view that Stoppard's derivativeness constitutes an artistic
weakness: "Some critics have confused Tom Stoppard's use
of earlier dramatic tradition (Shakespeare in Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead and Wilde in Travesties) with
parody, lack of originality, or want of purpose."68 Unlike
Wilcher and Corballis, though, Hinden's alternative context
for reading Stoppard's borrowing is not the death of tragedy
in the contemporary era, but John Barth's "The Literature
of Exhaustion," in which Barth puts forth the thesis that
"the used-upness of certain forms" is "by no means neces
sarily a cause for despair" and should not be equated with
6 9
"physical, moral, or intellectual decadence." Hinden
argues that "Like Barth, Stoppard finds himself in the
predicament of having to succeed not only classical tradi
tion (Shakespeare), but the newly defined (and therefore
70
defunct) tradition of absurdism as well." Hinden believes
71
"Berlin misses the point" when he labels Rosencrantz
72
"criticism, not literature" and describes the play
"feeding on" its source plays. "Stoppard," he argues,
"does not 'feed on' Shakespeare, Beckett, and Pirandello;
7 7
he dines with them." Hinden gives substance to this
substitution of words by citing Barth's remark that "if
Beethoven's Sixth were composed today, it would be an
embarrassment; but clearly it wouldn't be, necessarily, if
done with ironic intent by a composer quite aware of where
we've been and where we are.
74
By analogy," Hinden
-67-
continues, "Stoppard does not reinvent the world's most
7 R
famous play so much as he encounters and subverts it."
With all due deference to the intentional fallacy, I think
we can safely conclude that Stoppard did not intend to
quietly pass off Hamlet as his own invention; he clearly
uses the source play with an awareness "of where we've been
and where we are." In Barth's view, such an informed use
of the art of the past works to replenish art by confronting
"an intellectual dead end" and turning it "against itself to
7 6
accomplish new human work."
Thus, Hinden sees Stoppard's position in relation to
the history of the theater as analogous to Barth's position
in relation to the history of fiction. Just as Barth "ties
himself self-consciously to Joyce and Beckett in repetition
of the way Joyce tied himself consciouslybut not self-
7 7
consciously--to Homer," so Stoppard ties himself self
consciously to Shakespeare and Beckett in repetition, we
ought to realize, of the way Shakespeare and Beckett tied
themselves to the many sources they used in constructing
Hamlet and Godot. Hinden goes on to describe how Rosencrantz
"telescopes dramatic history, contrasting tragedy with
theater of the absurd," duly noting the differences between
the two theatrical modes which are highlighted by Stoppard's
conflation of his two primary source plays. But his major
contribution lies not so much in his discussion of the
specific insights which emerge from Stoppard's juxtaposition
-68-
as in the Barth frame he provides for reading Stoppard's
borrowing in general.
Post-modern aesthetic principles like Barth's provide
a much more adequate frame for reading Stoppard's borrowing
than either a Romantic aesthetic of originality in author
ship (on which the vehement condemnations of Stoppard's
"parasitism" are based) or a pre-Romantic aesthetic that
sidesteps the originality question (on which the relatively
non-judgemental source studies are based), for neither a
Romantic nor a pre-Romantic aesthetic can account for the
implications of Stoppard's overt derivativeness. Critics
locked into a Romantic conception of originality in author
ship fail to recognize that Stoppard's authorial strategy
directly challenges the aesthetic of originality, and as
a result, they produce little more than wholesale condemna
tions of Rosencrantz. While commentators working from pre-
Romantic assumptions generally produce more insightful
studies, they too fall short of the mark. Stoppard's
borrowing cannot simply be treated in the same way as
Chaucer's or Shakespeare's, for in the contemporary era,
when the popular view of authorship is still very much in
tune with early nineteenth century Romantic ideals, borrow
ing, especially borrowing as blatant as Stoppard's, means
something very different than it did in the days of yore
before critics embraced the creative genius of the Author
as a central aesthetic tenet. In short, critics, as much
-69-
as authors, must work from an awareness "of where we've
been and where we are." And where we are is limbocaught
between a play that demands an awareness of contemporary
critical theory, and an applied criticism that is still
stuck where we have been, still stuck with outdated critical
assumptions that render it unable to account for a play like
Rosencrantz.
Rosencrantz offers us a fun-filled ride out of limbo
land, and it will escort us safely to the shores of a re
vised aesthetic theory if only we will hop aboard and leave
our heavy, outdated critical baggage behind. Stoppard does
not just abruptly confront us with his blatant, jarring,
"dislocating" derivativeness and leave us empty-handed,
unable to reconcile our old ideas about art with this play
that so outrageously flies in the face of those ideas.
Instead, he fills his play with dialogue and situations
which guide us toward a series of insights about the nature
of the theater. As we watch Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
struggle with their lessons about the theater, we join
them in pondering the nature of representation, fate, and
dramatic structure. Berlin was at least partially correct
in calling Rosencrantz Theater of Criticism, for the play
does in fact function as criticism, prodding us, as so much
contemporary critical theory does, to revise our notions of
"originality" and "realism." But it also works as theater.
And this may be Stoppard's greatest achievement while he
-70-
teaches us that theater is a self-contained set of conven
tions with nothing behind or beneath it, no god-like Author
working in collaboration with Providence, no special rela
tionship with life, he also shows us that we can, as
Guildenstern advises, still "Enjoy it. Relax" (p. 40).
Theater has never needed God to provide fate, life to pro
vide "realism"; it has always been a set of conventions,
complete unto itself, always a matter of "playing at [. .]
words, words" (p. 41).
We feel no sense of loss at being asked to abandon our
old notions about art because while Stoppard is undermining
"realism" and "originality," he is simultaneously reassuring
us that theater still works perfectly well without these
aesthetic assumptions, reassuring us that we can give up
these old notions without sacrificing one iota of the joy
we have always found in the theater. Stoppard gives us a
play that not only defies "realism" and "originality," but
is also about deaththe deaths of Rosencrantz and Guilden
stern, the death of tragedy, the death of old assumptions
about representation. All these gloomy ingredients,
however, do not add up to a gloomy play, for Rosencrantz
is decidedly a joyand a large measure of the joyful
playfulness that pervades it is made possible by the
loosening of the constraints imposed by old aesthetic
rules. The deaths of tragedy, representation, "original
ity," and "realism" are, to borrow Barth's phrase, "by no
-71-
7 Q
means necessarily a cause for despair." In Rosencrantz,
Stoppard taps the potential of these deaths, demonstrating
that they make room for new lifeand that the room is
bigger, for the limits of theater have been extended.
In Act One, Guildenstern comments, "The only beginning
is birth and the only end is deathif you can't count on
that, what can you count on?" (p. 39). In Rosencrantz, you
cannot count on either, for neither the beginning nor the
end of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is a simple, single
point. In "The Death of the Author," Roland Barthes argues
that "a text is not a line of words releasing a single
'theological' meaning (the message of the Author-God) but
a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings,
8 0
none of them original, blend and clash." While Barthes
is describing a contemporary theoretical view of writing
in general, no play has ever more vividly manifested this
description than Rosencrantz. And the consequences of this
blatant blending and clashing could hardly be more far-
reaching for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and for us.
At the beginning of the play, they are most concerned
with their own beginnings, and they try repeatedly, though
unsuccessfully, to determine where they came from. Eventu
ally, as the play progresses and the "fortuitous" gives way
to the "ordained"the randomness and stagnation symbolized
by the coin toss give way to the outcome ordained by the
script of Hamletthe question of their origins becomes
-72-
moot, and they become ever more concerned with determining
their end. The blending and clashing of writings confounds
their search for their end even more profoundly than it
does their search for origins. And when death finally comes
to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, it raises more questions
than it answers, leaving us to carry on the search for an
explanation in their absence. Is this death as it was
written in Hamlet? If so, were the deaths of Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern ever part of tragedy's Grand Design, even
in Hamlet? Or were their deaths required in Shakespeare's
play merely to tie up a loose end? Or is this death accord
ing to Godot, pointedly absurd? Or is this death, as John
Perlette argues, according to Freud, "death" which demon
strates our psychological inability to believe that we
81
cease to exist, even as spectators? Or is this death by
magic trick"Now you see me, now you(and disappears)"
(p. 126).
It is death by all of these, death as "It is written"
(p. 80) in a variety of styles that blend and clash end
lessly, with no origin in a single Author-Father-God and,
as Barthes argues, therefore no end. "To give a text an
Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it
8 2
with a final signified, to close the writing." Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern's inability to find their origins and ends
points to the generalized lack of origins and ends in the
entire play. Stoppard and Barthes, however, both encourage
-73-
us to think, not in terms of a lack of origins and ends,
but in terms of a freedom from the limits formerly imposed
on the text by the Author-Father-God. By declining to pose
as the Author, Stoppard frees himself from the constraints
of feigning "originality." He is no longer compelled to
cover the tracks of his borrowing in an effort to pass
Rosencrantz off as an unmediated representation of reality.
Nor is he compelled to give us the Truth, the final answer,
the single 'theological' meaning in the form of an endorse
ment of one mode of theater at the expense of all the others.
If Rosencrantz offers us any truth, it is that theater never
depended on Truth. Rosencrantz does not rely on the truth
of the tragic vision"There's a divinity that shapes our
8 3
ends" any more than it relies on the Truth of the
absurdist visionthere is no divinity shaping any aspect
of lifeor on the Truth of the Freudian or even of the
magic trick vision.
The text does not offer us Truth, which inherently
requires closure. It offers playan endless play of styles
of writing. The text becomes, as Guildenstern explains,
"a prize, an extra slice of childhood when you least expect
it, as a prize for being good, or a compensation for never
having had one ..." (p. 40). The play is clearly a prize
for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, for they get to play
title roles this time, not bit parts as they did in Hamlet.
And when they are not futilely searching for their
-74-
untraceable origins or their inscrutable ends, they are
very often playingplaying games, role-playing. Egan
believes Rosencrantz's "truest debt to Waiting for Godot"84
lies not in a shared absurdist vision, but in a more full
realization of the potential of play suggested by Godot.
"One of the few consolations Didi and Gogo have in their
limbo state, besides the uncertain pleasure of one another's
company, is their sporadic ability to improvise games,
thereby endowing their existence with an artificial sense
8 5
of form and meaning," he observes. In Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead, the tenuous and wry note of hope
represented by this sense of play becomes a major chord and
8 6
a dramatized philosophy."
The major chord of hope stemming from Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern's ability to sustain play--Stoppard's ability
to sustain playin the absence of Truth, "realism," and
"originality" (ingredients formerly thought necessary to
make a play work) turns Rosencrantz into a prize for us as
well. After all the focus on what we have lost in the
twentieth centurywe have lost God, lost order, lost mean
ing, suffered a crisis of cultural authorityRosencrantz
moves beyond the gloom of expounding our losses and demon
strates what we have gained. Without the limits imposed
by Truth, theater is no longer restricted to endorsing a
single theatrical mode at the expense of all others. To
put it another way, theater is no longer restricted to
-75-
representing "life" and, in doing so, reinforcing a single
world view. We recall Craig Owens's distinction between
modernismthe era of master narrativesand post-modernism
the era when master narratives have lost their credibility,
when we have developed a healthy skepticism of attempts to
provide the single theoretical discourse. Stoppard fosters
this healthy postmodern scepticism by refusing to endorse a
single theatrical discourse. Rather than embarking on a
therapeutic program for recuperating "the tremendous loss
8 7
of mastery" characteristic of our era, Stoppard warmly
embraces the loss of mastery, treating it not so much as a
loss, but as an opening, an opportunity for extending the
limits of what theater can do.
To signal the extension of the limits of theater,
Rosencrantz opens with a coin toss which Stoppard describes
as "impossible" (p. 11), and the Players make their final
appearance, moments before the play's end, by emerging
"impossibly" (p. 122) from a barrel. The impossible opening
situation, in sharp contrast to the impossible barrel trick
near the play's end, provokes a lengthy consideration of
the nature of reality and order. Guildenstern's first
sustained response to the bizarre run of heads clearly
indicates that his faith in the order of reality has been
shaken: "A weaker man might be moved to re-examine his
faith, if in nothing else at least in the law of proba
bility" (p. 12). As still more coins consistently turn
-76-
up heads, Guildenstern grows ever more aware of the un
settling implications and seeks an explanation, sensing
that the lop-sided coin toss "must be indicative of some
thing" (p. 16). While the appearance of the ghost at the
beginning of Hamlet indicates only that there is something
rotten in the state of Denmark, the "impossible" coin toss
at the beginning of Rosencrantz reaches beyond mere plot
implications to indicate that the order of theater is
separate and distinct from the order of reality.
Guildenstern, however, does not immediately grasp these
broad implications. He first tries a variety of explana
tions to account for the impossible run of heads in terms
of reality as he has known it. He suggests that perhaps
he is willing it, that time has stopped dead, that the
divine has intervened, or that maybe the bizarre results
are "a spectacular vindication of the principle that each
individual coin spun individually (he spins one) is as
likely to come down heads as tails and therefore should
cause no surprise each individual time it does" (p. 16).
When the ninety-second coin he has just spun turns up heads
as well, he tries a trio of syllogisms which serve more to
undermine the whole concept of logic than to explain the
coin toss in terms of reality.
The failed syllogisms drive him to continue "with tight
hysteria, under control" (p. 17) with one last attempt to
contrive a realistic explanation of the impossible coin toss
-77-
before the approach of the Players prompts him to take a
different tack. "The equanimity of your average tosser of
coin depends upon a law, or rather a tendency, or let us
say a mathematically calculable chance," Guildenstern ex
plains, "which ensures that he will not upset himself by
losing too much nor upset his opponent by winning too often"
(p. 18). Desperately searching for a realistic explanation
of this event which has shaken his faith in the order of
reality, Guildenstern begins by referring to the "law"
which kept the world in balance. But he quickly reduces
that binding certainty to a "tendency," then a "probability"
before finally settling on "chance" as the principle of
order.
In accounting for his indebtedness to Beckett, Stoppard
told Ronald Hayman that "the Beckett novels show as much as
the plays" in Rosencrantz "because there's a Beckett joke
8 8
which is the funniest joke in the world to me." The joke,
he continued, "consists of a confidement statement followed
by immediate refutation by the same voice. It's a constant
process of elaborate structure and suddenand total
dismantlement.1,89 Guildenstern s lengthy speech is clearly
built on the Beckett jokea confident statement about the
order of reality, followed by refutations that dismantle
the whole structure he has just built.
Rosencrantz, who has not been at all disturbed by the
implications of winning ninety-two coins in a row, responds
-78-
to Guildenstern's elaborate discourse with a typically
inappropriate comment: "Another curious scientific phenom
enon is the fact that the fingernails grow after death, as
does the beard" (p. 18). Lightly dropped, apparently without
significance, this inappropriate remark unobtrusively intro
duces the topic which will gradually grow into an obsession
death. But Guildenstern is not yet interested in their
end. "Tensed up by [Rosencrantz1s] rambling" (p. 19), he
tries to redirect their discussion to an issue which seems
to him more appropriate at this early stagetheir begin
ning. "Do you remember the first thing that happened
today?" (p. 19), he asks. They connect again as Rosencrantz
recalls "that man, a foreigner" (p. 19)a messenger from
Hamlet"we were sent for" (p. 19). "That's why we're here"
(p. 19), he asserts triumphantly, as though certainty has
suddenly been restored. Of course, it has not, for they
do not even know where they are, except as Rosencrantz
lamely explains, "Travelling" (p. 19). Guildenstern's
suggestion that "We better get on" (p. 20) takes them all
the way to the footlights, where Rosencrantz asks, "Which
way do we(He turns round. ) Which way did we?" (p. 20).
They are temporarily saved from fruitless contempla
tion of where they came from by the sound of a band which
signals the approach of the six Tragedians. Rosencrantz
responds to the music, which is not yet audible to those
of us in the audience, by flatly stating, "It couldn't be
-79-
real" (p. 20). In a way, of course, he is right--the
Tragedians are always "on," "always in character" (p. 34),
always in a play, and thus never in reality. Before they
arrive, though, Guildenstern proposes another explanation
of their situation to Rosencrantz which shares a rhetorical
similarity with his second syllogism but marks a departure
from his previous attempts to reconcile the impossible coin
toss with "reality." When Guildenstern was still trying to
account realistically for the coin toss, he instructed
Rosencrantz to "Discuss" (p. 17) a syllogism centered on
the operation of probability in "un-, sub- or supernatural
forces" (p. 17). Now, as illusion is about to intrude in
the form of a troupe of actors, he instructs Rosencrantz
to "demolish" (p. 20) the following proposition: "'The
colours red, blue and green are real. The colour yellow
is a mystical experience shared by everybody'" (p. 20).
Rosencrantz does not demolish this proposition any
more than he discussed the syllogism, so Guildenstern
further explores the nature of reality and illusion with
an expanded story about "a man breaking his journey between
one place and another at a third place of no name, charac
ter, population, or significance" (p. 21)an apt synopsis
of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's situationwho "sees a
unicorn cross his path and disappear" (p. 21) A second,
third, and fourth man report the same sight, "and the more
witnesses there are the thinner it gets and the more
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reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality"
(p. 21). The mystical encounter with the unicorn is by
degrees robbed of its magic until it is explained away as
"a horse with an arrow in its forehead" (p. 21).
Unable to reconcile the impossible coin toss with
"reality," Guildenstern embraces illusion as an equally
plausible way of interpreting events. Why not unicorns?
Stoppard asks us through Guildenstern. Why stubbornly ad
here to the limits imposed by "realism" when the difference
between reality and illusion is on the whole rather arbi
trarywhy should yellow be mystical and red real?and a
matter of collective consent, not some distinction based
concretely on authentic divisions in the world? The uni
corn tale's disappointed "thin as reality" assessment
indicates that the usual privileging of reality over
illusion has been turned on its head, for the case of the
unicorn at least, believing in illusion offers a more
interesting way of perceiving the world. The point of
Guildenstern1s unicorn tale is lost on Rosencrantz, but
it is not lost on those of us in the audience. Theater
itself is a kind of unicorn, Stoppard is showing us, but
it is better than a unicorn because it does not lose its
magic when seen by multiple witnesses. Theater, like
unicorns, depends on "a choice of persuasions" (p. 21)
we can choose to believe in its magic, or we can explain
it away in realistic terms as "a horse with an arrow in
its forehead" (p. 21).
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Guildenstern's last wistful comment on the topic
"I'm sorry it wasn't a unicorn. It would have been nice
to have unicorns" (p. 21)provides the vocal accompaniment
for the musical arrival of the six Tragedians. In a way,
Guildenstern misreads the Players, for they are unicorns,
at least in some limited sense, for, as Egan argues, "despite
their sorry condition, the Player and his troupe are that
very hint of magic for which Guildenstern has been look-
90
ing." But while the Players may share the unicorn's
magic, they prove a bitter disappointment to Guildenstern
on other levels. "He has hoped for an omen, such as the
9
hero of a romance might receive at the outset of his quest,"
Egan observes. Instead of an immortal unicorn replete with
associations of virginity, Guildenstern finds "a comic
pornographer and a rabble of prostitutes" (p. 27) whose
forte is the performance of death. "I can do you blood and
love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and
rhetoric without the love [. .] but I can't do you love
and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory--
they're all blood" (p. 33), the Player explains.
Reality may be unfathomable for Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, but illusion is no calm, safe harbor either,
for the illusion Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are just
about to get caught up in ends in death every time. And
when the Hamlet script intrudes moments after the Player's
Blood is compulsory" speech, it serves to underscore the
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Player's explanation of fate: "We have no control" (p. 25).
Like the Players, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are charac
ters in a script over which they have no control, but
Stoppard emphasizes their lack of control even in Hamlet by
incorporating Act Two, scene two into Rosencrantz. After
Claudius instructs Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to draw
Hamlet "on to pleasures" (p. 36) and thereby glean what
afflicts him, "They both bow" (p. 36) and respond with
metrically identical speeches emphasizing their powerless
ness to refuse the will of the King and Queen:
Rosencrantz: Both your majesties
Might, by the sovereign power you
have of us,
Put your dread pleasures more into
command
Than to entreaty.
Guildenstern: But we both obey,
And here give up ourselves in the
full bent
To lay our service freely at your feet,
To be commanded. (p. 36)
Their twin speeches, however, belie the real differ
ences in their responses to the intrusion of the Hamlet
script, for while Guildenstern seems sincere in giving him
self freely "To be commanded" (p. 36), Rosencrantz imme
diately proclaims that he wants no part in this new script:
"I want to go home" (p. 37). Guildenstern, who was very
concerned about the randomness of the coin toss, finds the
certainty of the Renaissance play comforting, but Rosen
crantz, who was never disturbed by the randomness of their
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initial situation, somehow senses, amidst great confusion,
the ultimate implications of accepting the roles offered by
the King and Queen: "I tell you it's all stopping to a
death, it's boding to a depth, stepping to a head, it's all
heading to a dead stop" (p. 38).
Thus, Guildenstern now plays the soothing "nursemaid"
(p. 38) as Rosencrantz panics about the growing number of
questions and the diminishing number of satisfactory answers,
reversing the roles they played when the script was random
and Guildenstern was the one in a panic. When Rosencrantz
complains, "I remember when there were no questions"
(p. 38), Guildenstern disagrees: "There were always ques
tions. To exchange one set for another is no great matter"
(p. 38). For Guildenstern, though not for Rosencrantz,
the opening random script raised a multitude of questions
about the nature of reality. In exchanging one theatrical
mode for another, they merely swap sets of questions--"no
great matter," according to Guildenstern.
Rosencrantz, though, does not like all this inter
changeabilitythe interchangeability of their names, their
roles, the scripts. He wants to know, once and for all,
who he is, Rosencrantz or Guildenstern. "I don't care one
way or another," he tells Guildenstern, "so why don't you
make up your mind" (p. 38). "We can't afford anything quite
so arbitrary," Guildenstern replies, not wanting to risk
falling back into the pointed arbitrariness from which they
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have just been saved by the ordered Renaissance script.
"Nor did we come all this way for a christening. All that--
preceded us" (p. 39). Guildenstern's remarks indicate that
he is beginning to grasp the potential significance of the
script for them. Certainly, the "christening" preceded
them, for Shakespeare named them long before. As Guildenstern
tries to explain to Rosencrantz, they would be in a much more
uncertain predicament were it not for the author who named
them: "We are comparatively fortunate," he argues. "We
might have been left to sift the whole field of human nomen
clature, like two blind men looting a bazaar for their own
portraits ..." (p. 39). While they may still be uncertain
of which one is Rosencrantz and which Guildenstern, the
roles offered by the new script narrow their options from
"the whole field of human nomenclature" to just two names:
"At least we are given alternatives" (p. 39), Guildenstern
explains. "But," and here is the rub, "not choice" (p. 39),
he quickly adds.
As the attributes of fate begin to accrue to the
script, Rosencrantz by steps reveals that God does not
control fate as much as the author controls the script,
for in this play, destiny is defined and choice is limited,
not by the fate ordained by God, but by the script written
by the author. The blending and clashing of theatrical
modes undermines the Truth value of both the random,
Beckettian initial mode and the ordered Renaissance mode
-85-
which intrudes. For Guildenstern, it is "a choice of per
suasions" (p. 21), one set of questions or another. But
as Rosencrantz indicates with his "anguished cry," "Con
sistency is all I ask!" (p. 39), the blending and clashing
of modes is as unsettling for him as the impossible coin
toss was for Guildenstern. Unmoved, Guildenstern answers
Rosencrantz's anguished cry with the first of many scrambled
versions of the Lord's Prayer: "Give us this day our daily
mask" (p. 39). What was in times past (when God controlled
the fate of characters) a prayer to God for bread to sustain
life now becomes a prayer to the author of the script for
a role--a maskto sustain play.
Rosencrantz, however, still wants "to go home" (p. 39).
What he does not realize is that, as Wilcher observes,
"Characters, in the Pirandello sense, have no being and no
'home' but the text and the stage; when they are not on
stage, speaking the lines written for them, then they cease
to exist."92 Although Stoppard will illustrate this abstract
point more fully after Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have
had another encounter with Hamlet, he suggests it fleet-
ingly here with Rosencrantz1s repetition of the question,
"Which way did we come in?" (p. 39). The pair will never
answer that question and will never be able to find the
"home" Rosencrantz seeks. To get there, they will have to
redefine "home" as the text and the stage.
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Guildenstern', who feels more at home with the new
text, tries to encourage just such a redefinition as he
delivers perhaps the most beautiful speech in the entire
play, a speech directed as much to us in the audience as
to Rosencrantz, for most of us likely share Rosencrantz's
apprehension about the blatant blending and clashing of
theatrical modes. "We'll be all right" (p. 40), Guilden-
stern assures Rosencrantz and us. Rosencrantz, still
skeptical of the script, vaguely sensing what we already
know to be true about the ultimate end of Hamlet, asks,
"For how long?" (p. 40). "Till events have played them
selves out" (p. 40), Guildenstern convincingly answers.
"There's a logic at workit's all done for you, don't worry.
Enjoy it. Relax" (p. 40). In any play, characters are only
all right until events have played themselves out, only
all right as long as the script lasts.
Besides, Guildenstern continues, the script is in it
self a kind of prize, a chance to play: "To be taken in
hand and led, like being a child again, even without the
innocence, a childit's like being given a prize, an extra
slice of childhood when you least expect it, as a prize for
being good, or compensation for never having had one . ."
(p. 40). We in the audience should relax and be taken in
hand, for though we have lost our innocence--we know what
happens to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at the end of
Hamlet and we are being shown the error of our naive
-87-
assumptions about "originality," "realism," and Truth in
the theaterthis loss of innocence need not stop play.
And for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the play is decidedly
a prize, an answer to Guildenstern's prayer for a mask, for
Rosencrantz gives them new roles to play, starring roles
this time. Even though the outcome will be the same
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will still be deadthe chance
to play their roles again is a prize all the same, compen
sation either for being good or for never having had a
childhood (they were "born" as adults in both Hamlet and
Godot, after all). By reusing an old (con)text, Stoppard
has, in effect, given them new "life" as characters.
Guildenstern follows this speech by declaring, "It's
a game" (p. 40), and indeed, after some pointed allusions
to Hamlet and GodotGuildenstern tells Rosencrantz he is
93
playing at "words, words" (p. 41), echoing both Hamlet
94
and Vladimir, and Rosencrantz describes the business of
being a spectator as "appalling" (p. 41), recalling Vladi
mir's "... appalled. (With emphasis. ) AP-PALLED" ^
they engage in the most sustained period of playing in
Rosencrantz. First, they pursue Rosencrantz1s suggestion
to "play at questions" (p. 42), a most appropriate activity
since they have had no luck with answers. The question
game, which is won by always answering each question with
another question, is intended to serve as practice for their
match with Hamlet, the idea being that they will ask
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questions to glean what afflicts the Prince without giving
away any information about themselves in the process.
Helene Keyssar-Franke, observing that in this game,
9 6
"one loses when one answers a question," argues that "the
sense conveyed is that an answer is a box, an enclosure
which stops action and creates the death of the speaker;
questions are vital, freeing; answers are dead and en-
97
slaving." What is true for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,
98
she suggests, "is also true for the audience." Although
Keyssar-Franke is intent primarily upon illustrating the
appearance of free will in the actions of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, her comments about the vitality of endless
questions and the enslaving nature of final answers ring
true as a statement about the general strategy of the play.
While audiences may initially share Rosencrantz and Guilden
stern s sense of dislocation about the lack of final
answers, the lack of a fixed theatrical mode corresponding
to a fixed world view, both the content and the open-ended
structure of the play push toward a revision of the pre
ference for a clear-cut origin and a final message in art.
Rosencrantz encourages us to replace the old aesthetic
model of a god-like Author providing both the single origin
and the final answer with a model which recognizes neither
origins nor ends, but which celebrates instead endless
playplay of questions, play of styles, play of "words,
words.
-89-
Interestingly, the actual questions of the question
game also point to the death of the old aesthetic, for God,
upon whose existence the old aesthetic ultimately depends,
is first mentioned by name in the question game. When
Guildenstern poses the question "What in God's name is going
on?" (p. 42), Rosencrantz declares "Foul! No rhetoric"
(p. 42). Similarly, when Guildenstern responds to Rosen
crantz 1 s "Is there a choice?" (p. 43) with "Is there a God?"
(p. 43), Rosencrantz again declares a foul on the grounds
that the game allows "No non sequiturs" (p. 43). God has
been rendered irrelevant to choice, mere rhetoric, under
scoring the idea that the fate of characters lies not in
God's hands, where traditional assumptions placed it, but
in the hands of the author. The game winds down with
Rosencrantz's asking a question which will become the
central question as the play continues, "Where's it going
to end?" (p. 44), to which Guildenstern replies with the
statement, "That's the question" (p. 44). Rosencrantz
aptly sums up the general situation with his lament, "It's
all questions" (p. 44).
As they reach a new dead-end, Hamlet wanders on stage
briefly, providing a new impetus for dialogue. His appear
ance first prompts them to return to their earlier preoccu
pation with determining their names, a pursuit that offers
some initial success--just by randomly guessing, they are
right half the timebut no sustained certainty. When
-90-
Rosencrantz answers to the name of Guildenstern, Guilden-
stern is "disgusted" (p. 45) and exclaims, "Consistency is
all I ask!" (p. 45), taking over Rosencrantz's earlier line.
Then, just as they are about to engage in another extended
game, Rosencrantz quietly states, "Immortality is all I
seek . ." (p. 45). Guildenstern1s rhymed response is
another version of the Lord's Prayer, "Give us this day our
daily week . ." (p. 45), which is, in effect, a reitera
tion of Rosencrantz's call for immortality, a prayer for a
week for each day they are allotted. These requests for
immortality are strategically placed in the midst of their
most obvious, extended playing, illustrating the inverse
of Wilcher's observation that "when they are not on stage,
speaking the lines written for them, . they cease to
9 9
exist." As long as they are on stage, speaking their
lines, they continue to existplay gives them, if not im
mortality, at least remarkable longevity.
And play they do. For the first of many times in
Rosencrantz, they engage in role-playing, an activity with
overt metadramatic implications. Guildenstern suggests that
he play Hamlet and that Rosencrantz question him, again with
the intent of practicing for the upcoming match with Hamlet.
The immediate effect is greater confusion, since there are
now three roles instead of just two, and Rosencrantz cannot
figure out who he is supposed to play, Rosencrantz, Guilden
stern, or Hamlet. Once the verbal slapstick stemming from
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this identity confusion subsides, the role-playing yields
an admirable explanation of what afflicts Hamlet: "Your
father, whom you love, dies, you are his heir, you come back
to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his young
brother popped onto his throne and into his sheets, thereby
offending both legal and natural practice" (p. 51), Rosen-
crantz summarizes. "Now why exactly are you behaving in
this extraordinary manner?" (p. 51), he asks. The humor
of this scene arises at least in part from Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern's ability to somehow arrive, amidst great
fumbling and bumbling, at what seems a better explanation
of Hamlet's behavior than did T.S. Eliot in his well-known
and very serious "Hamlet and His Problems." Rosencrantz1s
explanation undermines Eliot's declaration that Hamlet "is
most certainly an artistic failure"because "Hamlet (the
man) is dominated by an emotion which is ... in excess of
the facts as they appear."If Rosencrantz, whose
strengths do not include a keen intellect, can account for
Hamlet's behavior in terms of the facts as they appear, the
facts cannot be nearly as obscure as Eliot claims.
This amusing scene of rare, triumphant insight degener
ates rapidly into confusion as Rosencrantz once again hears
the sounds of a band. But this time, his announcement
heralds the second appearance of Hamlet, not the Players,
and their long-awaited match with Hamlet finally comes in
the form of the latter part of Act Two, scene two of
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Shakespeare's play. Stoppard chooses this moment for his
act break. By placing a blackout in the middle of the
scene, he is able to omit the incriminating dialogue between
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Hamlet in which the pair
admit to having been sent for by the King and Queen. The
effect of this altered presentation, of course, is to foster
audience sympathy for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by
furthering the impression that they are helpless victims
with no control over their destinies, or even much under
standing of their situation, rather than willing conspira
tors in the plot of Claudius and Gertrude. When we do hear
of the exchange, it is through Rosencrantz's dismal assess
ment of the game they have practiced for so extensively.
He declares the match "twenty-seventhree" (p. 57) in
Hamlet's favor. The script has become a game for Rosencrantz
as well as for Guildenstern, but Rosencrantz sees it as a
losing game. "He murdered us" (p. 57), he complains after
the match with Hamlet, not yet fully aware of how prophetic
his words are.
The intrusion of the Hamlet script also prompts the
pair to return to a question twice raised by Rosencrantz,
"Which way did we come in?" (p. 58). In contrast to the
last two times Rosencrantz posed this question, this time
Guildenstern pursues it, hoping that by determining direc
tion, they will gain some insight into Hamlet's madness
since the Prince claims he can "tell a hawk from a handsaw"
-93-
(p. 57), but only "when the wind is southerly" (p. 57).
As Rosencrantz and Guildenstern try to determine which
direction is south, they find themselves unable to do so in
the absence of any fixed point of reference. All the old
ways of determining direction, the position of the sun in
relation to the time of day, for example, fail for Rosen
crantz and Guildenstern. They cannot work from the known to
determine the unknown since the information that would pro
vide their starting point is itself shrouded in mystery.
Unable to determine whether or not it is morning or which
way they came in, they turn in confusion to establishing
the direction of the wind. Invoking the old theater joke
that stages are notoriously drafty places, Rosencrantz ob
serves, "There isn't any wind. Draught, yes" (p. 59).
Guildenstern suggests a method for proceeding: "In that
case, the origin. Trace it to its source and it might give
us a rough idea of the way we came inwhich might give us
a rough idea of south, for further reference" (p. 59,
italics mine).
This idea immediately fails since the draft comes
"through the floor" (p. 59) and "that's not a direction"
(p. 59), but their inability fo find the source or origin
is more significant as a symptom of the generalized lack
of sources and origins in the play as a whole. God has
traditionally served as the ultimate source or origin, as
well as the end, of everything in the universe--the "Alpha
-94-
i n o
and the Omega, the beginning and the ending." But He
has been declared irrelevant, mere rhetoric. The other
traditional source or origin in literaturethe Author, who
has conventionally been seen as the creating God of his
fictive universeis not operating either, at least not in
the traditional, conventional sense, for Stoppard does not
pretend to be the ex nihilo creator of the fictive world of
Rosencrantz. The source of this script is not One, but
many, not one god-like Author, but many already existing
writings that are fused together in a new writing. In place
of a simple starting point from which they could determine
the one known to discover many unknowns, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern encounter layers of unknowns that slip and
slide infinitely without ever yielding a fixed source.
Again finding reality unfathomable, Guildenstern "sits"
(p. 60) and returns to pondering the benefits of embracing
illusion instead. Echoing his earlier tale of the unicorn,
he tells a story about "a Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty
and, by which definition, a philosopher[who] dreamed he
was a butterfly" (p. 60). "From that moment," Guildenstern
continues, "he was never quite sure that he was not a
butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher" (p. 60).
Unlike the unicorn tale, this story ends in an explicitly
stated moral: "Envy him; in his two-fold security" (p. 60).
The Chinaman never loses his illusion, perhaps because,
unlike the man who saw the unicorn, he does not share his
-95-
private illusion with anyone. But the illusion of the
theater can never be private: it must necessarily be shared
between players and audience.
This is exactly the point that the Player histrionically
makes when he enters the stage again momentarily. Pro
testing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's departure in the
midst of his troupe's performance of number "thirty-eight"
(p. 63), the Player "bursts out," "You don't understand the
humiliation of itto be tricked out of the single assump
tion which makes our existence viablethat somebody is
watching . ." (p. 63). He carries on, very dramatically,
"We pledged our identities, secure in the conventions of
our trade, that someone would be watching" (p. 64). Rosen
crantz and Guildenstern have violated the covenant between
actors and audience on which theater is based: actors play
and the audience gives meaning to the play by watching and
playing along. As the Player's protests make clear, the
illusion of the theater depends only on the audience and
actors playing their roles according to accepted conven
tions; it has nothing to do with an accurate representation
of life. "There we were," the Player explains, "demented
children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore,
speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and
rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords"
(p. 63, italics mine).
-96-
No, art does not mirror life, the Player teaches in
this, his first lesson to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and
to the audience. It is a self-contained set of conventions
which requires that the audience share in the illusion. The
Player has usurped Guildenstern's role as the spokesperson
for the possibilities of illusion. In his Chinaman story,
which, not coincidentally, is his last story espousing the
virtues of embracing illusion, Guildenstern revealed a
serious flaw in his understanding of the way illusion works,
for theater must be a shared illusion. From now on, Rosen
crantz and Guildenstern will be unwilling and contentious
students of the Player. They will resist his explanations
of the conventions of theater and cling stubbornly to an
old aesthetic model based on "realism" and Truth. The more
they insist upon these outdated assumptions, the less sense
they will be able to make of the script as it unfolds, and
the weaker their position will become vis-a-vis the Player.
They resist even this first lesson, which Guildenstern
responds to by clapping "solo with slow measured irony"
(p. 44) and critiquing the Player's overly dramatic monologue
"Brilliantly recreated--if these eyes could weep! . .
Rather strong on metaphor, mind you. No criticismonly a
matter of taste" (p. 64). Similarly, Guildenstern reveals
his resistance by responding to the Player's announcement
that their performance that evening will be "about a King
." (p. 65) by dismissing it as "Escapism!"
and Queen .
-97-
(p. 65), even though the script Guildenstern is himself
caught up in is also about a King and Queen. As Guildenstern
vies with the Player for the upper-hand, the Player gets
tough and delivers a series of lines pointing to his super
iority. In contrast to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the
Player "can come and go as [he] please[s]" (p. 66). When
Guildenstern admits, "We're still finding our feet" (p. 66),
the Player scores another point by advising, "I should con
centrate on not losing your heads" (p. 66). Then, the
Player pushes the moment to its crisis by declaring, "And
I know which way the wind is blowing" (p. 66).
This unnerving comment rattles Guildenstern, who first
tries to retaliate by insulting the Player as a man of the
theater: "Operating on two levels, are we?! How clever!
I expect it comes naturally to you, being in the business
so to speak" (p. 66). The Player knows that he has the
upper-hand now and that he does not have to take these in
sults. As he "makes to go off again" (p. 66), and in doing
so demonstrates his own freedom of movement, Guildenstern
breaks down and concedes victory to the Player, at least for
the moment. He admits to their pitiful plight: "The truth
is, we value your company, for want of any other. We have
been left so much to our own devicesafter a while one
welcomes the uncertainty of being left to other people's"
(p. 66). Unmoved, the Player pronounces a truth which has
been apparent since the play's opening: "Uncertainty is the
-98-
normal state. You're nobody special" (p. 66). As the
Player "makes to leave again" (p. 66), Guildenstern drops
all pretenses of superiority and adopts the role of a student
questioning the master: "But for God's sake what are we
supposed to do?!" (p. 66). The Player returns advice that
Guildenstern, in a calmer moment of accepting the script as
written, had given Rosencrantz: "Relax. Respond. That's
what people do. You can't go through life questioning your
situation at every turn" (p. 66). Guildenstern again re
veals that he has regressed to old aesthetic assumptions
when he complains, "We don't know how to act" (p. 66), be
cause they have been told so little, "and for all we know
it isn't even true" (p. 66). Guildenstern, who had once
taught Rosencrantz that Truth was merely "a choice of
persuasions" (p. 21), now gets his own lesson returned.
The Player tells him,
For all anyone knows nothing is. Everything has
to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is
taken to be true. It's the currency of living.
There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't
make any difference so long as it is honoured.
One acts on assumptions. (p. 67)
Truth is like the theater, the Player might add. There
may be nothing behind itno god-like Author carrying out a
Providential plan, no special relationship with reality
but as long as the conventions are honored, as long as both
actors and audience play their roles, the illusion works.
For that matter, Guildenstern might realize, Truth is like
-99-
"reality"; as long as everyone honors the color red as real,
it functions like a real color. There may not be, indeed
may never have been, anything behind Truth, reality, or
illusion, but this is, as Barth says, "by no means neces-
103
sarily a cause for despair." Although the Player knows
that there may be nothing behind all his playing, he and
his troupe keep right on playing roles: "We learn something
every day, to our cost" (p. 115), he tells Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern later. "But we troupers just go on and on.
Do you know what happens to old actors?" (p. 115), he asks.
"Nothing. They're still acting" (p. 115), is his punch
line. Guildenstern, who had earlier prayed for a mask to
sustain play, ought to know that play is like questions
104 .
"vital, freeing," as Keyssar-Franke explains. Ultimate
answers, which depend on Truth, are a box which stops play
and "creates the death of the speaker.
In insisting upon Truth as a precondition for play,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become counter-examples for
the audience, examples which illustrate the unfortunate
consequences of clinging to an outdated aesthetic model in
the face of a script that denies such a model. Before their
second meeting with the Tragedians, they had engaged in
extended playplay with coins, play with the Players, play
with questions, play with roles. After resisting the
Player's lesson and insisting upon Truth, though, they very
pointedly lose their ability to play. In rapid succession,
-100-
their games fail. First, Rosencrantz shouts "Next!" (p. 69)
into the wings, but no one comes. Then he refers to the
coin they were tossing"You remember that coin?" (p. 69),
he asksbut notes, "I think I lost it" (p. 70).
With no one and nothing to play with, Rosencrantz
imagines himself in the box Keyssar-Franke refers to. "Do
you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box
with a lid on it?" (p. 70), he asks. Throughout the play,
Rosencrantz typically merely responds"I can't think of
anything original. I'm only good in support" (p. 104), he
explains when Guildenstern complains, "You just repeat
[everything] in a different order" (p. 104)and his
responses are usually limited to one or two lines. For
once, though, he takes the initiative and delivers a twenty-
one line monologue on being dead--or alivein a box. He
begins, "It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean one
thinks of it as being alive in a box, one keeps forgetting
to take into account the fact that one is dead" (p. 70). He
"blunders on in a series of mutually self-cancelling state-
ments" which, as Perlette argues, indicate that death is
for Rosencrantz (and for all of us, according to Freud) "an
entirely unattainable thought, a literally unthinkable
107
thought, imaginatively considered."
Rosencrantz's box speech marks the beginning of the
growing obsession with death. Before, death was mentioned
only fleetingly, but after this sustained speech, it will
-101-
become the central issue of the playit will be discussed
and performed in a variety of theatrical modes until-
Stoppard has turned the one certainty of life into a series
of open-ended questions which subsume the other open-ended
questions raised by the play.
Rosencrantz comes out of his box reverie only to enter
another box, actually a continuation of the box he was al
ready inthe box which stops play. After failing to summon
anyone to play with and losing their coin, Rosencrantz
attempts to tell several stories that sound at first like
Guildenstern's unicorn and Chinaman parables in praise of
illusion. Sadly, all these stories fail. The first one,
about an early Christian meeting Saul of Tarsus in Heaven,
ends with a lame punch line whose pointlessness prompts
Rosencrantz to exclaim, "They don't care. We count for
nothing. We could remain silent until we're green in the
face, they wouldn't come" (p. 71). Guildenstern picks up
only the mention of green and responds, "Blue, red" (p. 71),
recalling his first venture into the nature of reality and
illusion, but mentioning, significantly, only the real
colors and not the mystical color yellow. Rosencrantz
stumbles through another abortive tale about the meeting
of a Christian, a Moslem, and a Jew, and a final one-line
failed story about the meeting of a Hindu, a Buddhist, and
a liontamer.
102-
These failed stories mark the end of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern's turning to illusion as a more attractive
alternative to "reality." They will hereafter see no uni
corns, but only horses with arrows in their foreheads.
Instead of enjoying the opportunities for play offered by
the script, they will fear the end of the script, fear death.
Interspersed in the failed stories are Rosencrantz1s twin
recognitions, "We have no control" (p. 71), an exact repeti
tion of the Player's earlier comment about the nature of
fate for characters caught up in a script, and "there's only
one direction" (p. 72), not South, but death. Rosencrantz
brings the sequence to a close by declaring, "I forbid any
one to enter!" (p. 72). Previously, they had hoped that
someone would come on to save them from stagnation, but now,
sensing that the script is headed in the one direction they
do not want to go, they wish to be left alone.
To underscore their lack of control, Rosencrantz's
request to be left alone is met by the immediate entrance
of "a grand procession" (p. 72), including Claudius, Gertrude,
Polonius, and Ophelia. The insult is extended as, amidst
Rosencrantz's complaint, "It's like living in a public
park!" (p. 75), Hamlet intrudes as well, followed by Alfred,
dressed like the Queen, and the Player. As a preliminary
indication of his inability to "read" the conventions of
the theater, Rosencrantz mistakes Alfred (in costume) for
Queen Gertrude and attempts to play the child's "Guess
-103-
who?!" (p. 75) game. The Player spoils his game by answer
ing "Alfred!" (p. 75), illustrating that the Player is,
after all, in charge of playing, for he understands the
conventions of the theater as Rosencrantz obviously does
not. Rosencrantz leaves this embarrassing situation to face
immediately yet another insult which again demonstrates how
far his fortunes have fallen in comparison to the Player's.
Hoping to repeat his earlier coup, when, much to the chagrin
of the Player, he retrieved a coin from under the Player's
foot, Rosencrantz "bends to put his hand on the floor"
(pp. 75-76). But "the Player lowers his foot" (p. 76),
after which Rosencrantz "screams" (p. 76). The Player is
firmly in charge now after having, quite literally, put his
foot down.
His position consolidated, the Player plays both
director and schoolmaster in the ensuing sequence, two very
fitting roles of power. The play he directs is Hamlet--"a
slaughterhouseeight corpses all told" (p. 83), the Player
explains. Though the Tragedians' performance begins exactly
like the play-within-the-play in Hamlet, the dumb show is
allowed to continue much further in Rosencrantz, all the
way to the "deaths" of "Rosencrantz" and "Guildenstern."
As Hinden argues, the two plays-within-the-play differ not
only in length, but in function as well. Whereas The
Murder of Gonzago "simplifies the world around it and so
accurately holds up a mirror to that world that it can
-104-
catch the conscience of a king in its reflection,"108
Hamlet, both the play-within and the play-without Rosencrantz,
"breaks its bonds and finally overwhelms the parent play, but
the image it catches in reflection is a baffling one to
10 9
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern." The play-within-Rosen-
crantz undermines rather than reinforces mimesis, for it
mirrors not "life," but one of the competing modes of
theater. While we understand The Murder of Gonzago to be a
reflection of Hamlet, which is in turn a reflection of
Renaissance reality, we understand Hamlet in Rosencrantz as
a script, an artificial construct, which is governed by a
set of conventions based on a world view we no longer accept
as valid.
The Truth value of the Hamlet script is further under
mined by the Player's lessons about the conventions of the
theater, which he teaches while the performance of Hamlet
is in progress. This is to be his most extended teaching
session, but it falls on the deaf ears of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, who cling ever more stubbornly to an old
aesthetic based on Truth and "realism." It is decidedly
more effective, however, as a lesson to the audience, for
\
we recognize that the pair's falling fortunes are directly
related to their unwillingness to adopt the revised aesthetic
advocated by the Player.
The Player explains first that the dumbshow is "a
device, really" (p. 77) and then when Guildenstern misreads
-105-
an act break that leaves "practically everyone on his feet"
(p. 79) at the end, the Player laughs and further explains,
"There's a design at work in all artsurely you know that?
Events must play themselves out to aesthetic, moral and
logical conclusion" (p. 79). Art is governed by its own
rules, invariable rules, as the Player teaches when Guilden-
stern responds to his general pronouncement by asking a
limited, plot-oriented question: "And what's that, in this
case?" (p. 79). "It never varies," the Player replies. "We
aim at the point where everyone who is marked for death
dies" (p. 79). Guildenstern1s question reveals how fully
he has failed to understand his lessons: "Who decides?"
(p. 80). He is still searching for an ultimate source of
fate, a God or Author to provide the single starting point,
the origin. In spite of their complete failure to deter
mine where they came from, in spite of the blending and
clashing of theatrical modes they have witnessed, and in
spite of the Player's lessons about the baselessness of
Truth, Guildenstern still insists on believing in origins
and the Truth of theatrical representation. The Player is
f
obviously shocked by his question, which could not be
posited on aesthetic assumptions more different from his
own. "Decides?" (p. 80), he asks incredulously. "It is
written" (p. 80).
The Player knows that the script is not a line of words
with a single origin and end, but is instead "a multi
dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of
-106-
them original, blend and clash."110 Guildenstern's ques
tions, "Who decides?" (p. 80), is typical of a critic
working within the confines of the old aesthetic, which
Barthes ironically describes as proceeding by "allotting
itself the important task of discovering the Author (or its
hypostases: society, history, psyche, liberty) beneath the
work: when the Author has been found, the text is 'ex-
plained'victory to the critic." The Player has already
taught Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that there may be nothing
beneath the script and that it does not make any difference
one way or the other. "Who decides?"who controls fate,
who served as the origin of the script--is an irrelevant
question at best, a positively debilitating one at worst.
Rosencrantz systematically undermines the old aesthetic
model by defying "originality" with its overt borrowing,
by defying "realism" with its blatant blending and clashing
of incompatible theatrical modes, and by denying the Truth
of representation by repeatedly exposing theater as a set
of conventions entirely separate from "reality."
In spite of all the overwhelming evidence pointing to
the errors in their aesthetic assumptions, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern cling stubbornly to these antiquated assump
tions, insisting on the old limits to theatrical represen
tation. When the performance continues, Rosencrantz
objects, "Oh, I say--herereally! You can't do that!"
(p. 80) sounding quite a bit like a stuffy critic objecting
-107-
to, say, Rosencrantz. "Why not?" (p. 80), the Player asks.
Indeed, why not? What is there to stop the theater from
doing whatever it wants? "What do you wantjokes?" (p. 80) ,
the Player asks. Rosencrantz states his aesthetic prefer
ence: "I want a good story, with a beginning, middle and
end" (p. 80). No wonder Rosencrantz is having such a rough
time of things, getting his hand stepped on and being embar
rassed at every turn. His aesthetic principles date back
to Aristotle's teleological formula, when art derived its
structure from a world view that had God (or the gods) as
its Alpha and Omega. Guildenstern's statement of aesthetic
preference is equally antiquated: "I'd prefer art to mirror
life" (p. 81). The former unicorn advocate has decidedly
become a spokesman for horses with arrows in their fore
heads. Guildenstern has, by "a choice of persuasions,"
opted to ignore the implications of all that he has witnessed
and all that he has been taught. In contrast to his earlier
advice to relax and enjoy the opportunities for play afforded
by the script, he joins Rosencrantz in futilely adhering
to outdated aesthetic assumptions that render both of them
incapable of "reading" the script.
Their inability to "read" the script is illustrated
very clearly by their confused reaction to the Tragedians'
enactment of the "deaths" of "Rosencrantz" and "Guilden
stern. They watch as the dumbshow rolls toward its con
clusion, portraying two spies, dressed in coats identical
-108-
to those of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, being prepared
for execution by the Player, now in the role of the English
King. Rosencrantz "approaches 'his' SPY doubtfully [and]
does not quite understand why the coats are familiar" (p. 82).
Unable to interpret the script, he comments confusedly:
Well if it isn't! No, wait a minute, don't tell
meit's a long time sincewhere was it? Ah, this
is taking me back towhen was it? I know you,
don't I? I never forget a face(he looks into the
SPY's face) . not that I know yours, that is.
For a moment I thoughtno, I don't know you, do
I? Yes, I'm afraid you're quite wrong. You must
have mistaken me for someone else. (p. 82)
The rehearsal culminates in the execution"The SPIES die
at some length, rather well" (p. 84)but Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern refuse the lesson of the performance. Faced,
as Egan explains, with a "prophetic mirroring of [their]
112
future," Guildenstern protests, "No, no, no . you've
got it all wrong ..." (p. 84). He then denies that death
can be represented at all: "You can't act death. The fact
of it is nothing to do with seeing it happenit's not
gasps and blood and falling about" (p. 84). Death, Guilden
stern insists, is "just a man failing to reappear, that's
allnow you see him, now you don't, that's the only thing
that's real" (p. 84).
We might at this point feel comfortable with declaring
the aesthetic debate between the Player and Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern to be a clear victory for the Player. Rosen
crantz and Guildenstern's fortunes have fallen precipi
tously, and we in the audience know that they are headed
-109-
straight for death. But things are rarely so simple and
straightforward in a Stoppard play, and they are never
simple and straightforward in Rosencrantz, perhaps his most
thoroughly open-ended achievement. Perlette argues con
vincingly that Guildenstern's protest that "you can't act
death" (p. 84) points simultaneously to the Truth of death
according to Freud and to a further truth about "the limits
113
of theatrical representation." "Guildenstern's insis
tence upon dissociating death from 'seeing it happen' is,"
he argues,
not only a recognition that nothing can repre
sent the abstract negativity of death to us. It
is also a confirmation of Freud's recognition of
the structural key to this impossibility, namely
that every representation (imaginative image or
dramatic spectacle) falls short because, by the
very act of witnessing it, "we really survive as
spectators. "
Theater will, because of "the structural limits of the
115
medium itself," always fall short of adequately repre
senting death, for by its very nature, it reinforces our
psychological self-deception about death, encouraging us
to believe that we really survive as spectators.
In representing in Rosencrantz that death cannot be
represented, Perlette argues, Stoppard creates "a curiously
contradictory effect.When we identify with Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern as spectators, "we are put into the posi
tion of identifying with their inability to identify,"
and "we are expected to be 'satisfied' with the adequacy of
-110-
a representation representing the inadequacy of representa-
118
tion." Furthermore, "we are asked to see a certain
reality in the representation of Rosencrantz and Guilden-
stern's recognition that representations don't give them
119
reality." Perlette accurately views these "flat contra-
120 121
dictions" as "aporra or insolubilia" which are not
meant to be resolved. "They are," he argues, "the struc-
12 2
tural counterpart of the play's thematic of uncertainty."
Because of this reflexivitythe play calls into question
the whole nature of representation which lies at the heart
of the theatrical experienceRosencrantz pushes theater to
its limits. When a medium is "operating at the extremity
123
of its own limits," he argues further, "we must recog
nize that any insight, truth, or reality we would be tempted
to derive here is thoroughly undermined."^2^
This process of undermining Truth and reality is not,
of course, confined to a single speech of protestation by
Guildenstern. Virtually all that has preceded and all that
follows Guildenstern's speech is equally a part of the same
process. When the dumbshow is brought to an abrupt conclu
sion by "Shouts . 'The King risesl . 'Give o'er the
playi . cries for 'Lights, lights, lightsl" (pp. 84-
85), Rosencrantz returns to his old search for direction.
"That must be east, then. I think we can assume that"
(p. 85), he observes as the light grows. Guildenstern
declines to pursue the question of where they came from,
111-
though, sensing' the futility of their search for origins.
"I've been taken in before" (p. 85), he replies, refusing
to play that game again.
But they are no longer gameless as they were briefly
at the height of their insistence on the Truth of theatrical
representation. Perhaps as a subtle indication of the
potential credibility of their position about the limits
of what can be represented, they are tentatively welcomed
back into the fold of play. Their game, however, has rather
ominous undertones, for it overtly echoes the final game
Vladimir and Estragn play in Godot as they temporarily
decide to commit suicide with the cord Estragn uses to hold
up his oversized trousers. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
decide to catch Hamlet in a trap created by joining their
two belts together. Rosencrantz's "trousers slide slowly
down" (p. 89) when he removes his belt, just as Estragn's
had fallen in Godot.
Their trap fails, but Hamlet surprises Rosencrantz by
coming on when he simply shouts "Lord Hamlet!" (p. 90).
The talk is of death, for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have
been given another mission by Claudius, to find out what
Hamlet has done "with the dead body" (p. 90) of Polonius.
Upon completion of their "trying episode" (p. 92) with the
Hamlet cast, Rosencrantz complains, "They'll have us hang
ing about till we're dead. At least. And the weather will
change. The spring can't last forever" (p. 93). Rosencrantz
-112-
has not, of course, abruptly dropped the topic of death to
make polite conversation about the weather. When he con
tinues, "We'll be cold. The summer won't last" (p. 93),
and Guildenstern replies "It's autumnal" (p. 94), we recog
nize that the pair is invoking the poetic code of represent
ing death, using the universal, even banal code of the cycle
of seasons to describe the beginning and end of human life.
Guildenstern's speech beginning "Autumnalnothing to do
with the leaves. It is to do with a certain brownness at
the edges of day. . Brown is creeping up on us, take my
word for it . ." (p. 94) is less poetry than a parody of
poetic codes, for in addition to using the cliche of seasons,
it continues with a catalogue of colors that one inevitably
associates with the flowery language of overly ornate
poetry. "Russets and tangerine shades of old gold flush
ing the very outside edge of the senses . deep shining
ochres, burnt umber and parchments of baked earthreflect
ing on itself and through itself" (p. 94). Brown may indeed
be creeping up on them, but the poetic code of representa
tion is no more an adequate discourse for describing death
than are any of the other competing discourses. No code,
no theatrical or literary mode can ever truly provide the
"thin beam of light" (p. 83) that might "crack the shell
of mortality" (p. 83), for death remains the "undiscover'd
country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns";
remains the thing which cannot be represented.
it
-113-
The second act comes to an end momentarily, with
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern bound for England on Claudius's
orders. This time, the act break marks a real change, com
plete with a new setting, which provides Stoppard with the
opportunity to pull one of his funniest and most character
istic jokes, the joke that provides a large measure of the
humor in The Real Inspector Houndexaggerated exposition.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern begin the act in typical un
certainty. After determining various bits of vital informa
tion, that they are still alive, for example, Stoppard's
stage directions call for sailors shouting "obscure but
inescapably nautical instructions" (p. 98), including (he
provides a short list) "Hard a larboard! Let go the stays!
Reef down me hearties!" (p. 98). "When the point has been
well made and more so" (p. 98), Rosencrantz arrives at the
brilliant conclusion, "We're on a boat" (p. 98).
The marked change of setting, however, is a bit of a
false lead, for very little else actually changes in
Stoppard's final, shortest act, which is more a matter of
tying up the "loose ends" Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
mention repeatedly than one of new direction. The third
act is a time for recapitulating themes and motifs already
in place and a time for playing with the limits of theatrical
representation. When an inexplicable "better light Lan
tern? Moon? Light" (p. 99) finally elucidates the
stage, we see "three large man-sized casks on deck" (p. 99)
props for the barrel tricksand "a gaudy striped umbrella
-114-
[. .] one of those huge six-foot-diameter jobs" (p. 99).
We will soon discover that the umbrella hides Hamlet. Why
would the Prince of Denmark be sitting behind a huge, gaudy,
striped beach umbrella? The third act repeatedly asks us,
why not? If we are no longer tied to the limits imposed
by realism, why cannot Hamlet be sitting under a beach
umbrella? Why cannot the Players "emerge, impossibly, from
[a] barrel" (p. 122)? None of the many blatant violations
of the realistic code that punctuate the third act provokes
any comment from the on-stage spectators, and their suspen
sion of disbelief provides those of us in the off-stage
audience with our cue for responding to the bizarreness of
the third act"Enjoy it. Relax [. .] it's like being
given a prize" (p. 40). Stoppard's extension of the limits
of theater eradicates the need to explain away unicorns as
horses with arrows in their foreheads.
Prior to the unsurprising surprise attack by pirates,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern spend their time on the boat
engaged in activities which are by now very familiar to the
audience. They play games with coins, and they sort out
the confusion surrounding which one received the letter of
instruction from Claudius, an extension of the identity
confusion which has plagued them through two acts. They
contemplate the nature of fate and free will at length,
but, as always, inconclusively. Guildenstern proclaims
that "We can do what we like and say what we like to whomever
-115-
we like, without restriction" (p. 116), but Rosencrantz
undermines this sweeping proclamation of freedom by adding,
"Within limits, of course" (p. 116) "Certainly within
limits" (p. 116), Guildenstern agrees, dismantling the whole
structure. They role-play again, with Guildenstern taking
the part of the English King and questioning Rosencrantz
about just why he came to England. As in Act Two, they find
themselves unable to overcome the "abstract negativity of
126
death." Rosencrantz explains that whenever he tries to
think of England, he draws a blank. "I have no image. I
try to picture us arriving, a little harbour perhaps . .
roads[. . .] But my mind remains a blank" (p. 108). And
as has happened repeatedly in the play, just when they have
run out of games to play and topics to discuss (inconclu
sively) they hear the sound of a band, the Tragedians
"playing together a familiar tune which has been heard
three times before" (p. 113). Rosencrantz's "I thought I
heard a band" (p. 114) is both another humorous statement
of the obvious and a pointed repetition of an observation
he has made in both of the previous acts, a repetition which
calls attention to the truth of his complaint that "nothing
is happening" (p. 102) and Guildenstern's exclamation, "No
wonder the whole thing is so stagnant!" (p. 104).
Act Three i_s stagnant, at least until the pirates
attack and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and the Player
emerge from the wrong barrels (as Stoppard has some fun
-116-
with the possibilities of trap doors). The disappearance
of Hamlet during the pirate attack, though, saves the final
act from stagnation by reintroducing the topic of death.
"Is he dead?" (p. 119), Rosencrantz inquires about Hamlet.
When Guildenstern confirms that Hamlet is "not coming back"
(p. 119), Rosencrantz reiterates the pair's position on
death: "He's dead then. He's dead as far as we're con
cerned" (p. 119). Death is, for Rosencrantz and Guilden
stern, "just a man failing to reappear" (p. 84).
Once death is reintroduced, events roll rapidly toward
their open-ended conclusion, replacing the pointed stagna
tion of the earlier part of the act, which we recognize as
a sort of deliberate lull, a period of buying time through
the reiteration of lines and the replaying of games. Rosen
crantz and Guildenstern have exhausted their lines, run out
of playing timealmost. One more round in the debate con
cerning death, and the representation of death, remains.
It opens with the anguished cry of the absurdist situa
tion: "But why? Was it all for this? Who are we that so
much should converge on our little deaths. . Who are
we?" (p. 122), Guildenstern asks. The Player's reply, "You
are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. That's enough" (p. 122)
is "not enough" (p. 122) for Guildenstern. And when the
Player smugly holds to his old position with "In our
experience, most things end in death" (p. 123), Guilden
stern temporarily forgets himself, and his position that
-117-
death is "just a man failing to reappear," as "He snatches
a dagger from the PLAYER'S belt and holds the point at the
PLAYER1S throat" (p. 123). He delivers a very dramatic
speech beginning, "I'm talking about deathand you've never
experienced that. And you cannot act it" (p. 123) It
culminates in his convincing proclamation, "No one gets up
after death--there is no applause--there is only silence
and some second hand clothes, and that'sdeath" (p. 123).
With that, Guildenstern "pushes the blade in up to the
hilt" (p. 123), and the Player "makes small weeping sounds
and falls to his knees, and then right down" (p. 123). As
Guildenstern's sometime competitor, sometime teacher dies,
Guildenstern delivers a rhetorically balanced, moving
elegy: "If we have a destiny, then so had heand if this
is ours, then that was hisand if there are no explanations
for us, then let there be none for him" (p. 123).
But the Player does get up after this, the most
theatrically convincing death in the whole play, and there
is applause as the Tragedians respond to their leader's
performance "with genuine admiration" (p. 123). His "death"
is the result of another illusion, a trick sword, a device
much like the trap doors under the barrels. If we are
surprised by his resurrection, it is not because we thought
the sword was real, but because we do not expect to see the
illusion of the trick sword revealed on stage. But the
Player's resurrection is not simply another joke at the
-118-
expense of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and another pat
victory for the Player. As Perlette argues, the fake death
scene endorses both of their positions at the same time.
Upon arising, the Player proclaims, "You see, it i_s the kind
they do believe init's what is expected" (p. 123). He is
right, of course; audiences are only prepared to believe in
the sort of patently theatrical performance he has just
given. But Guildenstern is also right in insisting that
the belief we invest in such a performance does not take us
any closer to experiencing the void of death. While we may
"believe" in the Player's death, we still survive the
spectacle as spectators. And "this, as Guildenstern has
been insisting, is the cheat at the heart of representa-
127
tions of death which renders them inadequate," Perlette
observes. We may "believe" in the Player's performance,
but only "because we are distanced (protected) from [it] by
128
a fundamental disbelief." Guildenstern's position is
backed by the position of the play as a whole which, as
Perlette argues, "once again . has gone out of its way
to make us aware that the reality of death is simply inac-
129
cessible to us."
The reality of death is inaccessible to us no matter
what mode of representation is used, and the various modes
blend and clash to a crescendo in the closing moments of
the play. The absurdist discourse has given way to the most
theatrically convincing death in the entire play, but this
-119-
death is immediately revealed as yet another trick. After
brushing himself off, the Player breaks into the discourse
of a carnival man hawking his spectacles: "Deaths for all
ages and occasions! Deaths by suspension, convulsion, con
sumption, and malnutrition! Climactic carnage, by poison
and by steel!" (p. 124). Then, as the Tragedians perform
a variety of these deaths and "the two SPIES dressed in the
same coats as ROS and GUIL, are stabbed, as before" (p. 124),
the light begins to fade, and the Player switches to the
poetic code of representing death. "Dying amid the dying
tragically; romantically" (p. 124), he goes down for the
final time with, "Light goes with life, and in the winter
of your years the dark comes early" (p. 124).
Guildenstern rejects all these discoursesthe carnival
call to witness a spectacle, the spectacles themselves, and
the romance of poetic death. "No . no . not for
us, not like that. Dying is not romantic, and death is not
a game which will soon be over . Death is not anything
. . death is not ..." (p. 124), Guildenstern tiredly
argues as the mime comes to a close, leaving the "dead"
bodies of the Tragedians scattered on stage. And when
"death" finally comes to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, it
follows the script Guildenstern has written: "It's just a
man failing to reappear, that's allnow you see him, now
you don't" (p. 84). There are no "gasps and blood and
falling about" (p. 84); the Player's version of the death
-120-
of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern never materializes. Instead
of being executed at the hands of the English King as the
Tragedians have twice performed it, Rosencrantz simply
disappears from view, leaving Guildenstern to remark, "Well,
we'll know better next time. Now you see me, now you"
(p. 126). Amidst the words of a magic trick, he disappears
also.
But one more discourse requires final playing time,
and immediately after Guildenstern disappears, "the whole
stage is lit up, revealing, upstage, arranged in the
approximate positions last held by the dead TRAGEDIANS,
the tableau of court and corpses which is the last scene
of Hamlet" (p. 126). This ending is a revision, for "in
the first published edition of the play (May 1967) the
action, like that of Waiting for Godot, is circular. . .
Someone is shouting and banging on a shutter, indistinctly
130
calling two names." In the revised version, Horatio's
penultimate speech in Hamlet is the last word, as he first
denies that Hamlet ordered the deaths of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, and then, in effect, introduces the beginning
of the play:
. . give order that these bodies
high on a stage be placed to the view;
and let me speak to the yet unknowing world
how these things came about: so shall you hear
of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts,
' of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, . .
. . all this can I
truly deliver. (p. 126)
-121-
Stoppard's revision retains the circularity of his
earlier version, but it is much richer than the simple
circularity of someone's banging on shutters. While the
earlier version would have endorsed the absurdist mode,
Horatio's words invoke the same circularity while denying
an endorsement of the Truth of any specific theatrical mode.
These words are Shakespeare's, but they are also part of
our common mythology, and as such, they resonate through the
history of theater, encouraging us to realize that no matter
what mode of representation is used, the world will always
remain "yet unknowing." Horatio's description, coming so
soon after the Player has hawked his spectacles like a
carnival man, takes on a subdued carnival flavor itself:
"carnal, bloody and unnatural acts, / of accidental judg
ments, casual slaughters, / of deaths put on by cunning and
forced cause" (p. 126).
The ambiguity of the final spectacle joins the ambiguity
of the final words to thoroughly resist closure. The Hamlet
cast assumes "the approximate positions last held by the
dead TRAGEDIANS" (p. 126) visually conflating the two
modes of theater the two casts represent, as Horatio's
speech conflates the circularity of absurdism, the language
of tragedy, and a hint of the language of a carnival. The
closing tableau does not so much provide the final answer
as it raises a multitude of questions. Is this death
according to tragedy's grand design, never grander than
-122-
in Hamlet, the central tragedy of our language? Or is this
death as the Tragedians perform it, glibly, without "dig
nity, nothing classical, portentous, only thisa comic
pornographer and a rabble of prostitutes ..." (p. 27)?
Or is death a sort of carnival freak show, as the words of
both Horatio and the Player suggest? Or is it pointedly
absurd, as Guildenstern's anguished cry"But why?" (p. 122)
and the Beckettian circularity suggest? Or is death just
another trick, as Guildenstern1s final magician's discourse
indicates?
It is death as "It is written" (p. 80) in a variety of
modes, none of which can directly expose us to the inscru
table, unknowable reality of death. Stoppard shows us,
through a series of dislocating contradictions, that death
remains what it has always beenthe thing which cannot be
represented. These contradictions pervade the play, operating
at the level of the Beckett joke, where a confident state
ment is followed by refutations which dismantle the whole
structure that has just been built, as well as at the larger
level, where one discourse bumps into another and then
another, qualifying and undermining the Truth of the pre
ceding discourse until none of the discourses retains its
Truth value. Even until the final curtain, the blending
and clashing of modes continues, refusing closure. Rosen-
crantz does not so much stop on one discourse at the end
as it plays all of them in rapid succession, "ending" with
-123-
a discourse that both suggests another beginning and con
tains elements of previous discourses within itself.
The blending and clashing of modes, which is vital to
the structure and themes of Rosencrantz, undermines the
critical hierarchy favoring originality over derivativeness.
We are hard put in Rosencrantz to distinguish between the
"original" segments and the derivative ones because the
writing is so heavily sedimented that we begin to suspect
that all of it could be traced back to a "source," which
would then likely slip to reveal another "source" behind
it, and so on, endlessly. As this critical hierarchy begins
to collapse, it carries others down with it. Because of the
blatant blending and clashing of modes, no mode is given the
authority of being designated as more "realistic" than any
other; thus, the distinction between reality and illusion,
life and art, begins to blur as well. The illusion of art
is presented less as a parasite on the reality of life than
as a realm of its own, governed by its own conventions,
chief among which is the agreement between actors and
audience to play their respective roles.
In teaching us, showing us, that the play of the
theater need not stop in the absence of Truth, "originality,"
and "realism," Rosencrantz also breaks down the opposition
between art and criticism, yet another manifestation of
logocentricism, another traditional host/parasite rela
tionship. Just as contemporary critical theory has moved
-124-
progressively toward becoming a literary genre in its own
right, thereby diminishing the distinction between Art, the
host, and criticism, its parasite, so Rosencrantz graciously
responds to the invitation by stepping on to the dance floor
and embracing contemporary critical theory as its partner.
As the play teaches us so many of the lessons of contem
porary theorythat art never depended on Truth, "reality,"
or "originality"it also reassures us that we do not have
to sacrifice any of the magic of the theater as we leave
these old assumptions behind. The play of the theater need
not stop in the absence of a center, a Truth.
Though art has never been able to expose us to the
reality of life, or of death, the play of styles, of "words,
words" (p. 41), keeps right on going. In fact, the room
for play may be even bigger without the old constraints
imposed by the need to feign "originality" and "realism,"
the need to present us with the final Truth. Now there is
room for a variety of discourses instead of just One, and
room for many witnesses to play with unicorns, though not,
perhaps, enough room for those who would, by "a choice of
persuasions," see only horses with arrows in their fore
heads.
Notes
'Torn Stoppard, "Second Interview with Tom Stoppard," in
Ronald Hayman, Tom Stoppard, Contemporary Playwrights Series,
3rd ed. (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1979) ,
p. 143.
-125-
2
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
(New York: Grove Press, 1967), p. 80. All further quota
tions refer to this edition and will be cited parenthetically
within the text. Unless otherwise indicated by brackets,
all ellipses are Stoppard's.
3
Robert Brustein, "Waiting for Hamlet," New Republic,
4 November 1967, p. 25.
4
Brustein, p. 25.
5C.O. Gardner, "Correspondence: Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead," Theoria: A Journal of Studies in
the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences 34 (May 1970): 83.
g
Gardner, p. 83.
7
Christopher Nichols, "Theater: R & G: A Minority
Report," National Review, 12 December 1967, p. 1394.
O
Robert Egan, "A Thin Beam of Light: The Purpose of
Playing in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," Theatre
Journal 31 (March 1979): 59.
Egan, p. 59.
^Normand Berlin, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
Dead: Theater of Criticism," Modern Drama 16 (December
1973): 271.
^''Berlin, p. 269.
12
Berlin, p. 269.
13Margarete Holubetz, "A Mocking of Theatrical Con
ventions: The Fake Death Scene in The White Devil and
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," English Studies
63 (October 1982): 426-429.
14
Ruby Cohn, Modern Shakespeare Offshoots (Princeton:
eton Univ.
Press
' 3Cohn, p.
215.
16-, .
Cohn, p.
215.
17
Cohn, p.
217.
^Cohn, p.
217.
19
Hayman,
p. 34.
-126-
20tt ...
Hayman, p. 34.
21
Hayman, p. 34.
22
Jill L. Levenson, "Tom Stoppard's Two Versions:
'Hamlet' Andante/'Hamlet' Allegro," in Shakespeare Survey
36, ed. Stanley Wells (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press,
1983), p. 21.
23
Levenson, p. 22.
24
Levenson, p. 22.
25
Levenson, p. 23.
2 6
Levenson, p. 23.
27
Levenson, p. 23.
2 8
William E. Gruber, "'Wheels within Wheels, etcetera'"
Artistic Design in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,"
Comparative Drama 15 (Winter 1981-1982): 291.
29
*^Gruber,
P-
291.
30
uGruber,
P-
291.
31Gruber,
P-
291.
32Gruber,
P-
291.
33Richard
Corball
Clockwork (New York:
is, Stoppard:
Methuen, 1984)
The Mystery and the
, p. 48.
34Robert Wilcher, "The Museum of Tragedy: Endgame and
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," Journal of Beckett
Studies 4 (1979): 44.
33Wilcher,
P-
44.
3^Wilcher,
P-
43.
3^Wilcher,
P-
44.
33Wilcher,
P-
51.
39
Wilcher,
P-
44.
4^Wilcher,
P-
47.
43Wilcher,
P-
47.
-127-
42Wilcher, p. 47.
42Wilcher, p. 48.
44Wilcher, p. 48.
45
Wilcher, p. 49.
4^Wilcher, p. 51.
^Wilcher, p. 51.
^Wilcher, p. 51.
4^Wilcher, p. 51.
^Wilcher, p. 51.
51
Richard Corballis, "Extending the Audience:
Structure of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,
11 (April 1980):
LO
v£>
"^Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
65.
53
Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
65.
54
Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
68.
"^Corballis r
"Extending,"
P-
66.
^Corballis,
"Extending,"
P*
66.
^Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
66.
^Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
66.
59
Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
78.
60^, , .
Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
68.
^Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
68.
^ 2Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
70.
^Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
73.
^4Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
74.
^corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
75.
^Corballis,
"Extending,"
P-
73.
The
" Ariel
-128-
6 7
Corballis, "Extending," p. 77.
6 8
Michael Hinden, "Jumpers; Stoppard and the Theater
of Exhaustion," Twentieth Century Literature 27 (Sprinq
1981): 1.
69
John Barth, "The Literature of Exhaustion," cited in
Hinden, p. 1. The article originally appeared in the
Atlantic, pp. 29-34. All subsequent quotations refer to
the original article.
78Hinden, p. 2.
"^Hinden, p. 2.
72
Hinden, p. 2.
73Hinden, p. 2.
7^Barth, p. 31.
75
Hinden, p. 2.
78Barth, p. 31.
77Hinden, p. 2.
7 8
Hinden, p. 2.
7^Barth, p. 29.
^Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author," in Image-
Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang,
1977), p. 146.
81John M. Perlette, "Theatre at the Limit: Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead," forthcoming in Modern Drama.
While Perlette demonstrates that the play supports a
Freudian vision of death, he goes further to argue that it
ultimately undermines any truth we might be tempted to
derive since the play operates at the limits of theater.
83Barthes, p. 147.
83Hamlet, 5.2.10.
84
Egan, p. 65.
8 5
Egan, p. 65.
8 6
Egan, p. 65.
-129-
8 7
Craig Owens, "The Discourse of Others: Feminists and
Post-Modernism," in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern
Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Port Townsend, Washington: Bay-
Press 1983), p. 67.
8 8
Tom Stoppard, "First Interview with Tom Stoppard,"
in Hayman, p. 7.
8 9
Tom Stoppard, "First Interview," in Hayman, p. 7.
90
Egan, p. 62.
91
Egan, p. 62.
^Wilcher, p. 50.
9 9
^Hamlet, 2.2.192.
94
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (New York: Grove
Press, 1954), p. 33b.
^Beckett, p. 8.
96
Helen Keyssar-Franke, "The Strategy of Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead," Educational Theatre Journal 27
(1975) p. 93.
97
Keyssar-Franke, p. 93,
98
Keyssar-Franke, p. 93.
99
Wilcher, p. 50.
100T.S. Eliot, "Hamlet and His Problems" in Critical
Theory Since Plato, ed. Hazard Adams (Atlanta: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971), p. 789.
101Eliot, p. 789.
i o?
^Revelation 1:8.
103Barth, "The Literature of Exhaustion," cited in
Hinden, p. 1.
'"^Keyssar-Franke, p. 93.
^Keyssar-Franke, p. 93.
'"^Perlette, p. 5.
10 7
'Perlette, p. 6.
108. ,
Hxnden, p
. 3
109. ,
Hinden, p
. 3
-
^Barthes,
P.
146.
111D ..
Barthes,
P-
1.
112-,
Egan, p.
65.
113Perlette,
PP
. 7-
114
Perlette,
P.
7.
3 "^Perlette,
P-
8.
33^Perlette,
P-
8.
117
Perlette,
P.
10.
1 1 O
Perlette,
P-
o
11
33^Perlette,
P-
10.
32^Perlette,
P.
9.
121
Perlette,
P-
10.
122
^Perlette,
P-
10.
123
Perlette,
P-
10.
324Perlette,
P-
9.
125
^Hamlet, 3
.1.
78-7
32^Perlette,
P-
7.
127
Perlette,
P-
13.
323Perlette,
P-
13.
129
Perlette,
P-
14.
130
Hayman, p
. 46.
TRAVESTIES OR TOM STOPPARD
SORTS IT OUT
One of the impulses in Travesties is to try to
sort out what my answer would in the end be if
I was given enough time to think every time I'm
asked why my plays aren't political, or ought
they to be?
Tom Stoppard"*"
Much more directly and explicitly than Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead, Stoppard's 1974 Travesties addresses
the related questions of Truth, the political function of
art, and the concept of originality in authorship. In
Rosencrantz, Stoppard worked from a distanced perspective,
setting his play about two inconsequential bit players from
Hamlet in an innocuous "place of no name, character, popu-
lation or significance." And just as Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are themselves safely void of immediate poli
tical relevance, so are Rosencrantz's two major competing
theatrical modes, tragedy and absurdism. At a safe remove
from the entangling encumbrances of specific political
issues, Rosencrantz prompts us to revise our general
aesthetic and political assumptions: as it encourages us
to revise our aesthetic preference for Truth and closure
in art, it simultaneously invites us to adjust our poli
tical preference for mastery, to question the Truth of
-131-
-132-
master narratives which seek to reduce the diversity of the
world to a single interpretive discourse. Thus, although
it steers clear of patently political content, Rosencrantz
is nevertheless a profoundly political play, for it asks us
to reconsider our whole conceptual framework for thinking
about Truth and the authority of authors to bring us that
Truth.
In Travesties, Stoppard zooms in for a more immediate,
unfiltered exploration of largely the same questions, for
the setting is Zurich during World War I, and his charac
ters are of great political and artistic consequence. Center
ing his play around three key Author-Fathers of modern
thoughtLenin, James Loyce, and Tristan TzaraStoppard
engages the questions of authorship and the Truth of
modernism's master narratives directly. And just as poli
tically charged characters replace the neutral characters
of Rosencrantz, so politically charged theatrical discourses
replace the neutral discourses of the earlier play. In
place of tragedy and absurdism, Travesties is built primarily
from the blending and clashing of the comic mode of Wilde's
The Importance of Being Earnest and the didactic mode of
Brecht's epic theater. The leftist political goals of the
epic theater are obvious given Brecht's outspoken advocacy
of Marxism. The political affiliations of comedy are cer
tainly more understated, and indeed Earnest often serves
as neutral ground for the characters, but the tendency of
-133-
comedy to endorse existing social values nevertheless pits
the comic mode against the epic mode, which aims to under
mine the same social values comedy supports.
The immediacy of Travesties' perspective may very well
lie at the root of the most significant difference between
the two plays: unlike Rosencrantz, which playfully resisted
a stable center of Truth, Travesties ultimately endorses
the Joycean vision at the expense of the visions of Lenin
and Tzara. While the first half of Travesties recreates
the open-ended, dislocating experience of Rosencrantz
questions are raised and answers are withheld as the play
exposes the limits of competing discourses and demystifies
the process of writingthe play abruptly turns about face
in mid-stream. The radical change of course coincides with
Joyce's moving speech insisting that "an artist is the
magician put among men to gratifycapriciouslytheir urge
for immortality." Unlike earlier speeches, Joyce's eloquent
defense of the artist is allowed to stand unrefuted, and
it is, furthermore, visually reinforced by the spectacle
of Joyce's pulling a carnation, flags, and a rabbit out of
a hatmagician styleas Tzara childishly smashes crockery
in a fit of Dadaist destruction.
But Tzara is not the real loser of Travesties; that
distinction belongs to Lenin, whose story bores us to tears
in Act Two. And while we are turning numb from boredom,
we hear Lenin's position persuasively rebutted by dialogue
-134-
which Stoppard repeats as his own version of Truth in a
4
1974 interview. Nor is the denunciation of Lenin confined
to an unfortunate speech or two: the revolutionary is
structurally ostracized as well. All the other characters
get caught up in the action of The Importance of Being
Earnest, but Lenin and his wife, Nadya, are, like Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern during their period of insisting on Truth,
refused roles, denied play. Furthermore, unlike Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern, they are never welcomed into the fold,
not even at the end: the concluding dance of comedy has
room for Tzara and Gwendolen, British consular official Carr
and Cecily, even (bizarrely) Joyce and Carr's manservant
Bennett, but not, alas, for Lenin and Nadya. Like the
scapegoats of earlier comedic tradition, they are sent off
into exile, the exile of the Russian revolution, banished
to atone for the sins of society.
As Lenin's position is denounced and Joyce's enjoys
the endorsement of Truth, the two major competing theatrical
modes get dragged into the imbroglio as well. As a result,
the comic mode is spared as the Brechtian mode, through
guilt by association with Lenin, also suffers an attack.
This seems most regrettable, for when Stoppard's theater
is at its best, as in Rosencrantz, it works according to
central Brechtian principles. Rosencrantz, like the epic
theater, does not allow the audience "to submit to an
experience uncritically [. .] by means of simple empathy
-135-
with the characters.1,5 Instead, the blending and clashing
of modes takes "the subject-matter and the incidents shown
and put[s] them through a process of alienation: the
alienation that is necessary to all understanding."6 Rosen-
crantz constantly calls into question the whole concept of
7
"what is 'natural'" and encourages the kind of critical
inquiry into the motivations of modes of representation
that Brecht hoped to encourage. Stoppard's stage environ
ment, like Brecht's, is no longer simply "seen from the
8
central figure's point of view"; instead, it tells its
own story, and in doing so, it makes us aware of the impor
tance of the environment in shaping and even controlling
what we used to call, naively perhaps, human nature. Though
Stoppard uses clashing theatrical modes where Brecht pre
ferred big screens and projected documents which "confirmed
q
or contradicted what the characters said," the effect of
Stoppard's technique is remarkably similar to Brecht's.
Furthermore, Stoppard achieves in Rosencrantz the combina
tion of pleasure and instruction that Brecht thought vital
to good theater. Given Stoppard's own success with central
principles of the epic theater, it seems unfortunate that
Travesties submits Brecht's theater to such an unfriendly
travesty in Act Two, presenting it as some kind of humor
less, leftist harangue delivered "from a high rostrum"
(p. 85).
-136-
Perhaps because the two halves of the play move in such
markedly different directions, critics do not universally
agree that Joyce wins and Lenin loses. Craig Werner, for
example, argued that although critics hailed Travesties "as
a vindication of James Joyce."10 it is not that at all.
"Centering his attention on the interaction of the mythologies
of Art (represented by Joyce), Political Revolution (repre
sented by Lenin), and Radical Individualism (represented
by Tristan Tzara), Stoppard unveils the limitations of the
twentieth century's most cherished systems of belief,"11 he
argued. In its best moments, which are almost exclusively
limited to the play's first half, Travesties is indeed a
rather spectacular exploration of the limitations of early
twentieth century master narratives. But Travesties is
not all great moments, and in the second half it slips
into a master narrative of its own. For Werner, "Carr,
a minor official at the British consulate in Zurich, stands
12
firmly at the center of Travesties' thematic structure,"
and "Stoppard indicates that the nature of his mind and
values is at least as much at issue as those of the three
13
obviously important intellectual characters." He believes
that Joyce and Lenin are equally discredited by their
failure to convince Carr, a sort of twentieth century
Everyman, and that "Tzara's myth comes closest to embody
ing Carr's Zurich experience."1^ even if "it also fades
quietly from historical memory.
-137-
Even as perceptive a critic as Thomas Whitaker declares
Tzara "easily the most captivating character on stage,"16
indicating that the voice of Truth which emerges in the
second half does not completely negate the playfulness of
the first half, in which Tzara co-stars with Carr. Whitaker
1 7
argues that Tzara's "moral and political outrage" over the
I Q
senseless slaughter of World War I "wins our sympathy."
But he qualifies his reading of Tzara by noting that "his
aleatory verses have meaning for us primarily because Stoppard
19
has transformed them with Joycean word-play." Whitaker's
qualification is crucial, for while Tzara's random verses
may delight us, the credit for their verbal magic is
ultimately taken away from Tzara and given to the true team
of artist-magicians, Joyce and Stoppard. For Whitaker, the
play is less an endorsement of any single character than a
game which "asks us to refract both the content and the
style of our playing through an ironic prism that illuminates
several large questions: How do we make art? Or revolu-
20
tion? Or history? Or, indeed, any kind of meaning?"
Perhaps what is most surprising, and most encouraging,
about the critical reaction to Travesties is the frequency
of observations like Whitaker's which take into account the
relationship between Stoppard's authorial strategy and his
content. Though far less has been written about Travesties
than about the more controversial Rosencrantz, we find
that critics very often incorporate Stoppard's blatant
-138-
borrowing into their readings of the content of the play
rather than insisting that the derivativeness is a sign of
Stoppard's incompetence as a playwright. Not that Travesties
completely escaped derision as a theatrical parasite: John
Simon lumped it with the rest of Stoppard's plays, which he
felt all "have in common to some degree . what I have
at various times described with images culled from the
animal and insect worlds, where the eggs or larvae of one
species may be unconsciously hatched by the efforts, or fed
21
by the very organisms, of another species." Nevertheless,
critics for the most part moved with admirable speed beyond
blanket condemnations of the play's derivativeness to recog
nize that Stoppard's borrowing serves as a structural
counterpart for one of the play's central themes, namely,
22
that all writing is "a tissue of quotations."
The explanation for this welcome change seems at least
two-fold. In the first place, the content of Travesties
is much more obviously centered on the process of writing
than is Rosencrantz's content, so it more readily invites
critics and audiences to make the connection between the
outside and the inside of the play. Timing must also be
taken into account. Not only does Travesties follow
Rosencrantz, which in effect demonstrated that borrowing
is a viable authorial strategy, but the perceptive readings
of Travesties began to appear at roughly the same time
(1978) that critics began to reject the parasite consensus
-139-
on Rosencrantz to ask instead how the derivativeness of
Stoppard's 1966 play worked with its content. But this is
not a simple matter of Travesties' basking in the glow of
Rosencrantz, for if Travesties has reaped critical dividends
from Rosencrantz's efforts to extend the limits of what we
accept as a valid authorial strategy, Rosencrantz has also
profited from Travesties' explicit treatment of borrowing
as the common denominator of all writing. Travesties works
as a sort of critical gloss for the earlier play, and the
interpretive frame it provides must surely have contributed
to the collapse of the parasite consensus on Rosencrantz.
Michael Hinden tacitly acknowledges the reciprocal
relationship between the two plays, for he uses the same
John Barth context to read the borrowing in Travesties
that he used to account for the borrowing in Rosencrantz.
Thus, he sees Travesties as "another possible tribute to
23
theatrical 'exhaustion'" because Stoppard uses "Wilde's
self-conscious farce"^ in Travesties in much the same way
he used Hamlet in Rosencrantz. Hinden, however, fears that
"the gears of Travesties do not mesh as smoothly as those
25
of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, in part be
cause "Stoppard editorializes in the play, siding with
Joyce on major issues. Other critics seem less con
cerned with Stoppard's editorializing and more interested
in his efforts to revise the old view of authorship. Ian
Donaldson argued in 1980 that "behind the exuberant nonsense
-140-
of Stoppard's play glitters the beginnings of a serious
proposition: that art, and indeed other forms of creative
enterprise, are essentially a matter of the stylish bringing-
together of miscellaneous scraps and particles which in
themselves, discretely, may be of negligible interest."27
John William Cooke put forth a similar argument in 1981:
"The process of making meaningbe it telling a story,
writing Ulysses, or composing socialist historyis the
28
central focus of Stoppard's play." And Margaret Gold
specifically cited the relationship between Stoppard's
strategy and the debates within the play, observing that
Travesties' "stylistic and thematic ventures proceed in
29
tandem," for the play is "pastiche, a cut and paste job
like the one Tzara performs on Shakespeare's sonnet number
30
18." Thus, she argued that "Tzara's pastiche is a meta-
31
phor for Stoppard's methods."
Pastiche is indeed the method, in Travesties as well
as in Rosencrantz, but from the moment the curtain rises,
Stoppard goes out of his way to show us that Tzara is by
no means unique in composing his writing from scraps. In
fact, the entire opening scene, including Carr's narrative
bridge, is a brilliantly executed rebuttal to the tradi
tional concept of authorship. Tzara may open the scene
with an ostentatious display of the cut and paste method--
he uses "a hat and a large pair of scissors" (p. 17) but
Joyce likewise composes by "searching his pockets for tiny
-141-
scraps of paper" (p. 19), and at one point, he "encounters
a further scrap of paper which is lying on the floor: LENIN
has inadvertently dropped it" (p. 20). Thus, as Cooke
argues, "rather than drawing distinctions among Lenin,
Joyce, and Tzara, Stoppard emphasizes their similarities:
they are all makers, composing their works from facts out
3 2
of context, apparent scraps." "Whether the products are
novels, histories, or dadaist poems," he continues, "the
33
process is the same."
When the characters speak in the opening scene, to read
aloud from their scraps, the verbal dimension reinforces the
visual, for in spite of the widely varying authorial intents
behind the writings, any scrap has roughly the same chance
as another of sounding like nonsenseor genius--depending
upon what kind of expertise the particular spectator in
question brings to the theater. Tzara's "Eel ate enormous
appletzara" (p. 18), though deliberately nonsensical, may
strike an ear accustomed to the sounds of French (which
34
would then hear "II est un homme, s'appelle Tzara") as
more intelligible than Joyce's "Deshill holies eamus"
(p. 18), unless our ideal audience member is also intimately
acquainted with Ulysses. And Lenin's acronym-ridden
"G.E.C. (U.S.A.) 250 million marks" (p. 20) may very well
sound like nonsense to a spectator whose love of languages
and literature has left little time for the study of
economics.
-142-
In this opening scene, styles and even languages
(Lenin and Nadya engage in an extended conversation in
Russian, and there is a quadrilingual apology as Lenin
retrieves his scrap of paper from Joyce) blend and clash
in such rapid succession that the closing moments of Rosen-
crantz seem tame by comparison. As language is ripped from
its context, the audience becomes "the space on which all
3 5
the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed." And
though Barthes optimistically adds "without any of them
3 6
being lost," many of the quotations that make up this
elaborate linguistic game must necessarily be lost on all
but the most erudite audience members. Thus, by trans
forming Tzara's nonsense into bilingual exposition and
selecting cryptic quotations from Joyce and Lenin, Stoppard
uses his verbal games in conjunction with his visual effects
to reduce the significance of the political and aesthetic
differences the characters will argue about so vehemently
as the play proceeds. Underneath the narcissism of their
minor differences lies the basic sameness of all writing
it is always a kind of cut and paste job, and authorial
intent is always open to subversion as readers and
audiences may or may not supply the expected context.
The process of writing is further demystified as Henry
Carr takes over the scene (which has all taken place in
side his senile mind) and begins orally "writing" his
memoirs of Zurich during the Great War. For the record,
-143-
Lenin, Joyce, and Tzara were in fact all in Zurich during
some part of World War I, and Carr, a minor British consular
official, did cross paths with James Joyce when Carr agreed
to play Algernon in a performance of The Importance of Being
Earnest that Joyce managed. Unfortunately, Carr and Joyce
quarrelled over the financial arrangements and ended up
going to court, amidst Joyce's insistence that Carr had
slandered him. As Stoppard explains, "Joyce won on the
money and lost on the slander, but he reserved his full
retribution for Ulysses," (p. 12) in which Carr becomes a
drunken soldier in the "circe" episode. Carr apparently
did not know Lenin or Tzara, but this fact does not deter
him in the least from including them in his memoirs, for
Carr is not notably concerned with the distinction between
fact and fiction. What is most remarkable about Carr's
narrative bridge, however, is not so much its creative
blending of reality and fancy, but its uncannily accurate
representation of the act of writing. Carr's confused
ramblings remind any writer of any persuasion of the series
of drafts that are only too familiar. We have to laugh as
we see the private tricks of the trade unveiled on stage,
for as Carr starts a draft and stops in frustration, and
then starts again on a new sheet of paper, he saves the
best phrases and rhetorical strategies from his previous
attempts, even though his ostensible subject changes from
"Memories of James Joyce" (p. 22) to "Lenin as I Knew Him
-144-
(p. 23) to "Street of Revolution!" (p. 24) to "Memories of
Data by a Consular Friend of the Famous in Old Zurich: A
Sketch" (p. 25).
Thus, while Carr may readily, abandon the topic of Joyce
to begin a sketch of Lenin, he is much less willing to throw
out his favorite lines. He recycles one of his Joyce
openers, "To those of us who knew him, Joyce's genius was
never in doubt" (p. 22) for his portrait of Lenin: "To
those of us who knew him, Lenin's greatness was never in
doubt" (p. 24). He describes Joyce as "a complex personality,
an enigma" (p. 23) and asserts that "To be in his presence
was to be aware of an amazing intellect bent on shaping
itself into the permanent form of its own monumentthe
book the world now knows as Ulysses 1" (p. 22). After de
claring Joyce "not worth the paper" (p. 23), Carr reassembles
the scraps, adds a bit of alliterative embellishment, and
pulls out of his hat this description of Lenin: "To be in
his presence was to be aware of a complex personality,
enigmatic, magnetic, but not, I think, astigmatic" (p. 23),
and furthermore, a man "bent [. .] on the seemingly im
possible task of reshaping the civilised world into a feder
ation of standing committees of workers' deputies" (p. 23).
And Stoppard recycles his own favorite Beckett joke as he
has Carr qualify his assertions about Joyce to the point
of negationand then reapply the same formula to Lenin.
One moment, Carr describes Joyce as "exhibiting a monkish
-145-
unconcern for worldly and bodily comforts" (p. 23), but in
the same breath, he declares that Joyce was not given to
"shutting himself off from the richness of human society"
(p. 23). Lenin is likewise both "an essentially simple man,
and yet an intellectual theoretician" (p. 23) .
As we observe Carr struggling to get the words right,
we laugh not only at his bungled attempts and the obvious
absence of veracity, but at the defrocking of the romantic
conception of writing as "the spontaneous overflow of power-
37
ful feelings . recollected in tranquility." For Carr,
no less than for the three famous authors, or for any of us,
writing is not notably tranquil or spontaneous. It seems
less a matter of recording "powerful feelings" than of
assembling the right words into the right rhetorical stra
tegiesCarr, after all, fails most miserably and must begin
again whenever he actually recollects how much he hated
Joyce and resented Lenin's escape from Zurich. And inasmuch
as Carr's memoir writing demonstrates the triumph of form
over content, it also serves as both a subtle tribute and
an introduction to Oscar Wilde, whose The Importance of
Being Earnest is just about to take over the structure of
Travesties via Carr's recollection of his personal triumph
"in the demanding role of Ernest (not Ernest, the other
one)" (p. 25).
Gold sees an inverted relationship between Travesties
and Earnest, observing that Wilde
-146-
wrote a play as deliberately emptied of content
politically, emotionally, and philosophicallyas
can be imagined, and while he was engaged in
making light of most of the sacraments and almost
every bourgeois notion of seriousness, he called
his play The Importance of Being Earnest. Stop
pard, on the other hand, has written a play
called Travesties and filled it with serious
matter
If we take this observation one step further, however, we
see that this relationship is inverted again so that the
first half of the play firmly supports Gwendolen's conten
tion in Earnest that "In matters of grave importance, style,
39
not sincerity, is the vital thing." The opening movement
in particular is "as deliberately emptied of content
politically, emotionally, and philosophicallyas can be
imagined," in spite of the fact that it purportedly por
trays Lenin, Loyce, and Tzara working away on germinal
writings of the modern era. Whitaker notes that W.H. Auden
"once called The Importance of Being Earnest 'perhaps the
only purely verbal opera in English' obviously, Auden
had not seen Travesties, for even more than the parent
play, it calls our attention to language and style to such
an extent that the "serious matter" becomes incidental to
the verbal play.
After Carr's narrative bridge subsides to make way
for more dramatic action, the play of language and styles
continues, though it is now more firmly grounded in a con
text. That context, however, is anything but simple. For
now Act One of Earnest is providing the basic structure as
-147-
Carr relives his stellar performance as Algernon, while his
manservant Bennett assumes the role of Lane, Tzara becomes
Jack, and Joyce (christened James Augusta) plays Algy's Aunt
Augusta, Lady Bracknell. As if this were not enough com
plexity for one act, Bennett's exposition has a Brechtian
flavor in its didacticism (we later learn from Cecily that
Bennett "has radical sympathies" (p. 73)), and "the politi
cal debates . have an unmistakably Shavian crackle."41
Joyce's interview of Tzara travesties "the 'handbag' inter
view in Wilde and also the dry catechetical tone of the
4 2
penultimate section (Ithaca) of Ulysses," and one scene
is written entirely in limericks. Carr's memory, meanwhile,
has not improved, so "The story (like a toy train perhaps)
occasionally jumps the rails and has to be restarted at the
point where it goes wild" (p. 27). Added to this trademark
Stoppardian pastiche are equally trademark Stoppardian word
games. The verbal games, delightful in themselves, also
work to sustain the effect of the opening scene; that is,
until Joyce overwhelms the play near the end of the first
act, the dance of styles brings the characters together,
undermining their differences and providing them with a
common idiom.
The Earnest segment opens as Carr takes off the hat
and dressing gown of Old Carr and modulates his voice to
that of the Young Carr of 1917. Bennett enters with the
tray of tea and sandwiches, la Earnest, and after Carr
-148-
delivers some well-phrased cliches about the neutrality and
punctuality of Switzerland, Bennett ventures beyond a simple
"Yes, sir" (p. 26) to inform Carr, for the first of five
times: "I have put the newspapers and telegrams on the
sideboard, sir" (p. 26). Carr responds in turn with the
question he will repeat five times as his toy train jumps
its tracks: "Is there anything of interest?" (p. 26).
Bennett's summary of the news stylishly embodies the general
strategy of contradiction Stoppard envisioned for the play
as a whole. As he explained to Hayman, in Travesties "what
I'm always trying to say is 'Firstly, A. Secondly, minus
43
A. '" Bennett gives us A and minus A in the same elegant,
Wildean sentence: "The Neue Zricher Zeitung and the
Zricher Post announce, respectively, an important Allied
and German victory, each side gaining ground after inflict
ing heavy casualties on the other side with little loss to
itself" (p. 26). Of course, Bennett's news report also
contains the essence of another related Travesties theme,
that historical fact depends as much on the observer as on
the events observed, or, simply, that Truth is relative.
Carr's response to Bennett's rhetorically polished
war report is a most un-Wildean emotional outburst filled
with dashes, fragments, and exclamation points: "Never in
the whole history of human conflict was there anything to
match the carnageGod's blood! the shot and shell! grave
yard stench!Christ Jesu!deserted by simpletons, they
-149-
damn us to hell-ora pro nobisquick! no, get me out!"
(p. 27). Nor is this the end of his outburst, for he goes
straight into a description of the clothes he plans to wear
that evening to the theater. As in his opening memoir
writing, topics may come and go, but style is decidedly more
permanent: Cooke observes that "Carr (or rather Stoppard)
uses an almost identical pattern of sounds (much like Tzara's
dadaist poem which opens the play) to convey an entirely
44
different meaning." Carr's "I think to match the carna
tion, oxblood shot-silk cravat, starched, creased just so"
(p. 27) repeats the sounds of his "anything to match the
carnageGod's blood! the shot and shell!graveyard
stench!Christ Jesu!" (p. 27), just as "asserted by a
simple pin, the damask lapelsor a brown, no, biscuitno
get me out [. .]" (p. 27) is patterned after "deserted
by simpletons, they damn us to hellora pro nobisquick!
no, get me out!" (p. 27). As Cooke explains (with less than
perfect clarity), "This is more than simply an elaborate
pun,"45 for "like Tzara's passage, ^he verbal 'facts' have
no meaning in themselves but two meanings when perceived in
context."45 Furthermore, he argues, "the meanings them
selves reinforce the idea that the reality of events in
the objective world (the war) is a creation of the subjec
tive self (clothing) ,"4"^ for "Here Carr's aesthetics
literally shapes his vision of war." In other words,
Carr's chaotic tirade makes the same point that Bennett's
-150-
elegant news report made, namely, that the reality of the
war depends on the interpretation of the observer.
But we recognize in Carr's Dadaist outburst a continua
tion of the strategy of the opening scene. Although Carr and
Tzara are headed for a stormy confrontation, mainly about
style, Stoppard defuses the impact of their dispute with his
own stylistic games. While Carr is "au fond a bourgeois,
49
Wilde's favorite target," and a philistine who detests
Dadaist nonsense, his outburst is very much Dadaist non
senselike Tzara's opening poem, it depends on "chance"
sound qualities rather than substance. This stylistic game
includes Bennett as well, for although Carr's servant "has
radical sympathies" (p. 73) the style of his speech is
drawn from the gentlemanly banter of Earnest. Until the
play changes course with Joyce's triumphant speech, all of
its characters are brought together in this game of styles
all except Lenin and his wife, who are banished after the
opening library scene to reappear only in Act Two, when
their stylistic consistency will work to highlight the
substantive contradictions in Lenin's doctrine.
When Carr and Bennett begin the sequence again, Carr
is under control and back into characterthe character of
Algernon, or perhaps Wilde himself. His character note, an
excessive interest in clothing, marks him as a Wildean
Dandy and underscores his preference for style over sub
stance. And when his lines are not directly borrowed from
-151-
Earnest, they retain both Wilde's rhythms and his character
istic inverted cliches. Meanwhile, throughout the remaining
four versions of Travesties1 renditions of the opening scene
of Earnest, Bennett modulates seamlessly from the Wildean
mode to the Brechtian mode and back again. He plays Lane
respectfully accouncing that Mr. Tzara called while also
summarizing the newspaper reports on the progress of the
Russian Revolution. As Whitaker notes, "Bennett's reports
50
on current politics" foreshadow Cecily's "sober lectuire
51
on the history of Marxism" which opens Act Two. Bet
Bennett's exposition is mercifully saved from the deadem-
ingly dull earnestness of Cecily's lecture by Stoppard's
delightful exploitation of the comic potential of the scene.
We are always amused by the stock device of the learned
servant teaching the stupid master, but doubly so here
because the topic isof all thingsthe class war. And
Stoppard carries the joke one step further in this scene
as he undermines even the stupid-master/learned-servant
device through brilliant exploitation of the clashing of
the comic and epic modes. Carr may play the dense master
being taught by his well-informed and articulate servant,
but his comic frame contains and neutralizes the radical
content of Bennett's polished Brechtian speeches.
The combination of the two modes leads to repeated
dislocations which are unfailingly funny and often thought-
provoking. After Bennett explains with aplomb both the
-152-
process of dialectical materialsm" (p. 30) and the Soviet
stance that the war is merely an "imperialist adventure
carried on at the expense of workers of both sides" (p. 31),
he observes that the Soviet term for those participating in
the war'"lickspittle capitalist manservant'" (p. 31)is
"unnecessarily offensive in my view" (p. 31) At the surface
level, Carr seems to miss completely the chance to coopt
Bennett, but his reply, "I'm not sure that I'm much inter
ested in your views, Bennett" (p. 31), while discouraging
his servant's budding bourgeois leanings, does coopt Bennett
back into the comic mode, where he meekly returns to his
subservient demeanor. Like Lane who once apologized for
offering his solicited views on marriage (only to be told
by Algy, "I don't know that I am much interested in your
52
family life, Lane" ), Bennett now apologizes for having
offered his views on politics"They're not particularly
interesting, sir" (p. 31). But without missing a beat,
Bennett drops back into the Brechtian mode and explains
"the Bolshevik line" (p. 31) that "some unspecified but
unique property of the Russian situation, unforeseen by
Marx, has caused the bourgeois-capitalist era of Russian
history to be compressed into the last few days, and that
the time for the proletarian revolution is now ripe"
(p. 31).
As the scene shuttles back and forth from the comic
mode to the Brechtian mode, Bennett undoubtedly gets the
-153-
best lines, but Carr manages to retain his position of
social superiority, even while being taught about the class
war, by maintaining the comic frame of Earnest. And if
Bennett reveals a certain lack of awareness by addressing
Carr as "sir" while he is explaining central tenets of
Marxism, Carr equals him by remaining oblivious to the
Dadaist tendencies in his own style. Some moments after
his associative outburst about the war and his evening
clothes, Carr scolds Bennett for following his mention of
"spies, counterspies, radicals, artists, and riff-raff of
all kinds" (p. 30) with a second announcement that "Mr.
Tzara called, sir" (p. 30). Now safely back into the role
of Algernon, Carr reprimands Bennett for "taking up this
modish novelty of 'free association'" (p. 30). The time for
the first politico-aesthetic clash is now ripe, for Carr,
who freely associates while disapproving of free association,
is about to receive the prime advocate of the practice.
In lines borrowed straight from Earnest, Bennett an
nounces "Mr. Tzara" (p. 32), and Carr receives Tzara as
Algernon had received Jack. This Tzara is, as Stoppard
specifies, "a Rumanian nonsense" (p. 32), and he speaks
Jack's lines with a ridiculous foreign accent," "Plaizure,
plaizure! What else? Eating ez usual I see 'Enri?!"
(p. 32), he replies to Carr's query about what brings him
for a visit. He has just enough time to express his hope
that the guests indicated by the tea service include
-154-
Gwendolen I hopp!I luff 'er, 'Enri" (p. 32)before
Bennett announces the arrival of "Miss Gwendolen and Mr.
Joyce" (p. 32) Tzara's silly Rumanian accent is topped by
Joyce's speech, which is entirely in limericks. In fact,
Joyce's presence is so imposing, partly because he is
destined to play Lady Bracknell when he returns in -the third
version of this scene from Earnest and partly, I suspect, as
an early warning sign that he is going to commandeer the
play upon his return, that all the dialogue among the four
is in limerick form. This manic scene manages to introduce
Joyce as "A fine writer who writes caviar / for the general,
53
hence poor" (p. 33), a description borrowed from Hamlet,
and Tzara as an artist who "writes poetry and sculpts, /
with quite unexpected results" (p. 34), as well as bringing
up the topic of the play Joyce wants to put on, the play we
have, in effect, been watching for some time now. The
scene degenerates into a quadrilingual good-bye, "Avanti!
Gut'n tag! Adis! Au revoir! Vamanos!" (p. 33), echoing
the quadrilingual apology of the opening library scene,
before Carr signals its end by starting his memoirs, and
the scene, over again with, "Well, let us resume. Zurich
by One Who Was There" (p. 36).
After Bennett reinitiates the sequence by again an
nouncing the arrival of "Mr. Tzara" (p. 36), "TZARA, no
less than CARR, is straight out of The Importance of Being
Earnest" (p. 36). Stoppard continues the strategy of
-155-
undermining the differences between his characters by
giving them a common language, a common style. But Tzara
is not simply coopted into the witty banter of Earnest; Carr
unknowingly reciprocates by falling back into Dadaist free
association. Annoyed by Tzara's observation that he is
"eating and drinking, as usual" (p. 36), Carr responds
"stiffly," "I believe it is done to drink a glass of hock
and seltzer before luncheon" (p. 36) because drinking hock
makes one "feel much better after it" (p. 36). Tzara, sus
picious of the very concept of cause and effect, suggests
that Carr "might have felt much better anyway" (p. 36). Carr
predictably insists on a causal relationship, but the form
of his reply so thoroughly undermines its surface message
that his would-be rebuttal to Dadaism supports the same
principles he seeks to refute. "No, nopost hock, propter
hock" (p. 36), he argues, again relying on "chance" asso
ciation of sounds, even though he thinks himself opposed to
this "modish novelty" (p. 30). And, of course, the Latin
phrase he refers to, "posthoc, ergo propter hoc," is itself
a catch-phrase which designates the fallacy of assuming a
cause and effect relationship when only a temporal rela
tionship exists.
Instead of seizing the opportunity to point out that
Carr's apparent defense of causality ultimately demonstrates
Dadaist principles, Tzara takes Carr's statement at face
value, and the debate is on: "But, my dear Henry, causality,
-156-
[sic] is no longer fashionable owing to the war" (p. 36),
he rebuts. Round one features Carr defending the position
that the war did in fact have causes against Tzara's in
sistence that "everything is Chance, including design"
(p. 37). Neither debater is notably consistent, and Carr
again unwittingly undermines his stance by referring to
"chance" sound qualities to support his argument that the
war had perfectly logical causes. He believes that it was
caused by "something about brave little Belgium" (p. 36),
but Tzara (undermining his own position) names Serbia as
the cause. Carr rejects the Serbian explanation, not be
cause his understanding of recent history differs from
Tzara's, but because "The newspapers would never have risked
calling the British public to arms without a proper regard
for succinct alliteration" (pp. 36-37). Here, as in earlier
segments, Carr's dandyish preference for style over sub
stance coincides with his habit of privileging sound over
sense, which has become the mark of Dadaism through Stoppard's
transforming word-play. Carr is spared from humiliating
defeat in this debate only by Tzara's own remarkable incon
sistency: the apostle of nonsense as the salvation of the
world dismisses Carr's unreasonable reasoning with, "Oh,
what nonsense you talk" (p. 37) .
Round two begins after Tzara repeats "Dada" thirty-four
times and Carr returns Tzara's insult: "Oh, what nonsense
you talk" (p. 37). Carrtries to salvage some credibility
-157-
by reminding his opponent, "I was there, in the mud and
blood of foreign field, unmatched in the whole history of
human carnage" (p. 37). If the words have a familiar ring,
it is because they initiated his outburst in the "newspapers
and telegrams" sequence. And as before, the words trigger
some association with clothing. "Ruined several pairs of
trousers" (p. 37), Carr continues, and then catalogues the
"twill jodphurs with pigskin straps" (p. 37), "the sixteen
ounce serge, the heavy worsted, the silk flannel mixture"
(p. 37) and so on until Tzara, the Dada of free associa
tion, must bring him back to the point at hand. Tzara sug
gests that Carr could have spared himself the agony of
ruining so many irreplaceable pairs of trousers by spending
"the time in Switzerland as an artist" (p. 38), and with
this remark, the debate expands to include the political
responsibilities of artists. Carr reveals a love-hate
attitude toward artists, insisting first that they are
unspeakably self-centered"To be an artist in Zurich, in
1917, implies a degree of self-absorption that would have
glazed over the eyes of Narcissus" (p. 38)and then that
they are "gifted in some way that enables [them] to do
something more or less well which can only be done badly
or not at all by someone who is not thus gifted' (p. 38).
Lacking these gifts, Carr declares, "I couldn't be an
artist anywhereI can do none of the things by which is
meant art" (p. 38). When Tzara reassures him that "Art is
-158-
no longer considered the proper concern of the artist[ ]
He may be a poet by drawing words out of a hat" (p. 38) ,
Carr fails to recognize that he has been functioning as a
poet, in Dadaist terms, since the beginning of the play.
"But that is simply to change the meaning of the word Art"
(p. 38), he counters, before declaring all such redefini
tions irresponsible. Tzara's reply"You do exactly the
same thing with words like patriotism, duty, love, freedom,
kind and country, brave little Belgium, saucy little Serbia"
(p. 39)wins him both debating points, and as Whitaker
54
argues, audience sympathy.
Nevertheless, the debate must ultimately be declared
a draw, for neither Carr nor Tzara emerges as a clear-cut
winner, as the voice of Truth, and the lack of resolution
stems at least as much from the form of their arguments as
from the substance. We may be swayed both by Carr's argu
ment that "modern art" (p. 39) is often a product of "loss
of nerve and failure of talent" (p. 39) and by Tzara's
rejection of the traditional "sophistry that sanctifies mass
murder with the rhetoric of 'patriotism, duty, love> free
dom 1 ^^ but our ambivalence, even confusion, is fostered
by the characters' consistent stylistic inconsistency.
Tzara relies heavily on cause and effect to support his
arguments against causality, and while declaring himself
opposed to artistic tradition, he participates freely in
"that quintessential English jewel" (p. 51) Earnest. And
-159-
Carr, of course, repeatedly adopts the style of free asso
ciation Tzara advocates, even while arguing against Dadaism.
This constant switching to the style and rhetorical strategy
of the opponent so thoroughly undercuts the substance of
their arguments that it seems perfectly appropriate for the
scene to end as Carr finishes Tzara's sentence, "Or, to put
it another way" (p. 40) with the chant, "We're here because
we're here . because we're here [. .]" (p. 40). As
Werner notes, "Carr's droning repetition of the phrases . .
c r
seems as meaningless as a Dadaist chant," and in fact,
Tzara accompanies Carr's droning by chanting "'da-da' to the
same tune" (p. 40).
When the lights return to normal after another one of
Carr's chaotic outbursts, Carr and Tzara calmly begin the
"cucumber sandwiches" sequence of Earnest for the third and
last time. This final scene of Travesties' first act is
easily the most complex in the play, for it houses the con
tinuation of the contradictory debate between Carr and Tzara
as well as the crockery-smashing confrontation between Joyce
and Tzara in an elaborate structure built from the first act
of Earnest, the "Ithaca" section of Ulysses, tag-lines from
various Shakespeare plays, history, and other sources. If,
as Werner argues, "Stoppard unveils the limitations of the
57
twentieth century's most cherished systems of belief" in
Travesties, he also, as Hinden argues, begins "siding with
in this sequence. Joyce may suffer
Joyce on major issues
-160-
some personal attackshe is repeatedly shown trying to
remedy his penniless state by arranging permanent loans,
and his uncoordinated suit attracts much criticismbut his
qualifications as an artist are never successfully chal
lenged. Meanwhile, Tzara discredits his own position by
remaining as inconsistent as ever, but he emerges from in
consistency long enough to begin the assault on Lenin by
pointing, quite accurately, to "the contradiction of the
radical movement" (p. 46), the bourgeois artistic tastes of
political revolutionaries like Lenin. Thus, although the
first act's final scene retains the stylistic complexity of
earlier segments, the stylistic continuity belies the drastic
change of course contained within the scene, for well before
Cecily's unmercifully dull speech opens Act Two, Travesties
moves decisively toward a solid endorsement of Joyce and an
almost equally unambiguous condemnation of Lenin.
The sequence opens with Wildean banter which furthers
Wilde's plot line, for it reintroduces Cecily, the librari-
aness of Zurich, with whom Carr will fall in love to provide
the requisite second pair of lovers (Tzara has, of course,
already professed his love for Gwendolen) Cecily serves
another function as well, though, for when she is not help
ing Lenin assemble economic facts for his work on imperal-
ism, "she is working her way along the shelves (p. 42) ,
reading "the poets, as indeed everything else" (p. 42) in
alphabetical order. Cecily's unusual method of acquiring
-161-
and ordering knowledge provides the basis for a series of
quick jokesTzara's mention of "Zimmerwaldists" (p. 45),
for example, prompts Carr to comment, "That sounds like the
last word in revolutionary politics" (p. 45)but it also
highlights a central Travesties theme, namely, as Cooke
explains, that "Formarrangement, order, contextcreates
59
meaning." Her method of assembling facts is even more
arbitrary than the methods used by Lenin, Joyce, and even
Tzara, and its very arbitrariness calls attention to the
point made by both the structure and content of Travesties,
that form and context are the creators of meaning.
With the mention of the Zurich Public Library, Tzara
brings up the topic of Joyce, and after explaining how the
Irish writer came to be living in Zurich, he embarks on a
contradictory condemnation of the man from Dublin. He first
slurs Joyce for wearing "the mismatched halves of sundry
sundered Sunday suits" (p. 42), suits he describes in such
detail that he sounds like Carr cataloguing the trousers he
ruined in the trenches. Then, he condemns Joyce's art as
"reeking of old hat, being second-hand fin-de-siecle slop"
(p. 42). Tzara's inconsistency blares at usfor who is a
Dadaist to complain about an author's drawing second-hand
material out of a hat?but he goes on to explain the crux
of his criticism, which, if anything, makes his position
even more shaky. The most serious flaw he finds in Joyce s
poems is that they are "hardly likely to start a revolution
-162-
(p. 42). With perfect inconsistency, then, Tzara claims
that his cut and paste method spurs revolution, but when
another author cuts and pastes without bothering to announce
that the proletarian revolt is at hand, Tzara simply pro
nounces the writing bad.
Oddly enough, it is Carr who comes to Joyce's defense
when Tzara continues his condemnation by observing that
Joyce's helper, Gwendolen, "is so innocent she does not stop
to wonder what possible book could be derived from reference
to Homer's Odyssey and the Dublin Street Directory for
1904" (p. 44). For once, Carr expresses an inkling of
appreciation for the method of writing that he happens to
use as well. "I admit it's an unusual combination of sources,
but not wholly without possibilities" (p. 44), he retorts.
Carr's own combination of sources, The Importance of Being
Earnest and the history of ideas in Zurich during World
War I, is also unusual, but, as Travesties has shown, not
wholly without possibilities.
Rather than lingering on this point, however, the pair
modulates immediately to the cigarette case encounter be
tween Jack and Algernon in Earnest. This time, the lost
and found item is a library card belonging to Tristan Tzara,
but "made out in the name of Mr. Jack Tzara" (p. 44). As
Tzara explains, his "name is Tristan in the Meirei Bar and
Jack in the library" (p. 45) because he does not want his
library companions, especially Lenin, to know that he is
-163-
the Dadaist, Tristan Tzara. Algernon's line from the
cigarette case scene in Earnest, "The truth is rarely pure
0
and never simple," though never stated, lurks in the
background of Tzara's convoluted explanation of his dual
identity. He explains, in a story we will hear again as
Lenin is firmly discredited in Act Two, that as "Lenin was
raging against the chauvinist moderates who didn't neces
sarily want to bayonet every man over the rank of NCO"
(p. 45), "someone at the bar piano started to play a
Beethoven sonata" (p. 45). In Tzara's view, Beethoven is
part of the tradition of Western culture which created
World War I: "The classicstraditionvomit on it! [. .
Beethoven! Mozart! I spit on it!" (p. 35), he proclaimed
in the manic limerick scene. But Lenin, in the midst of
declaring all participation in the war just cause for
execution, "went completely to pieces" (p. 45) upon hearing
the sonata, "and when he recovered he dried his eyes and
lashed into the Dadaists, if you please" (p. 45).
For Tzara, this cafe scene embodies "the contradiction
of the radical movement" (p. 46) because, he explains, "as
a Dadaist myself I am the natural enemy of bourgeois art
and the natural ally of the political left, but the odd
thing about revolution is that the further left you go
politically the more bourgeois they like their art" (p. 45)
As anyone who has ever suffered through an exhibition of
socialist realistic art knows, there is more than a grain
-164-
of truth in Tzara's observation. But Travesties is still
in the playful mode, still refraining from presenting its
own unqualified version of Truth, and Tzara's comments on
this apparent contradiction are not allowed to stand unre
futed. Carr responds with a counter-argument which is at
least as convincing as the one put forth by Tzara. "There
is nothing contradictory about it . ." (p. 46), Carr re
plies, because "Revolution in art is in no way connected
with class revolution" (p. 46). He maintains that "Artists
are members of a privileged class" (p. 46) and that "Art
is absurdly overrated" (p. 46) not only by artists but by
everyone else as well. Carr's argument culminates in an
impassioned speech directly borrowed from Artist Descending
61
a Staircase, Stoppard's 1972 radio play which also explores
the relationship between art and politics: "For every
thousand people there's nine hundred doing the work, ninety
doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky bastard who's
the artist" (p. 46) When Hayman asked Stoppard about using
identical arguments in the two plays, Stoppard replied
6 2
simply, "If it's worth using once, it's worth using twice."
Obviously, the argument appeals to Stoppard, as it inevitably
appeals to an audience comprised mainly of the "nine hundred
doing the work" (p. 46).
This dizzying, dislocating debate achieves new heights
of contradiction when Tzara, after repeatedly declaring
that anyone, no matter how untalented, is capable of being
-165-
an artist, insists, quite literally, that artists are sacred.
"When the strongest began to fight for the tribe, and the
fastest to hunt, it was the artist who became the priest-
guardian of the magic that conjured the intelligence out of
the appetites" (p. 47, italics mine), he heatedly argues.
This is, of course, precisely the stance Joyce will espouse
in a few moments as he clashes with Tzara, and what is more,
Tzara uses terms to describe his position"magic" and
"conjure"which are identical to the ones Joyce will use
so effectively. Tzara's praise for the sacred artist's
abilities to conjure "the intelligence out of the appe
tites" (p. 47) absolutely defies his Dadaist desire "to make
the point that making poetry should be as natural as making
water" (p. 62). In spite of his professed radicalness, he
falls back on the traditional line that culture ("intelli
gence") is superior to nature ("the appetites").
Just when the intensity of this politico-aesthetic
debate has become almost overwhelming, Stoppard gives us a
welcome respite as Bennett again announces the arrival of
"Miss Gwendolen and Mr. Joyce" (p. 47). On this cue, the
play drops back to a slower pace as it averts its attention
temporarily from the intellectual conundrum which has
developed to attend to the necessities of plot. In rela
tively straightforward fashion, Joyce announces that he is
mounting a play and requests Carr's official support. He
then explains that if his "name is in bad odour among the
-166-
British community in Zurich" (p. 49), perhaps it is because
of his pacifist poem, "Mr. Dooley." But nothing in the plot
requires that Joyce then recite all twenty-one lines of
this remarkably pedestrian poem, which is exactly what he
does.
The pace picks up only slightly after slowing to a near
halt during "Mr. Dooley," for as Joyce asks Carr to play the
leading role in his production of Earnest, the two remain
comfortably in their dominant personae, and the dialogue is
thus rather straightforward. Joyce asks for "a couple of
pounds" (p. 50) and then begins to persuade Carr to play
Algernon by presenting Zurich as "the theatrical centre of
Europe" (p. 51) where "culture is the continuation of war
by other means" (p. 51). This appeal to Carr's patriotic
duty piques the consular official's interest, and Joyce's
mention of "a repertoire of masterpieces" (p. 51) brings
out the philistine in Carr, who suggests "Gilbert and Sul
livan" (p. 51) or perhaps "Pirates of Penzancel" (p. 51).
Ultimately Carr accepts the role after hearing the details
of the stylish costumes the part requires, and Carr and
Joyce retire to discuss the play, as Algernon and Lady
Bracknell had retired to discuss music, leaving Gwendolen
and Jack/Tzara alone to form a romantic alliance.
With the exits of Carr and Joyce, the slow paced lull
gives way to one of the play's most amazing demonstrations
of the potential of collage. Tzara's profession of love
-167-
for Gwendolen commences as "TZARA comes forward with rare
diffidence, holding a hat like a brimming bowl. It transpires
that he has written down a Shakespeare sonnet and cut it up
into single words which he has placed in the hat" (p. 53).
Gwendolen observes that Tzara's "technique is unusual"
(p. 53) but Tzara insists that "All poetry is a reshuffling
of a pack of picture cards" (p. 53) a claim that certainly
seems valid in light of the opening library sequence and,
indeed, the whole structure of Travesties. Tzara, however,
then asserts that "all poets are cheats" (p. 53). If bor
rowing is cheating, Stoppard is about to cheat extravagantly,
for the entire ensuing conversation between Gwendolen and
Tzara is composed of famous lines from numerous Shakespeare
plays and the thirty-second sonnet. Upon learning that the
hat contains scraps of the eighteenth sonnet, Gwendolen
recites the lovely poem, and then asks, "You tear him for
his bad verses?" (p. 54), a familiar query which now enjoys
a contextual pun. When she complains, quite justly, "These
are but wild and whirling words, my lord" (p. 54) Tzara
can only agree, "Ay, madam" (p. 54). Then Gwendolen looks
on her would-be lover, the Dadaist poet, and laments,
"Truly I wish the gods had made thee poetical (p. 54) ,
but Tzara must admit, "I was not born under a rhyming
planet" (p. 54). Stoppard sustains this wonderful pastiche,
this delightful "reshuffling," through eight exchanges of
dialogue, and I would venture to guess that few of s feel
-168-
cheated by his borrowing. To the contrary, this sequence
is perhaps his most eloquent and impressive testimony in
defense of his method.
Whitaker accurately observes that the dialogue between
Tzara and Gwendolen prepares us "to see a collaborative
meaning emerge once more from random bits and pieces"63 when
Gwendolen finally pulls the scraps of the sonnet from
Tzara's hat. We are not disappointed, for just as in the
opening scene, Tzara's would-be nonsense is transformed by
Stoppard's games into a poem appropriate to the context.
Tzara had explained when he offered the scraps to Gwendolen
that they come "from the well-spring where my atoms are
uniquely organized" (p. 53), which is presumably a decidedly
unromatic way of saying that the resulting poem will be an
expression of love uniquely his own. The "random" words
do express a desire, for, as Whitaker notes, "they have
become a free-verse poem of unmistakably phallic excite-
ment," and poor Gwendolen blushes to read, "see, this
lovely hot possession growest / so long / by nature's
course / so . longheaven!" (p. 54). Happily for
Gwendolen, when Tzara takes over the task of pulling the
words out of the hat, the temperature of the poem drops to
innocuous observations about the weather "summer changing,
more temperate complexion ..." (p. 55) and the pair
modulates easily to the Earnest frame as Gwendolen repeats
her lines from Wilde, "Pray don't talk to me about the
-169-
weather, Mr. Tzara. Whenever people talk to me about the
weather I always feel quite certain that they mean something
else" (p. 55).
The new lovers move quickly through the motions of con
firming their mutual admiration, but the rules of comedy
require an obstacle which blocks the full realization of
the union until the play's end. As in Earnest, the obstacle
is two-fold. In place of the "insuperable barrier"65 of
6 6
"Christian names" which deters Gwendolen and Cecily in
Wilde's play, the first obstacle in Travesties depends on
whether Tzara shares Gwendolen's "regard for Mr. Joyce as
an artist" (p. 55). To test their aesthetic compatibility,
Gwendolen gives Tzara a folder which she assumes contains
the manuscript of "The Oxen in the Sun" chapter from
Ulysses, but which in fact, due to an accidental swapping
of folders in the opening scene, contains a chapter from
Lenin's work on imperialism. They have no time to discover
the mistake (discovery must, of comic necessity, wait until
the final scene anyway) because Joyce reenters just as the
lovers are embracing to provide the second obstacle: Lady
Bracknell. Joyce booms, "Rise, sir, from that semi-
recumbent posture!" (p. 55), grabs his scrap-filled hat,
and exits in righteous indignation.
When Joyce, now "covered from head to breast in little
bits of white paper" (p. 56), reenters to question Tzara,
we witness the apparent continuation of the scene in the
-170-
same impressive collagestyle, for Joyce interviews Tzara
as Lady Bracknell had interviewed Jack, but in place of
Wilde's witty wackiness, the questions and answer resemble
Joyce's dry catechism in the "Ithaca" chapter of Ulysses
while at the same time suggesting Brechtian didacticism,
especially when Tzara incorporates quoted material into his
answers. As in the opening library scene, Stoppard plays
with the visual dimension and with the actual content of
the dialogue to complete his tri-level tribute to collage.
Throughout the interview, Joyce picks the "bits of paper
from his hair and from his clothing" (p. 60) and replaces
"each bit in his hat" (p. 60); he will perform visual magic
tricks with the scraps at the end of the scenevoil, a
carnation and a rabbitmuch as we know he performed a
verbal magic trick with the scraps from the opening scene
voil, "The Oxen in the Sun." The content adds the third
dimension, for in the midst of all the borrowing of styles
and conjuring from scraps, Joyce and Tzara intersperse in
their discussion of Dadaist methods of composition repeated
references to the problem of copyrights. The concept of
authorship as exclusive ownership has probably never seemed
more bizarre, more completely invalid, than it does in this
context.
Thus, the scene seems in every way a seamless continu
ation of what has preceded itthe stylistic density is
sustained, scraps continue as a visual motif, and the
-171-
traditional model of authorship remains under fire. But
subtly, almost imperceptibly, Travesties is radically shift
ing course, for in place of the general unmasking of the
traditional concept of authorship, the interview moves toward
an increasingly specific critique of the inconsistencies in
the Dadaist attempt to revise it. But instead of simply
unveiling the limitations of Dadaism, this scene awards
every one of Tzara's lost debating points to Joyce. The
interview opens with matter-of-fact questions and answers
which provide an informative, if dry, summary of the found
ing of Dadaism by Hans, or Jean, Arp whose "duplicate"
(p. 57) name is the result of Arp's being "a native of
Alsace, of French background, and a German citizen by virtue
of the conquest of 1879" (p. 57) But as information about
Hugo Ball, another founder of Dadaism, is presented in the
form of quotes from Ball's diary, the partisan attack on
Dadaism begins as Stoppard has Joyce explore the irony of
a Dadaist's asserting copyrights.
Upon learning that Ball's diary is not "in the public
domain by virtue of the expiration of copyright protection
as defined by the Berne convention of 1886" (p. 58) Joyce
instructs Tzara to "Quote judiciously so as to combine
maximum information with minimum liability" (p. 58), and
then again, to "Quote discriminately from Ball's diary in
such a manner as to avoid forfeiting the goodwill of his
executors" (p. 58). Tzara obliges by doing his best to
-172-
avoid violating Dadaist Father Ball's ownership rights while
also borrowing from Ball's diary to explain the founder's
advocacy of borrowing indiscriminately to produce new
writing. While we may be obliged, in turn, to wonder who
owns the words from Ball's diary which Tzara guotes in
Stoppard's play, we are undoubtedly most struck by the
absurdity of a Dadaist's even bothering to claim copyright
protection. And the Dadaists sound ever more like a silly
lot of quacks as Tzara answers Joyce's query about the rela
tive merits of hats and coats as sources of Dadaist art with
the dry and untheoretical explanation that coats are
" Inferior to a hat in regard to the tendency of one or both
sleeves to hang down in front of the eyes, with the resultant
possibility of the wearer falling off the edge of the plat
form" (p. 59), but "Superior to a hat in regard to the
number of its pockets" (p. 59). Tzara continues to "Cor
roborate discreetly from any contemporary diarist whose
estate is not given to obsessive litigation over trivial
infringement of copyright" (p. 59) at Joyce's command, all
the while showing no sign of recognizing the irony of his
position. He offers a fact-filled diary quote followed by
his own recollection "of what was declaimed synchronously'
(p. 59) on the evening of March 30, 1916:
I began, "Bourn bourn bourn il deshabille sa chair
quand les grenouilles [. .]" Huelsenbeck began,
"Ahoi ahoi des admirals gwirktes Beinkleid
[. .]" Janeo chanted, "I can hear the whip
o'will around the hill at five o'clock[. . .]
The title of the poem was "Admiral Seeks House
To Let." (pp. 59-60)
-173-
The title may now be Travesties instead of "Admiral Seeks
House To Let, and we may now have simultaneous literary
styles rather than simultaneous languages, but what we have
just witnessed is nevertheless a brilliant simulacrum of the
Dadaist performance described in the interview.
But before we can take our hats off to Tzara to acknow
ledge this apparent tribute to Dadaism, Joyce has a few hat
tricks of his own which visually underscore a point which
has been lying in wait all along: the scraps of Dadaist
destruction have meaning and value only "because Stoppard
6 7
has transformed them with Joycean word-play." As the
idiom slips firmly back into Joyce's "Ithaca" mode (the
Brechtian-style quotations are now dropped), Joyce asks,
"Is it the case that within a remarkably short time per
formances of this kind made Dada in general and Tzara in
particular names to conjure with wherever art was dis
cussed?" (p. 60) and then casually, on the word "conjure,"
"he conjures from the hat a white carnation, apparently made
from the bits of paper" (p. 60). The moral is already
clearanybody with a pair of scissors can cut, but it takes
a real artist to perform the magic of pasting. Instead of
the familiar persuasive counterargument we have come to
expect from Stoppard, we witness a series of debilitating
blows to Tzara. First, Joyce "tosses the carnation at
TZARA" (p. 60)no subtlety in that insult--and then asks,
ibe this triumph?" (p. 60). At the
How would you descr
-174-
verbal level the question refers to the renown Dadaism has
achieved, but at the visual level, of course, it refers to
Joyce's triumphant carnation, which Tzara is "putting [. .]
into his buttonhole" (p. 60) when he offers his reply: "As
just and proper. Well merited. An example of enterprise
and charm receiving their due" (p. 60). The joke is on
Tzara as his words, intended as self-praise, attach them
selves instead to Joyce's artwork, now on display in the
Dadaist's buttonhole. Joyce proves himself the true "priest-
guardian of the magic" (p. 47) of Tzara's hypothetical
ancient tribe as he pulls silk hankies, then flags, from
the hat, all the while firing incriminating questions at
Tzara which undermine the significance of Dadaism. When,
for example, Joyce asks what Dada brought to art that had
not been previously brought in "Barcelona, New York, Paris,
Rome, and St. Petersburg" (p. 60)he produces a flag to
accompany the naming of each cityTtara can only respond
to this impressive wizardry with the decidedly lame answer,
"The word Dada" (p. 61). The question and answer session
come to an end as Joyce instructs Tzara to "Describe
sensibly without self-contradiction" (p. 61) how the word
Dada was discovered, an assignment we know to be impossible
given Tzara's past inconsistency, and then asks for details
on the factional rivalry which plagued the Dadaist move
ment.
-175-
Angry at the steady barrage of attacks, Tzara finally
lashes out at Joyce with a string of Irish slurs and then a
rebuttal: "You've turned literature into a religion and
it's as dead as all the rest, it's an overripe corpse and
you're cutting fancy figures at the wake" (p. 62), he
charges. Tzara's counterattack undoubtedly contains some
truthJoyce's writing, especially the fancy figures of his
Wake, requires the explication of a high priest of modern
ism much as the Latin Bible required a priest to reveal the
6 R
mysteries of the Sacred Word in medieval times but Tzara
destroys his credibility as he begins to destroy "whatever
crockery is to hand" (p. 62) as well. And as he childishly
smashes pots, he unwittingly sets the scene for Joyce's
eloquent "broken pots" speech, which more than any other
in the play contains the message of Truth.
Joyce begins, "You are an over-excited little man,
with a need for self-expression far beyond the scope of
your natural gifts" (p. 62), and while "This is not dis
creditable" (p. 62), "Neither does it make you an artist"
(p. 62). These words, like those that follow, are un
hampered by stylistic games or any hint of contradiction.
Nothing in the preceding scene or in the play as a whole
undermines Joyce's speech; unlike most of Act One, this set-
piece is an oasis of clear-cut referential language. An
artist is the magician put among men to gratify capri
ciouslytheir urge for immortality" (p. 62), he continues.
-176-
Temple and states come and go, but "If there is any meaning
in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in
the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of
nonentities" (p. 62)nonentities like Carr, who achieves
immortality in both Ulysses and Travesties. Art has no
immediate political obligations, Joyce in effect argues;
artists may justly celebrate even tyrants if this celebra
tion serves a larger purpose, for "What now of the Trojan
War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch?"
(p. 62), Joyce asks. "Dust" (p. 62), he answers. "A for
gotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for
new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots"
(p. 62), he continues, speaking from a stage littered with
the broken pots of Dadaist destruction, smashed in an effort
aimed at least in part at exposing the evils of capitalism
and imperialism, the same economic urges that started the
Trojan War. And who is not moved by Joyce's justification
of the Trojan War (capitalist motives and all) and of the
artist?
But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of
heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face
that launched a thousand shipsand above all, of
Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most
complete of all heroeshusband, father, son,
lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician,
inventor and adventurer. ..." (p* 62)
Anyone who feels any attachment to the Western tradition,
which is roughly everyone who bothered to attend the play,
is bound to hear the ring of Truth in Joyce's argument,
-177-
which, not coincidentally, is something of an "overdeter
mined" and eloquent restatement of Stoppard's own justifi
cation of art: "Art," he explained in his 1974 "Ambushes"
interview, "is important because it provides the moral
matrix, the moral sensibility, from which we make our judg-
6 9
ments about the world." And while he acknowledged the
"possibility of political art having a political effect in
close-up, in specific terms," he added, "though I can't
offhand think of an example of it happening."^
As critics are quick to point out, Joyce's speech was
not even a part of Travesties when rehearsals began; it was
71
"added at [Director] Peter Wood's urging." Werner goes
back to a still earlier stage of the play's composition and
72
notes that "Joyce wasn't even in the original plan," and
he takes this fact as a sign that "Travesties could hardly
have been intended as a forum for the propagation of his
esthetic message." While it is entirely possible that
Travesties was not intended as a tribute to Joyce, it is
just as clear that that is precisely what it turns out to
be. In immediate visual terms, Tzara is reduced to a child
throwing a temper tantrum and breaking everything in sight
while Joyce is elevated to the ranks of the artist-magician
who can transform the broken bits and pieces into whole
objects of beauty. But the visual dimension works as a
metaphor for their writing and retroactively discredits
Tzara. All the makers of meaning were presented as roughly
-178-
the same in the opening sceneall composed from scraps,
and all their writing needed an audience to provide a proper
context to turn the random scraps into meaningful utterances.
As Joyce's triumph over Tzara casts its shadow back onto
earlier scenes, though, we revise our appreciation of Tzara's
brilliant nonsense poems ("Eel ate enormous appletzara" and
the reshuffled eighteenth sonnet) and now give credit to
Stoppard for Joycean word-play. Tzara, then, is simply a
destroyer while Joyce and Stoppard are gifted reassemblers.
And from a still more distant perspective, we see the larger
equation: Stoppard's whole style in Travesties, his
catalogue of styles, his word-play, is a tribute to the
word-play and catalogue of style in Ulysses.
Though he hardly needs it, Joyce has the last word as
he instructs Tzara, in Bracknellian fashion, "to try and
acquire some genius and if possible some subtlety before
the season is quite over" (p. 63) With that, he bids the
speechless Tzara good morning, "produces a rabbit out of
his hat" (p. 63), and exits, "holding the rabbit" (p. 63).
While it could be argued that the plot of Earnest requires
that Joyce win his bout with Tzara just as Lady Bracknell
triumphed in her interview with Jack, it is important to
note that Tzara is never allowed an effective rebuttal to
Joyce. His earlier attacks on Joyce lacked credibility
because of their pervasive contradictions, and his one
chance to discredit Joyce in Act Two Tzara pronounces
-179-
that Joyce's writing "is graceless without being random;
as a narrative it lacks charm or even vulgarity; as an
experience it is like sharing a cell with a fanatic in
search of a mania" (p. 96)is more than a failure because,
due to the accidental swapping of folders, Tzara is unwit
tingly condemning Lenin's work on capitalism instead of
Joyce's "Oxen in the Sun" chapter, and poor Tzara, we recall,
admires Lenin. In spite of the battering he suffers from
Joyce, though, Tzara is not the real loser of Travesties.
That dubious honor belongs to Lenin, whose story is about
to be toldCarr warns us in his ramblings which end the
act, "now I'm on to how I met Lenin and could have changed
the course of history etcetera" (p. 64) in the driest,
most unplayful style imaginable. But before the curtain
falls on Act One, Carr returns once more to the topic of
Joyce and tells how he dreamed he had the Irish writer on
the witness stand, "a masterly cross-examination, case
nearly won" (p. 65) but when he "flung" (p. 65) the ques
tion at Joyce, "'And what did you do in the Great War?'"
(p. 65) Joyce answered, "'I wrote Ulysses1 [. . .] 'What
did you do?'" (p. 65). Joyce wins in Carr's dream even as
he won the actual court case over the money, and even as he
wins Travesties.
The audience leaves for intermission with all too few
questions to ponder, for in the closing moments of Act One
Travesties has subtly but radically changed course. It
-180-
began as an exploration of the limits of competing master
narratives, competing versions of Truth, much as Rosencrantz
is an exploration of the limits of competing theatrical
modes. But while Rosencrantz is able to withhold endorsement
of any single mode of representation and thus sustain its
questioning of Truth right through to the final curtain, the
presence of Joyce simply overwhelms Travesties. If Stoppard's
characters can find no effective rebuttal to Joyce, perhaps
it is because Stoppard himself can find no effective rebuttal
to this imposing Father of modernisma Father to whom
Stoppard owes an obviously large debt.
When the play resumes, it returns to the theme of the
folly of Truth, for above all else, Lenin's flaw lies in
his steadfast insistence that "Marx had shown the only way
forward" (p. 68). But this attempt to undermine the concept
of one Truth now has a hollow ring, for it is simply a theme
which is no longer supported by a structural ambivalence.
Instead of the constantly shifting ground of Rosencrantz,
which in effect demonstrates that play goes on in the absence
of Truth, Travesties settles on the firm ground of the
Joycean vision and simply tells us that Truth is folly. It
goes without saying that showing is more aesthetically
satisfying than simply telling, but it seems that in this
case at least, showing is also more politically effective
than telling. Rosencrantz offered us the rare and dislo
cating experience of proceeding in uncertainty, carrying on
-181-
in the absence of Truth, and this experience has the poten
tial to shake profoundly our whole Truth-centered conceptual
framework. But Travesties retreats back to the well-worn
and stable ground of Truth, and in doing so, it loses its
power as a critique of mastery, master narratives, Truth,
and the authority of authors. In "siding with Joyce on
74
major issues," Stoppard doubly restores essential com
ponents of the Author-Father-God model, for he writes with
authorial authority of the authorial authority of Joyce.
Even though the endorsement of Joyce works to restore the
authority of the "message" of the Author, however, the
traditional model of authorship is not simply placed back
on its pedestal whole and unchanged. Significantly, the
challenge to the concept of originality survives the play's
change'of course, for inasmuch as Joyce's artistic genius
resides in his ability to reassemble scraps of the Western
tradition into new work, Stoppard is able to endorse Joyce
without abandoning his critique of originality. Neverthe
less, because Travesties proves unable to sustain the open-
ended questioning of Truth which lay at the heart of the
Rosencrantz experience, Rosencrantz remains the more pro
foundly political, more potentially radical play, in spite
of the factor perhaps ultimately because of the fact
that Rosencrantz steers clear of the sort of patently poli
tical content which fills Travesties.
-182-
In spite of its regrettable turn toward Truth, however,
Act One remains theatrically effective, for it is richly
textured, intellectually stimulating, visually delightful,
and--simplyhighly entertaining, right through to its final
curtain. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Act
Two, which, quite apart from its Truth-centered problems,
fails as theater. Stoppard rather charmingly explained to
Hayman that he intended that Act Two open by boring us:
I thought,"Right. We'll have a rollicking first
act, and they'll all come back from their gin-and-
tonics thinking, 'Isn't it fun? What a lot of
lovely jokes!' And they'll sit down, and this
pretty girl will start talking about the theory
of Marxism and the theory of capitalism and the
theory of value. And the smiles, because they're
not prepared for it, will atrophy." And that to
me was like a joke in itself.7B
While the plan succeededaudience smiles most certainly
atrophy during Cecily's four page lectureStoppard quickly
realized that no one else found his joke funny. "I over
played that hand very badly," he admits, "and at the first
preview I realized that the speech had to be about Lenin
only ... I just blue-pencilled everything up to the men
tion of Lenin.Indeed, while the published version of
the text retains the entire lecture, Stoppard notes in his
stage directions that "The performance of this lecture is
not a requirement" (p. 66) and suggests that 'it could pick
up at any point, e.g. 'Lenin was convinced . orKarl
I It
Marx had taken it as an axiom .
(p. 66).
-183-
The new starting points he suggests cut at least half
of the lecture and spare us a considerable amount of bore
dom, but Act Two's problems are by no means confined to
Cecily's lecture. Whitaker provides a convenient catalogue
of the act's faults as he observes that "Reviewers have often
complained that the Lenin episodes in Act Two are simply
expository, that their documentary realism is at odds with
the notion of travesty, that they have no relation to The
Importance of Being Earnest, or that they cannot plausibly
77
be included in Carr's memory." And though Whitaker
attempts a generous defense of the act by presenting it as
a vital term in a dialectic which "reaches out to interro
gate its antithesis: the alleged importance of being in
deadly earnest," his defense is simply not convincing.
In the first place, he concludes his justification of the
act with a tacit admission that the dialectic fails: Lenin's
"merciless and self-contradictory violence stands in dark
contrast to [Joyce's and Tzara's] irreverant but celebratory
freedom."79 A true dialectic would have resulted in a
synthesis of the "celebratory freedom" of Act One and the
deadly earnestness of Act Two; no such synthesis occurs
because synthesis depends, as Whitaker observes a bit later,
on "clashes of opposed but almost equally plausible [italics
mine] arguments. No amount of wishful thinking can
transform the overt condemnation of Lenin into an argument
which even approaches the plausibility of Joyce s.
-184-
In any case, even if the dialectic had worked, other
problems remain. Reviewers are clearly correct to complain
that the Lenin episodes "have no relation to The Importance
of Being Earnest" and that "they cannot plausibly be in-
eluded in Carr's memory." Even Stoppard concedes the
second point: "Peter Wood's objection was unarguable: the
whole thing is within the framework of Carr's memory except
this bit. How do you get back people's belief if you
8 2
interrupt it?" The answer, as Stoppard knows, is that
you do not. But Stoppard resists suggestions that the
Lenins should have been incorporated into Earnest. "It
would have been disastrous to Prismize and Chasublize the
8 3
Lenins," for "that would have killed the play because of
84
the trivialization," he argues. Perhaps, but one notes
that neither Joyce nor the play suffers from the "trivial
ization" of turning Joyce into Lady Bracknell. Stoppard's
interview comments indicate that the exclusion of the
Lenins from the play of Earnest was motivated less by
respect and fears of trivialization than by an unequivocal
desire to damn Lenin. As he explained to Hayman:
What was supposed to be happening was that we have
this rather frivolous nonsense going on, and then
the Lenin section comes in and says, "Life is too
important. We can't afford the luxury of this
artificial frivolity, this nonsense going on in
the arts." Then he says, "Right. That's what
I've got to say," and sits down. Then the play
stands up and says, "You thought that was
frivolous? You ain't seen nothin yet. And
you go into the Gallagher and Shean routine, g^
That was the architectural thing I was after.
-185-
The problem with this plan is fairly obvious: in trying
to depict Lenin as unplayful and boring, Stoppard makes the
whole Lenin section unplayful and boring, and boring theater
is always bad theater.
As we sit through Act Two,we have to be thankful that
although Stoppard refused to incorporate the Lenins into
the play of Earnest, he did compromise in the revision
phase by bringing the Earnest frame back onstage through
the other characters. "In my original draft," he explained
to Hayman, "I took the Lenin section out of the play far
more radically than in the version you saw. I actually
stopped the play and had actors coming down to read that
8 6
entire passage from clipboards or lecterns." In the re
vised version, Cecily still lectures from "the front of the
stage" (p. 66), and she still translates the Lenins' revolu
tion conversation, "pedantically repeating each speech in
English, even the simple 'Nol and 'Yes! 111 (p. 70) Nadya
still addresses the audience "undramatically" (p. 79), and
Lenin still delivers his key speech "from a high rostrum"
(p. 85). But Stoppard punctuates the dull, undramatic
lecturing and reading with welcome intrusions of first
Carr, then Tzara, and finally the whole cast from Act One,
who bring with them the Earnest frame and its accompanying
jokes and frivolity.
Thus, Cecily's lecture on Marxism, capitalism, and the
theory of value, after firmly establishing Lenin's flaw as
-186-
unwavering "fidelity to Marx" (p. 68)"Marx had shown the
only way forward. To quote Marx was enough to settle an
argument. To question Marx was to betray the revolution"
(p. 68)is finally interrupted by the entrance of Carr,
"very debonair in his boater and blazer" (p. 70), who hands
Cecily "the visiting card he received from BENNETT in Act
One" (p. 71). Carr's entrance saves us from numbing exposi
tion about Lenin's work habits"He would work till the
lunch hour, when the library closed, and then return and
work until six, except on Thursdays when we remained
closed" (p. 70)by suddenly transforming the scene into
Earnest's meeting of Algernon and Cecily in the garden.
"You must be Cecily!" (p. 71), Carr exclaims, to which
Cecily replies, "Ssssh!" (p. 71). "You are!" (p. 71), Carr
responds with delight which equals our own at finally
hearing a joke.
Since Cecily is merely Lenin's misguided helper, not
the arch-villain himself, she is eligible to be inducted
into the Earnest frame, and after two abortive attempts to
win her over, Carr at last manages to tear Cecily out of
her Brechtian mode and away from her loyalty to Lenin.
"Ever since Jack told me he had a younger brother who was
a decadent nihilist it has been my girlish dream to reform
you and to love you" (p. 79), she admits as she enters
Earnest and leaves behind both Lenin and her Brechtian
The triple repetition of the scene works to
didacticism.
-187-
reimpose the control of Carr's faulty memory, for we
recognize that Carr's train is jumping its tracks again,
as it did in both the "newspapers and telegrams" seguence
and the "cucumber sandwiches" sequence of Act One. The
first version of the scene is primarily dedicated to re
storing humor and continuity, for unlike Cecily's lecture,
the dialogue between Carr and the librarian often reaches
out of the scene to connect with earlier jokes. Carr, for
example, tries to win Cecily's sympathy by telling her that
"an overly methodical education has left me to fend as best
I can with some small knowledge of the aardvark, a mastery
of the abacus and a facility for abstract art" (p. 72).
Stoppard gets a few extra miles out of the alphabetical
order joke as Cecily and Carr trade lines about anarchism,
Bolshevism, and Zimmerwaldism, naming the political move
ments as Cecily would have discovered them on the shelves.
Cecily's explanation that Lenin is certain that Western
agents are trying to prevent his return to Russia sets up
an old-fashioned jab at the British as well as reminding
us of Carr's remarkable incompetence as a consular official.
"The British are among the most determined, though the
least competent" (p. 72), she confides to Carr, who is, of
course, masquerading as Tzara. "Only yesterday the Ambas
sador received secret instructions to watch the ports
(pp. 72-73) she continues, just moments after having
informed us of the difficulties of Lenin's escape from
-188-
"this landlocked country" (p. 70). Stoppard taps the comic
potential of both Carr's consistent bungling and the mis
taken identity device he inherited from Wilde as he has
Cecily observe, "You are not a bit like your brother. You
are more English" (p. 73). "I assure you I am as Bulgarian
as he is" Cp. 73), Carr replies, unable to keep either the
Balkan states or the details of his assumed identity
straight. When Cecily, always the pedant, informs Carr
that Jack/Tzara "is Rumanian" (p. 73), he responds with his
usual unwarranted confidence, "They are the same place"
(p. 73).
Once Cecily and Carr settle in for the second version
of the scene, however, the jokes quickly vanish again, even
though the scene is ostensibly inside the playful Earnest
mode. Not only does Stoppard abruptly abandon the comic
mood called for by the Earnest frame, but he suddenly and
inexplicably transforms Carr from a bumbling fool lacking
even a rudimentary familiarity with the map of Europe into
a consistent and intelligent political analyst. As Carr
coherently and effectively shoots down Cecily's Marxist
arguments with witty, then eloquent versions of Stoppard's
own interview rebuttals to Marxism, we see the evidence
of Stoppard's having sacrificed the plausibility of his
character and the effectiveness of his architectural scheme
to the exigencies of presenting Truth. First, Carr suc
cessfully challenges Cecily's condemnation of socialist
-189-
politician Ramsay MacDonaldshe labels him "an economist
and opportunist" (p. 76)by asking, "But do you mean that
forcing up wages and voting their own chaps into power is
against the interests of the workers?" (p. 76). Then, he
rebuts her assertion that "Imperialism had introduced a
breathing space, but the inexorable working-out of Marx's
theory of capital" (p. 76) with, "No, no, no, no, my dear
girlMarx got it wrong" (p. 76). Finally, in a speech
whose Truth-value is matched only by Joyce's defense of the
artist, he delivers a cogent and unquestionably valid
historical analysis to support his contention that Marx
misread the evidence. Instead of behaving "according to
their class" (p. 77), Carr argues, the workers "showed
superior strength, superior intelligence, superior moral
ity . Legislation, anions, share capital, consumer
powerin all kinds of ways and for all kinds of reasons,
the classes moved closer together instead of further apart"
(p. 77).
Stoppard seems to have sorted out what his "answer
O O
would in the end be" if he were "given enough time to
think"89 every time he is asked why his plays are not
"political," but the Stoppard who does not know is a far
better playwright than the Stoppard who does know. Carr s
speech is too clearly a statement of Truth to need any
buttressing from external sources, but Stoppard's interview
statement accompanying his attack on Marx he got it
-190-
90
wrong" and on Lenin"in the ten years after 1917 fifty
times more people were done to death than in the fifty
91
years before 1917" is so uncharacteristic that it bears
quoting. "My plays are a lot to do with the fact that I
just don't know," he began in the 1974 "Ambushes" interview.
"Few statements remain unrebutted," he continued. "But I'm
not going to rebut the things I have been saying just now.
One thing I feel sure about is that a materialistic view
93
of history is an insult to the human race." In his un
qualified certainty, Stoppard is willing to break his con
trolling frame and send his senile, bumbling narrator on
stage to deliver an out-of-character, eloquent, coherent
version of the playwright's own rebuttal to Marxism. Per
haps the greatest unintended irony of the speech is the
moral Carr draws. "The critical moment never came" (p. 77),
he tells Cecily. "The tide must have turned at about the
time when Das Kapital after eighteen years of hard labour
was finally coming off the press, a moving reminder, Cecily,
of the folly of authorship [italics mine]" (p. 77). If
Marx's folly was presuming to know as he wrote, Stoppard's
critique is more than hollow.
Like Tzara's rebuttal to Joyce's key speech, Cecily's
refutation of Carr's critique of Marxism ultimately supports
what it aims to undermine. "Marx warned us against the
liberals, the philanthropists, the piecemeal reformers
from them but from a head-on collision,
change won't come
-191-
that's how history works!" (p. 77), she heatedly argues,
insisting as before that "Marx had shown the only way for
ward" (p. 68). But her-story, intended to illustrate Lenin's
"superior morality" (p. 77), damns the revolutionary more
surely than any other single attack in the play:
When Lenin was 21 there was famine in Russia.
The intellectuals organised reliefsoup kitchens,
corn seed, all kinds of do-gooding with Tolstoy
in the lead. Lenin didnothing. He understood
that the famine was a force for the revolu
tion [ . .] (p. 77)
What other tale could more effectively horrify and alienate
Western audiences, who so typically pride themselves for
their long tradition of liberal reform and "all kinds of
do-gooding"?
But now Stoppard's anxious question looms even larger:
"How do you get back people's belief if you interrupt
9 4
it?" And even more emphatically than before, the answer
is simply that you do not. The Earnest frame, whose seam
less pasting had previously been such a source of delight,
now often seem forced and contrived without the underpinning
a plausible Carr provided, and one senses the Earnest plot
fairly rushing to its conclusion. Carr wins Cecily's love
just by professing to agree with the contents of the folder
she gave him in the second version of the garden scene the
folder which she believes contains Lenin's manuscript, but
which, of course, actually contains Joyce's. Cecily crosses
over to the Earnest plot and style, and she and Carr embrace,
-192-
all in the space of one page of dialogue. Then, "NADYA
enters and comes down to address the audience, undrama
tically" (p. 79), and the play abruptly returns to its
unfriendly parody of Brecht's theater as Nadya stands on
stage and delivers a boring expository monologue chronicling
Lenin's preparation to return to Russia. Tzara's entrance
shifts the play back to Earnest for a moment, as Tzara/Jack
denies that Carr/Algernon is his brother, but while the
comic plot is more entertaining than Nadya's undramatic
exposition, it is simply spliced in and has no connection
with the Lenin story unfolding onstage.
The gap between the two plots grows wider when, after
more exposition accompanied by a Brechtian "projection
screen" (p. 81), Stoppard specifies that the stage be divided
into two separate playing areas: "The corner of the Stage
now occupied by TZARA and CARR is independent of the LENINS"
(p. 82) Tzara and Carr sit in one corner discussing the
merits of preventing Lenin's escape from Zurich while Nadya
provides the narration to accompany Lenin's statements from
their position at center-stage. And once again, Stoppard
allows Carr to step out of character and tell us what he
could not have possibly known in 1917: "You're an artist"
(p. 83) he observes to Tzara. "And multi-coloured micturi
tion is no trick to these boys, they'll have you pissing
blood" (p. 83) Just moments after that ominous warning,
we hear the "distant sound of [a] train setting off (p. 84) ,
-193-
3-nci though Carr is now a more vestige of a character, the
context supplied by the play obligates us to sympathize
with Carr's belated decision to prevent Lenin's return to
Russia: "No, it is perfectly clear in my mind" (p. 84), he
decides too late. "He must be stopped. The Russians have
got a government of patriotic and moderate men[. . .] All
in all a promising foundation for a liberal democracy on
the Western model" (p. 84).
Though Lenin and Nadya have left Zurich and taken with
them any remote possibility that Carr's memory could now
include them, they reappear on stage to assure us that the
horrors Carr predicted all come true. As though he feared
giving -the audience any room to provide its own context for
interpreting the historical reality of the Russian Revolu
tion, Stoppard makes every conceivable effort to present
Lenin as a tyrannical monster. He first explains that
"There is a much reproduced photograph of Lenin addressing
the crowd in a public square in May 1920" (p. 84). Lenin
looks a bit like a maniac in the image, "his chin jutting,
his hands gripping the edge of the rostrum" (p. 84). In
case readers of the play are unacquainted with the Soviet
practice of airbrushing out revolutionary leaders who later
fell into disfavor, Stoppard notes parenthetically that
"This is the photo, incidentally, which Stalin had retouched
so as to expunge Kamenev and Trotsky who feature prominently
in the original" (p. 84). Stoppard may be unable to
-194-
represent the airbrushing in the theater, but he is adamant
that the maniacal tyranny captured in the photograph be
transferred to the stage. First he directs that "The image
on stage now recalls this photograph" (p. 85), and then in
remarkably emphatic and insistent language, he specifies
that "It is structurally important to the Act that the
following speech is delivered from the strongest possible
position with the most dramatic change of effect from the
general stage appearance preceding it" (p. 85) .
Lenin can no longer be said to be a character in the
play; he becomes "the orator" (p. 85), "the only person on
stage" (p. 85), and the audience becomes the crowd in the
public square. Stoppard explained to Hayman that as Lenin
delivers his harangue against freedom of the press--a sacred
cow for Westerners of virtually all political persuasions
he "keeps convicting himself out of his own mouth. It's
9 5
absurd. It's full of incredible syllogisms." Indeed it
is, as Lenin argues first that the press will be free, then
that the party will control it and will, of course, allow
no advocation of "anti-party views" (p. 85) Lest the
audience doubt the authenticity of the speech, Stoppard
had Nadya appear at its close to inform us that Ilyich
wrote these remarks in 1905 [. (p* 86). More Brechtian
exposition follows which confirms first Tzara's Act One
charge that political revolutionaries like Lenin have hope
lessly bourgeois artistic tastes and then Carr's prophetic
-195-
warning that these boys will "have [artists] pissing blood"
(p. 83). Finally, the Beethoven sonata Tzara described in
Act One "is quietly introduced" (p. 89) to motivate Lenin's
last speech. "Amazing, superhuman music" (p. 89) he ob
serves. "It always makes me feel proud of the miracles that
human beings can perform" (p. 89). But there is no room
for human miracles in Lenin's totalitarian state, no room
for artistic expression: "I can't listen to music often.
It affects my nerves, makes me want to say nice things and
pat the heads of those people who while living in this vile
hell can create such beauty" (p. 89). And as the sonata
continues, reinforcing our faith in the unqualified goodness
of free artistic expression, Lenin, now a paranoid sadist,
exits to the vile hell he has created, amidst these last
self-damning words: "Nowadays we can't pat heads or we'll
get our hands bitten off. We've got to hit heads, hit them
without mercy, though ideally we're against doing violence
to people . ." (p. 89).
With Lenin at last safely removed, the play is free to
pick up the "celebratory freedom" it revelled in before the
Lenins spoiled the fun. "The 'Appassionata' swells in the
dark to cover the setting change to 'The Room'" (p. 89) and
to give the audience time to be emotionally moved and grate
ful that Lenin's iron fist cannot quash artistic freedom
in the West. The sonata then "degenerates absurdly into
'Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean'" (p. 89) and the play shifts
-196-
abruptly to a rhymed musical version of Earnest's tea
scene, in which Cecily and Gwendolen discover that they are
apparently engaged to the same man. Carr and Tzara enter
with their accidentally swapped folders, and their twin
admissions that they found the contents "Rubbish!" (p. 94)
and "Bilge!" (p. 94) quickly set the scene for the discovery
of the mistake and the comic happy ending.
But the rush toward the conclusion slows down as
"BENNETT enters with champagne for two" (p. 95) and Stoppard
returns for a brief period at the end of the play to the
kind of writing he does best. The jokes, in part because
they have no butt, are once again funny, and the language
is as dense and allusive as it was in Act One. Roughly
patterned after the muffin-eating episode immediately pre
ceding the comic resolution of Earnest, the scene opens as
Tzara repeats Cecily's observation that Bennett "has radical
sympathies" (p. 95). Carr's reply draws both substance
and style from Wilde, whose Algernon had once elegantly
complained about servants consuming household champagne.
"There is no one so radical as a manservant whose freedom
of the champagne bin has been interfered with" (p. 95),
Carr notes. But Tzara is not to worry because, Carr con
tinues, "I've put a stop to it" (p. 95). "Given him
notice?" (p. 95) Tzara asks. No, Carr replies, "Given him
more champagne" (p. 95). Tzara's response indicates that
he, like Bennett, has been fully coopted back into society:
-197-
"We Rumanians have much to learn from the English" (p. 95) ,
he comments approvingly. Then, seamlessly, Stoppard returns
to Carr's hopeless geography as the consular official ob
serves sympathetically to his Rumanian friend, "I expect
you'll be missing Sofia" (p. 95). Confused, Tzara corrects
him: "You mean Gwendolen" (p. 95). Carr "frowns; clears"
(p. 95) and sets things straight with "Bucharest" (p. 95),
finally naming the capital of Rumania. Carr's bumbling
continues as he replies to Tzara's "Oh, yes. Yes. Paris
of the Balkans ..." (p. 95) with "Silly place to put it,
really . ." (p. 95). And then, when Carr sips his cham
pagne, the jokes slide easily back to the cooptation of
Bennett as Carr sputters, "Is this the Perrier-Jouet, Brut
'89????'! I l" (p. 95), naming, of course, the brand Algernon
consumed under the guise of Earnest in Wilde's play. The
Perrier Jouet is, as Carr quickly realizes, "All gone . ."
(p. 95), the price paid to forestall the revolution and keep
social relations just as they are. Bennett's services are
clearly worth a few bottles of champagne, for he proves his
value again as he drops back into the familiar refrain of
Act One, "I have put the newspapers and telegrams on the
sideboard, sir" (p. 95) and proceeds to elegantly summarize
the news for his eminently uninformed master. Recycling
the "A, not-A" rhetorical strategy of his first news report,
Bennett recounts that "The Neue Zricher Zeitung and the
Zricher Post announce respectively the cultural high and
-198-
low point of the theatrical season[. . .] The Zeitung
singles you out for a personal triumph in a demanding role"
(p. 95). The rhetorical similarity between this cultural
report and Bennett's Act One war report also subtly recalls
Joyce's claim that in neutral Zurich "culture is the con
tinuation of the war by other means" (p. 51).
The connection, though, is probably too subtle for Carr,
but something in his free-associating mind triggers a link,
and he mutters "Irish lout" (p. 95) as Bennett exits, only
to return immediately to announce the arrival of "Mr. Joyce"
(p. 96). The play now hurries to its prearranged conclu
sion as Joyce scans the contents of Tzara's folder and
discovers that it does not contain his manuscript describing
"events taking place in a lying-in hospital" (p. 97). Just
as Lady Bracknell once boomed, "Prism! Where is that
9 6
baby?" Joyce now booms, "Miss Carr, where is that
missing chapter???" (p. 97). The folders are swapped,
followed by "a rapid and formal climax" (p. 97) and the
dance of comedy, which pairs Tzara and Gwendolen, Carr and
Cecily, but leaves Joyce and Bennett to dance independently,
awkward substitutes for Prism and Chasuble.
The dancers exit, but Old Carr and Old Cecily hobble
back on for a few closing words. Still a pedant after all
these years, Old Cecily tries to convince Old Carr that he
"never even saw Lenin" (p. 98) and was "never the Consul
(p. 98) and that his dates are all wrong--in short, that
-199-
the play we just watched has no historical validity. In an
obvious attempt to "get back people's belief"97 in "the
framework of Carr's memory," Stoppard gives Carr the last
words which deliberately recall the narrator's senile rambling
at the beginning of the play. "Great days . Zurich
during the war. Refugees, spies, exiles, painters, poets,
writers, radicals of all kinds. I knew them all" (p. 98),
he insists in defiance of Cecily's attempts to correct his
delusions. "I learned three things in Zurich during the
war. I wrote them down" (p. 98), he continues, still trying
to commit his memoirs to paper. "Firstly, you're either a
revolutionary or you're not, and if you're not you might
as well be an artist as anything else. Secondly, if you
can't be an artist, you might as well be a revolutionary . .
I forget the third thing" (pp. 98-99), Carr concludes as the
lights fade on Travesties.
With that, Carr leaves the play as he started it, a
confused old fool whose final senile rambling betrays no
hint of the mental astuteness he revealed when he first
courted Cecily in the library with coherent rebuttals to
her beloved Marxist ideology. We, too, leave this play
confused, wondering whether to believe in the Carr of the
opening and close of the play or in the Carr who so insight
fully revealed the errors of the Marxist way. If Carr s
credibility as a character has suffered from these implausible
flip-flops, Stoppard's credibility as a playwright has also
-200-
suffered, perhaps most obviously from Carr's unconvincing
swings, but from other radical shifts as well. We are given
a controlling frame which we invest with our belief, much
as we invest our belief in the Player's death by Guilden-
stern's hand in Rosencrantz. In both cases, the illusion is
broken, but the breaking of the illusions works toward
opposite ends in the two plays. When the Player gets up
after his convincing "death," we realize again that neither
playwrights nor the theater can bring us the Truth of death.
But when Carr stands up and effectively refutes Marxism
after his character has been defined by confusion and
ignorance, the aim is to turn the theater back into a forum
for bringing us Truth.
Of course, the most significant difference between the
two instances is simply that the Player's resurrection
worksand works brilliantlywithin the context of the play
while Carr's sudden coherence and insight remain irrecon
cilable and threaten to destroy the whole frame which makes
Act One possible. Carr's blatant inconsistency, the play's
most obvious flaw, is rooted in the dual nature of
Travesties itself. It began as a playful romp in Rosenerantz-
style uncertainty, for which Carr's senility and confusion
are ideally suited. But once the play turns from question
ing Truth to presenting Truth, Carr's memory no longer fits,
for its inaccuracy works at cross-purposes with the thrust
of Act Two, which seeks to present with certainty the
-201-
historical Truth about Russia in the 1920s in orden to
dispel any sympathy we might have felt toward Lenin and
his revolution.
The failed attempt at the end to reinstate Carr's memory
as the controlling frame should remove any lingering sus
picions that the dual nature of the play is somehow part of
a grand but subtle scheme whose point we are missing. If
anything, Stoppard's efforts to plaster over the crack which
has developed only call more attention to the gaping hole in
his architectural construct. Rather than trying to wish it
away, we can proceed more productively by accepting that
the flaw is there and then asking how and why it came to
be. Stoppard joins many of his critics in designating
Cecily's lecture as the beginning of the problem: "It was
99
a miscalculation," he admits, and then goes on to explain
the weakness as essentially a stylistic error. "What I was
trying to do was write a play which was an anthology of
different sorts of play and that was one sort. I mean dif
ferent kinds of style, different kinds of idiom.
This explanation is misleading on both counts, how
ever. In the first place, Travesties' problems begin with
Joyce's unrefuted speech in Act One, well before Cecily's
lecture, for once the play makes its decisive turn toward
Truth, the stylistic games lose their reason for being and
Carr becomes excess baggage. And we must steadfastly resist
any suggestion that the Brechtian style of the lecture and
-202-
the Lenin episodes is itself at fault. We know from ex
perience that the epic theater is by no means intrinsically
boring, and we need only look back to Bennett's Brechtian
reports on the Russian Revolution to realize that Stoppard
was perfectly capable of incorporating Brecht's idiom into
a playful and entertaining scene. It is not that Stoppard
confronted a style he could not play with; rather, he con
fronted subjects he could not play with.
Prodded by repeated interview questions-cum-accusations
about the apolitical nature of his plays, Stoppard finally
wrote a play that might qualify as "political" in the
limited sense that interviewers and even academic critics
so often use the term. But, ironically, the overtly poli
tical content of Travesties contributes directly to the
play's reinstatement of essential elements of the conserva
tive, Truth-centered model of authorship. Faced with the
competing visions of Joyce, whom he obviously admires, and
Lenin, whom he even more obviously detests, Stoppard ulti
mately proved unable to write from a position of not knowing,
proved incapable of creating the effect of playing in
uncertainty. Once he abandoned the distanced perspective
that had served him so well in Rosencrantz, to write instead
from an immediate, unfiltered perspective, Stoppard could
no longer sustain the play of questions which lay at the
heart of Rosencrantz's challenge to the Truth of authorship.
When Travesties shifts from exploring the limits of competing
-203-
visions of Truth to endorsing the Truth of the Joycean
vision, it becomes, in effect, yet another master narrative.
And when Travesties becomes a master narrative, not only does
it lose its power as a critique of mastery and Truth, but
it also begins to crack at the seams. Thus, in both aesthetic
and political terms, Travesties falls short of Stoppard's
earlier achievement in Rosencrantz, which, in spite of the
misguided attacks it has suffered at the hands of critics,
remains the more profoundly political and aesthetically
satisfying play.
Notes
Tom Stoppard, "First Interview with Tom Stoppard," in
Ronald Hayman, Tom Stoppard, Contemporary Playwrights Series,
3rd ed. (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1979),
p. 2.
2
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
(New York: Grove Press, 1967), p. 21.
3
Tom Stoppard, Travesties (New York: Grove Press,
1975) p. 62. All further quotations refer to this edition
and will be cited parenthetically within the text. Unless
otherwise indicated by brackets, all ellipses are Stoppard's.
^Tom Stoppard, "Ambushes for the Audience: Towards
a High Comedy of Ideas," Theatre Quarterly 4 (May-July
1974): 12-15. When Cecily explains to Carr that "Imperial
ism has introduced a breathing space, but the inexorable
working-out of Marx's theory of capital ..." (p. 76),
Carr replies, "No, no, no, no, my dear girl Marx got it
wrong. He got it wrong for good reasons but he got it wrong
just the same. And twice over. In the first place he was
the victim of an historical accident" (p. 76). Compare
Carr's argument to Stoppard's interview statement: Marx s
"theory of capital, his theory of value, and his theory of
revolution, have all been refuted by modern economics and
by history. In short he got it wrong" (p. 13). Similarly,
-204-
when Cecily announces that "the gap between rich and poor
gets wider" (p. 76), Carr argues, "But it doesn't" (p. 76).
In the same interview, Stoppard complains that playwright
David Hare includes in the published text of The Exhibition
"an epigraph in the form of a statistical table showing that
down the ages the top ten per cent of the population owned
eighty per cent of the property: (pp. 14-15). It bothered
Stoppard that Hare "only took the table down to I960 and
it so happens . that it goes on to show that by 1970 a
huge change had taken placea much less unequal distribu
tion" (p. 15). This interview, published as Travesties
opened in London, leaves little room for speculation about
where Stoppard stands on Marxism-Leninism.
Bertolt Brecht, "Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for
Instruction," in
Brecht on
Theatre,
(New York: Hill
and Wang,
1979) p
^Brecht, p.
71.
7
Brecht, p.
71.
^Brecht, p.
71.
9
Brecht, p.
71.
10
Craig Werner, "Stoppard's Critical Travesty, or, Who
Vindicates Whom and Why," Arizona Quarterly 35 (1979): 228.
^Werner, p.
228.
12Werner, p.
230.
^Werner, p.
230.
14
Werner, p.
235.
15Werner, p.
235.
16Thnmas Whitaker. Tom Stoppard (New York:
, p. 120.
1^Whitaker,
p. 120.
1 O
Whitaker,
p. 120.
"^Whitaker,
p. 121.
20
uWhitaker,
p. 108.
21John Simon, "Theater Chronicler," Hudson
(Spring 1976) : 79.
-205-
22
Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author," in Image-
Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wanq,
1977), p. 146.
23 .
Michael Hinden, "Jumpers: Stoppard and the Theater
of Exhaustion," Twentieth Century Literature 27 (SDrina
1981): 4.
24 .
Hinden, p. 4.
3^Hinden, p. 4.
^Hinden, p. 4.
27
Ian Donaldson, "'The Ledger of the Lost-and-Stolen
Office': Parody and Dramatic Comedy," Southern Review
(Adelaide) 13 i (1980): 47. ~
28
John William Cooke, "The Optical Allusion: Percep
tion and Form in Stoppard's Travesties," Modern Drama 24
(December 1981): 526.
29
Margaret Gold, "Who Are the Dadas of Travesties?"
Modern Drama 21 (March 1978): 59.
30Gold, p. 64.
33Gold, p. 64.
33Cooke, p. 528.
33Cooke, p. 528.
34Jim Hunter, Tom Stoppard's Plays (London: Faber and
Faber, 1982), p. 240, provides a full "translation" of
Tzara's opening poem:
Eel ate enormous appletzara
II est un homme, s'appelle Tzara
He is a man called Tzara
key dairy chefs hat he'lllearn oomparah
Qui des richesses a-t-il nonpareil
Who has unparalleled talent
III raced alas whispers kill later nut east.
II reste a la Suisse parce qu'il est un artist
He stays in Switzerland because he is an artist
noon avuncluar ill day Clara! ^
'Nous n'avons que l'art,' il declara.
'We have only art,' he declared.
-206-
3^Barthes, p. 148.
38Barthes, p. 148.
37
William Wordsworth, "Preface to Lyrical Ballads," in
Critical Theory Since Plato, ed. Hazard Adams (Atlanta:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971) p. 441.
38Gold, pp. 60-61.
39
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, in The
Norton Introduction to Literature, shorter 3rd ed., eds.
Carl E. Bain, Jerome Beaty, and J. Paul Hunter (New York:
W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1982), p. 708.
40
Cited in Whitaker, p. 113.
44Gold, p. 61.
42Hunter, p. 239.
43Stoppard, "First Interview," in Hayman, p. 10.
44Cooke, p. 535.
43Cooke, p. 535.
4 p.
DCooke, p. 535.
4^Cooke, p. 535.
48Cooke, p. 535.
^^Gold, p. 61.
50Whitaker, p. 123.
^Whitaker, p. 123.
52Wilde, p. 671.
53See Hamlet, 2.2.394-395, "the play, I remember,^
pleased not the million; 'twas caviary to the general.
54Whitaker, p. 120, argues that^Tzara's "moral and
political outrage wins our sympathy.
55Whitaker, p. 120.
^Werner, p. 235.
-207-
57
Werner, p. 228.
"^Hinden, p. 4.
~^Cooke, p. 528.
60Wilde, p. 675.
61
See Tom Stoppard, Artist Descending a Staircase, in
Albert's Bridge and Other Plays (New York: Grove Press,
1969), p. 105.
^^Stoppard,
"First Interview," in Hayman, p. 2.
^Whitaker,
p. 116.
^^Whitaker,
p. 116.
^~Vilde, p.
708.
^Wilde, p.
708.
^Whitaker,
p. 121.
6 8
In "The Literature of Replenishment: Postmodern
Fiction," the Atlantic, January 1980, p. 69, John Barth
observes, "But with Finnegans Wake or Ezra Pound's Canots
we need a guide because of the inherent and immediate dif'
ficulty of the text. We are told that Bertolt Brecht, out
of socialist conviction, kept on his writing desk a toy-
donkey bearing the sign Even- I must understand it; the high
modernists might aptly put on their desks a professor of
literature doll bearing, unless its speciality happened to
be the literature of high modernism, the sign Not even I
can understand it."
6 9
Stoppard,
"Ambushes," p. 14.
^Stoppard,
"Ambushes," p. 13.
71Whitaker,
p. 121.
72
Werner, p.
231.
73
Werner, p.
231.
74
Hinden, p.
4.
7 5
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in Hayman,
p. 9.
7 6
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in Hayman,
p. 9.
-208-
"^Whitaker,
p. 122.
7 8
Whitaker,
p. 124.
^^Whitaker,
p. 126.
^Whitaker,
p. 127.
^Whitaker,
p. 122.
^^Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
O O
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
84c, ,
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
8 5
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
8 7
See Stoppard, "Ambushes," pp.
12-13, and note
^Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
2.
89
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
2.
90
Stoppard,
"Ambushes," p. 13.
91
Stoppard,
"Ambushes," p. 12.
92
Stoppard,
"Ambushes," p. 13.
93
Stoppard,
"Ambushes," p. 13.
94
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
95
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
^Wilde, p.
715.
9 7
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
9 8
Stoppard,
"First Interview,"
in
Hayman,
P-
10
^Stoppard, "Second Interview with Tom Stoppard," in
Hayman, p. 143.
^^Stoppard, "Second Interview," in Hayman, p. 143.
CONCLUSION OR THE IMPORTANCE OF
BEING PLAYFUL
"I suppose that's the fate of all us art
ists [. . .] People saying they preferred
the early stuff."
Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing1
Because Stoppard is still writing plays and the direc
tion of his future work remains uncertain, it is far too
early to tell whether these words, spoken by Henry, the
playwright in Stoppard's most recent play, The Real Thing,
will ultimately prove true. The critical assessment of
Stoppard's work remains in the formative stage and continues
to be characterized by a deep split which divides his
critics into two opposed camps. If this split persists
after nearly two decades of criticism, perhaps it is be
cause Stoppard's canon is itself split: on one hand, we
find the early, derivative, playful plays which steer clear
of overt political content, and on the other, we have the
later, "realistic," socially committed plays. Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead remains, of course, the most out
standing example of "the early stuff," but a number of
shorter works such as The Real Inspector Hound and Artist
Descending a Staircase also retain the playfulness and
uncertainty which graced Rosencrantz. The Real Inspector
-209-
-210-
Hound in particular is reminiscent of Rosencrantz, for not
only is it free of any hint of overt political content, but
it is also openly derivative inasmuch as it is a broad
parody of Agatha Christie murder mysteries. And as in
Rosencrantz, the theatrical illusion is decisively dis
rupted as two drama critics, members of the on stage
audience, first critique the play and then get caught up
in its action. These early plays, scorned by members of
one camp as socially irrelevant, frivolous, and parasitical,
are warmly embraced by members of the other camp, who see
no reason to apologize for the plays' characteristic un
certainty and playfulness, or for the derivativeness that
makes so much of the playfulness possible. While critics
who favor the early plays never labelled them "parasitic,"
they have only recently begun to treat Stoppard's borrowing
as an essential element of a larger strategy. Michael
Hinden's reading of Rosencrantz (and other early plays)
as a tribute to "theatrical exhaustion" stands out as one
of the most coherent and intelligent attempts to incorporate
Stoppard's derivativeness into a more comprehensive reading
of the play.2 John Perlette also offers an invaluable
analysis of Rosencrantz as "Theatre at the Limit, for
his insistence on the intimate connection between the play s
form and its content pushes for just the sort of integrated
reading the play demands. But neither these two excellent
analyses nor the relatively few articles which proceed in
-211-
a similar direction have completed the work of revising
the critical assessment of Rosencrantz, for more than any
other Stoppard play, it has been the target of misguided
charges of "parasitism" and political irrelevance.
Unfortunately, just when Hinden, Perlette, and other
critics began to push for a revision of the "parasite" con
sensus on the early plays, Stoppard ceased his overt borrow
ing and started to write "original," socially committed
plays in the "realistic" mode. When the derivativeness
vanished, much of the playfulness and uncertainty dis
appeared as well, leaving straightforward dialogue which
often overtly addresses current social and political issues.
Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, for example, in spite of its
innovative incorporation of a full orchestra into the play's
main action, remains an essentially "realistic" play which
openly condemns the repression of free speech. It is set
in a Soviet mental hospital for political dissidents, and
its content leaves little room for speculating about where
Stoppard stands on Soviet repression. Night and Day, set
in an African country caught in the throes of revolution,
is likewise a "realistic" play which directly examines a
pressing issue: the proper role of the press in covering
such upheavals. Similarly, his television play Professional
Foul takes two British professors of philosophy to Czecho
slovakia (Stoppard's birthplace) where they are forced to
turn from the abstract theorizing of an academic conference
-212-
to fa.ce a real life" moral quandaryshould they risk
smuggling out the politically controversial doctoral disser
tation of one of the professor's former students, a Czech
citizen suffering persecution at the hands of the secret
police? For those critics who were uncomfortable with the
apparent irrelevance, lack of "seriousness," and "unorigin
ality" of Rosencrantz and other early plays, these later
works represent a welcome change to social commitment.
Carol Billman, for example, indicates her support of
Stoppard's turn toward relevance and commitment by observ
ing that Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, Night and Day, and
Professional Foul "truly represent social engagements on
Stoppard's part: these plays face squarely such issues as
4
governmental restriction of individual freedom."
While it might seem that Stoppard has made a firm
decision to abandon playfulness and derivativeness to write
"realistic" plays advocating social change, his most recent
play casts some doubt on such a conclusion, for The Real
Thing attempts a Rosencrantz-style exploration of the limits
of theatrical representation. Instead of death, love is
substituted as the thing which cannot be represented, whether
the mode of representation be Strindberg's naturalistic
theater or Ford's theater of "love in wigs and rhymed
couplets,"5 as the Player once described that style. Un-
forunately, the "realistic" frame Stoppard provides robs
the stylistic play of its potentially dislocating impact, for
after the opening scene, the characters are firmly grounded
-213-
in a stable context which allows the audience to account for
the intruding scripts in "realistic" terms. Furthermore, like
the transitional Travesties, which is caught halfway between
the early and late plays, The Real Thing also directly ad
dresses the relationship between art and politics and comes
down conclusively and emphatically on the side of the pure
artist whose only concern is excellence in craft. So, on
one hand, the play attempts a Rosencrantz-style exploration
of the theater's inability to bring us the Truth, and on the
other hand, it brings us the undisguised Truth about the
incompatibility of art and politics, reiterating the message
of the second half of Travesties. Of course, there is a
certain irony in Stoppard's using the traditional Truth-
centered, message-oriented mode which typifies his later
plays to deride Truth-centered, message oriented plays
just the sort of play that Brodie (The Real Thing's equiva
lent to Travesties' arch-villain, Lenin) attempts to write
i
from his jail cell.
Perhaps because The Real Thing tries to embody both
the early playful style and the later certain style, the
critical reaction to the play has been decidedly mixed, even
polarized. Depending on the critic, the style is reassur
ingly Stoppardian,"8 full of "witty puns, elegant jokes,
[and] comic misunderstanding,"7 or alternatively, "clear-
cut,"8 even "rather dull"9 because of its relentless pursuit
of its themes. It is, however, somewhat misleading to
speak of the critical reaction to the play, for if Stoppard
-214-
criticism as a whole is still in the formative stage,
criticism of The Real Thing remains in the embryonic phase.
Only two substantive articles have yet appeared, but the
widely diverging assessments they offer indicate that
Stoppard's latest play will leave his critics as deeply
divided as ever.
Centering his reading around the love relationships
which form one of the play's two main plots, Hersh Zeifman
sees The Real Thing as "Comedy of Ambush," very much in the
tradition of the early plays. In addition to the "reassur
ingly Stoppardian"^ style, he cites the "cunningly patterned
and allusive"11 first scene as "another Stoppardian signa-
12
ture." Zeifman briefly acknowledges that the play is
autobiographical: "Henry is a playwrighta playwright
with a reputation for being witty, clever, 'intellectual,'
much like Stoppard."13 But he does not give any indication
that he finds this remarkable, as it certainly is for a
playwright like Stoppard who had previously avoided auto
biographical revelations in favor of the distancing that
masks and layers of borrowed art provide. Furthermore,
Zeifman apparently overlooks the possibility that Henry's
autobiographical origins might work to lend his views a
special authority, for he reads the play as part of
Stoppard's early, playful tradition rather than as an
example of the later, message-oriented style. He asks,
"But is [Henry and Annie's] love 'the real thing'? What
is 'the real thing' when it comes to love?"14 Then, clearly
-215-
placing this latest play in the context of the uncertain,
early style, he asserts, "The rest of the play attempts to
answer these questionsor rather, as is typical of
Stoppard's plays, it bounces the questions around in a kind
of endless debate, with no single 'answer' shown to be
indisputably right. n1^
Not only does Zeifman see the content as open-ended,
but he also finds the form to be reminiscent of the dis
locating experience of early plays like Rosencrantz: "The
very structure of his newest playnot simply its thematic
content--dramatizes the difficulty inherent in determining
16
precisely what 'the real thing' is." "Once again," he
continues, "the form of a Stoppard play mirrors its theme."'*'
18
He describes "the Pirandellian opening" of the play, which
depicts Max discovering Charlotte's adultery, apparently
'the real thing,' but in fact a scene from Henry's latest
play, and observes, "Stoppard is deliberately shaking his
audience up." He continues by describing the series of
such "ambushes" which recur as the love relationships
develop and notes, "Stoppard uses this kind of structural
20
dislocation repeatedly in The Real Thing." Then, m
language which could easily be transferred to an analysis
of Rosencrantz with only a minor substitution of death
for "love," he asks, "Dramatists write constantly about
love, but can its 'real' essence ever accurately be cap
tured on-stage?"21 Thus, Zeifman undoubtedly sees The Real
Thing in the flattering light created by the early,
-216-
dislocating, playful works, and therefore declares Stop
pard's most recent play a success.
Richard Corballis, however, offers an almost dia
metrically opposed reading. Unlike Zeifman, he emphasizes
both the play's autobiographical origins and its second main
plot centered on the relationship between art and politics.
He notes the "remarkable similarities"22 between Henry and
Stoppard which "continue to emerge"23 throughout the play,
some trivial, like their shared love of cricket, but others
of unquestionable significance. Henry and Stoppard have
the same "attitudes to their work, for example,"2^ and when
"Henry argues vehemently that craftsmanship matters more
than content in the making of plays," he "echoes Stoppard
25
himself." After cataloguing other biographical links
between Stoppard and his character"both undergo divorce
before finding security in a second marriage (and the play
is dedicated to Miriam, Stoppard's second wife); neither has
26
much taste in music" Corballis explores one of the most
intriguing correlations between Stoppard and his character.
"Henry is goaded into a semblance of political commitment
when Annie persuades him to rewrite Brodie's play for
television,1,27 he observes. And while Corballis acknow
ledges "the political activism which has characterized
Stoppard's life and work since 1977," he questions the
parallel on the grounds that Stoppard's turn toward activism
"has been more whole-hearted than Henry's," as well as
"more durable."20 He draws a further distinction between
-217-
the real playwright and the character-playwright by noting
that 'the objects of Stoppard's political attentionsHavel,
Kohout, Bukovsky and the resthave always been more worthy
and substantial figures than Brodie, the straw man with
whom Henry is persuaded to involve himself."31 Corballis
concludes his extended discussion of the play's autobio
graphical roots by arguing that "this discrepancy between
Henry and Stoppard is enough to prove that The Real Thing
3 2
is not simply an autobiographical ramble," but he con
cedes that "a certain autobiographical input is undeniable
and it casts an interesting and unwonted shadow over the
33
play's conclusion."
Just as Corballis differs from Zeifman by giving more
attention to the "political art" strand of the play and to
its autobiographical roots, so he differs in reading The .
Real Thing as closer to the Truth-centered, message-oriented
style of Stoppard's later work than to the playful uncer
tainty of the early plays. He argues that "It analyzes two
important problems and comes to clear-cut decisions about
both of them."34 The first of the two problems he desig
nates, Annie's involvement in the "Justice for Brodie Com
mittee," is, as he argues, unambiguously resolved, for the
final scene discredits Brodie, and Annie's commitment to
this unredeemable thug, more thoroughly than even
Travesties' second half discredits Lenin. Corballis
i.35
sees a second problem in "Henry's theories about love,
36 and he argues that Henry
his "emotional sterility,
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ultimately abandons his rigid, "clockwork" conception of
love to adopt a more flexible approach which is less static
idealistic, much as Annie abandons her idealized notion
of "Justice for Brodie." In both cases, "the play as a whole
comes down on the side of 'mystery' and repudiates 'clock-
37
work'" as it drifts "away from closed systems towards the
3 8
flux of reality." In Corballis's view, then, Stoppard
"has an important decision to make about his future work:
whether to pursue wit at the expense of morality ... or
3 9
to pursue the morality and minimize the wit." While he
expresses the hope that Stoppard "can rediscover the old
formula for leavening the moral 'mystery' with some engaging
4 0
'clockwork,'" he fears that Stoppard has sacrificed word
play and wit in The Real Thing to pursue moral themes
relentlessly: "Although some of the craftmanship is as
pleasing as ever, all this is as tinsel on the surface of
a play that plods its way, especially in Act Two, through
a succession of scenes which are both unduly static and
unduly similar in construction."^ Thus, he suspects that
Stoppard has taken to heart "the old accusation that his
4 2 .
plays 'don't really make clear statements,'" and in the
search for clarity of theme, "has produced a rather dull
i 43
play."
The two assessments differ so radically that one
wonders at first if Zeifman and Corballis are writing about
the same work. For Zeifman, The Real Thing is a playful
-219-
exploration of the theater's inability to represent love,
a series of comic "ambushes." For Corballis, it is a static,
autobiographical and dull play which minimizes comic games
to pursue morality. If Zeifman and Corballis read the play
as an example of two different types of theater, perhaps
it is because the play is itself divided. The love plot
does indeed seem close to Rosencrantz, for Stoppard revives
the strategy of employing different modes of representa
tion, different styles of theater, in an attempt to expose
the limits of what the stage can adequately represent. On
the other hand, the plot centered on the relationship between
art and politics bears a remarkable resemblance to Travesties1
second half, both in structure and in substance, and in
stead of questioning the theater's ability to bring us
Truth'and "reality," it delivers with certainty the message
that politics and art do not mix. But unlike Travesties,
which shifts from the playful mode to the message-oriented
mode at the halfway mark, The Real Thing blends the two
modes from the very beginning, for the love between Henry
and Annie depends upon a successful resolution of her mis
guided attachment to Brodie.
The play opens, as Zeifman observes, with a Pirandel
lian scene between Charlotte and Max which thoroughly
dislocates the audience. We expect exposition introducing
the characters and situation, but just when we have deter
mined that The Real Thing will focus on the impact of
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Charlotte's adultery, the scene shifts to a living-room
where a new and as yet unidentified man is sorting through
a pile of record albums. When Charlotte "enters barefoot,
wearing HENRY1s dressing gown" (p. 15), the audience im
mediately assumes that the man sifting through records is
the lover with whom she betrayed Max. But their dialogue
quickly establishes that Charlotte's new lover is in fact
her old husband, a playwright who is busily selecting the
eight records he "associate[s] with turning points" (p. 17)
in his life for a radio program which will feature his life,
work, and tastes in music and literature. He is having some
difficulty, though, because he is, as Charlotte later ex
plains, "a snob without being an inverted snob" (p. 24).
That is, while Henry likes pop music, he is afraid to admit
it because, as he explains, "I'm supposed to be one of your
intellectual playwrights. I'm going to look like a prick,
aren't I, announcing that while I was telling Jean-Paul
Sartre and the post-war French existentialists where they
had got it wrong, I was spending the whole time listening
to the Crystals singing "Da Doo Ron Ron'" (p. 17). In the
midst of discovering that the tune for which he has been
searching is the "Skater's Waltz,"he rejects that song
as "so banal" (p. 18)Max enters, explaining, "Henry
phoned . ." (p- 19)*
The ensuing dialogue establishes the stable frame for
the remaining trysts, for though Stoppard will
interpreting
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work in segments of Strindberg's Miss Julie and Ford's
'Tis Pity She's a Whore, our expectations will never again
be so thoroughly dislocated, for the realistic frame he
provides for the characters hereafter remains consistent.
Not only is Henry a playwright, but Max and Charlotte are
both actors, and the opening scene, we learn, is taken from
Henry's latest play, House of Cards, in which Max and
Charlotte starCharlotte most reluctantly. As Henry's
wife she objects to the conclusion that the audience will
inevitably reach: "All those people out front thinking,
that's why she got the job" (p. 20). Then, introducing the
theme of the real versus the illusory which will run
throughout the play, she further objects to the audience's
"thinking that I'm her . coming in with my little suit
case and duty-free bag'It's me!ooh, it's her! so that's
what they're like at home" (p. 20). She protests that
Henry's play does not at all accurately represent their
domestic situation: "You don't really think that if Henry
caught me out with a lover, he'd sit around being witty
about placemats. Like hell he would. He'd come apart
like pick-a-sticks" (p. 22). That, she insists, is the
difference between plays and real life thinking time
(p. 22).
Max tries to defuse Charlotte's attack on Henry by
changing the subject to Annie, his wife: "Annie said she'd
come round if her committee finished early. She's on this
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Justice for Brodie Committee ..." (p. 22). Thus, before
the second scene is even half completed, Stoppard has intro
duced the second plot lineAnnie's work on the Justice
for Brodie Committee. Annie enters on cue with "a carrier
bag loaded with greengrocery" (p. 23), and while Charlotte
and Max are in the kitchen preparing vegetables and dip, we
discover that Henry and Annie are having an affair, that
Annie believes they should tell Charlotte and Max and end
the charade. When Henry protests, Annie introduces the
play's title by complaining, "You want to give it time
[. .] time to go wrong, change, spoil. Then you'll know
it wasn't the real thing" (p. 27). Before they can resolve
this difference in opinion, Max bursts into the living-room,
"bleeding from a cut finger" (p. 28). Henry offers him
his handkerchief, setting up the object which Max will dis
cover in Annie's car, leading him to conclude correctly,
as Othello had concluded mistakenly, that his wife has
betrayed him.
After Charlotte and Max reenter with the vegetables
and dip, Charlotte rudely questions Annie about her child
lessness and Henry retaliates against her bad behavior by
bringing up the one topic she has begged him not to men
tion: "I say, Annie, what's this Brodie Committee all
about. Charlotte was asking" (p. 31). Henry's plan back
fires, though, for as Annie reluctantly retells the story
of how she met Brodie on a train while travelling to an
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anti-missiles demonstration and persuaded him to join the
march during which he ignited the wreath to the Unknown
Soldier Henry's objections to such activism become the
target of an increasingly bitter attack. Max intones, "The
guts of it, the sheer moral courage. An ordinary soldier
using his weekend pass to demonstrate against their bloody
missiles" (p. 32). But Henry, perhaps more aware than Max
of the British role in developing the atomic bomb and of
NATO commitments, protests with the question, "Their? I
thought they were ours" (p. 32). When Max clarifies his
point, "No, they're American" (p. 32), Henry sarcastically
agrees, "Oh, yestheir . ." (p. 32). Henry likewise
questions Max's defense of Brodie, "He's a child" (p. 32),
by asking, "He kicked two policemen inside out, didn't he?"
(p. 33) Then Charlotte reveals that "when Henry comes
across phrases like 'the caring society' he scrunches up
the Guardian and draws his knees up into his chest" (p. 33)
Henry defends himself by asserting that "Public postures
have the configuration of private derangement" (p. 33) and
suggests that members of the Justice for Brodie Committee
are motivated not by altruism, but by "the desire to be
taken for properly motivated members of the caring society
(p. 33). Then, when Henry labels Brodie "an out-and-out
thug, an arsonist, vandalizer of a national shrine (p. 34)
Max protests that Brodie "got hammered by an emotional
backlash" (p. 34). Henry's rebuttal, "No, no, you can't
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[ ] I mean 'hammer' and 'backlash'" (p. 34) turns the
already heated discussion into a stormy verbal battle. Max
"puts down his glass definitively and stands up" (p. 34),
delivering his parting shots at Henry: "You may have all
the answers, but having all the answers is not what life's
about [. .] Brodie may not be an intellectual, like you,
but he did march for a cause" (p. 34). Annie, who cares
about people like Brodie, is, Max insists, "worth ten of
you" (p. 35).
This effective rebuttal of Henry's apparent political
apathy is, however, immediately undermined as Henry and
Annie take advantage of Charlotte's escorting Max to the
door to arrange a tryst for the afternoon. When Annie sug
gests meeting Henry at three, Henry asks, "What about Brodie?"
(p. 35). Annie's reply"Let him rot" (p. 35)foreshadows
the final scene's resolution of the Brodie problem, for
already her words suggest that Annie is not nearly as al
truistic and public-minded as Max would like to think. When
public altruism conflicts with private desires, Annie chooses
private desires.
Scene Three opens in a living-room whose "disposition
of furniture makes the scene immediately reminiscent of the
beginning of Scene I" (p. 35). In place of Charlotte s
breezy entry, it is Annie who now enters to greet Max. She
wants very much to listen to the radio program about Henry,
but Max wants to talk. In the first scene, Max asked
-225-
Charlotte, "How's Ba'l" (p. 10), referring to Basel in
Switzerland, the country Charlotte had purportedly visited
on her business trip. Now, Max asks Annie, "How's Julie?"
(p. 36), referring to Strindberg's Miss Julie, the play Annie
has purportedly been rehearsing. When Annie asks for
clarification as Charlotte had when Max brought up the
topic of her Swiss sale, Max replies, "Julie. Miss Julie.
Strindberg's Miss Julie. Miss Julie by August Strindberg,
how is she?" (p. 36). His words, of course, draw their
rhythms from the parallel speech Henry had written for him
in Scene One: "Good sale. Was the sale good? The sale in
Geneva, how was it?" (p. 12). The problem in the first
scene was Charlotte's passport, which Max had discovered
in her recipe box. The parallel object here is "Henry's
handkerchief" (p. 36), now "soiled and blood-stained"
(p. 36). Annie at first tries to dismiss the whole thing
"Well, give it back to him" (p. 36)but Max's syntax and
calm "theatrical" style from Scene One collapse as he
sputters, "I did give it back to him. When was he in the
car?" (p. 36). After a pause, he resumes, "It was a clean
handkerchief, apart from my blood. Have you got a cold?
It looks filthy. It's dried filthy. You're filthy"
(p. 36). When Annie confesses, Max tries to believe "It
didn't mean anything," (p. 37), but Annie tells him, I m
awfully sorry, Max, but I love him" (p. 37).
-226-
Thus, this scene coyly toes the line between the real
and the illusory, for Stoppard suggests simultaneously that
it is "the real thing" and that it is not. On one hand,
Max's inelegant sputtering supports Charlotte's contention
that "that's the difference between plays and real life
thinking time" (p. 22), time to compose an elegant response
to the discovery of adultery. Furthermore, the scene is
given the air of "realism" because both characters are firmly
grounded in the stable outside frame of the play. But on
the other hand, the cunning parallels between this scene
and the first suggest that Charlotte's distinction between
real life and plays may not be so great after all. The
"real" Max borrows the pattern of the "artificial" Max's
speech, and the handkerchief not only parallels the passport
from Scene One, but it inevitably recalls that most famous
of handkerchiefs from Othello. As he did in Rosencrantz,
Stoppard works in this scene to blur the distinction
between reality and illusion. If Stoppard does not now
-dislocate his audience's assumptions as thoroughly as he
once did in Rosencrantz, it is mainly because The Real
Thing, unlike Rosencrantz, establishes a solid context for
interpreting the various versions of love and provides
stable ground for the audience to stand on.
In spite of the multi-layered theatrical games within
it, Scene Four, which depicts Henry and Annie in the living-
room formerly occupied by Henry and Charlotte, remains
-227-
solidly grounded in the controlling "realistic" frame.
Stoppard specifies that "the disposition of door and furni
ture makes the scene immediately reminiscent of Scene 2"
(p. 37), but beyond the set and Annie's entrance, "barefoot
and wearing HENRY's robe" (p. 38), Scene Four does not bear
much resemblance to Scene Two. The scene opens with Henry
suffering writer's block"I can't write it. Let me off"
(p. 38)unable to compose the play about love that he
promised Annie as a gift. After some talk about their sex
life, Henry and Annie begin to read "without inflection"
(p. 39) the script of Strindberg's Miss Julie to help Annie
learn her lines. Stoppard selects a remarkably rich scene,
for their reading of Strindberg's dialogue culminates in
the question, "'Where did you learn to talk like that?
Do you spend a lot of time in the theater?" (p. 40). The
line reverberates beautifully, for it is not only borrowed
from Strindberg's play about love for Stoppard's play about
love, but it overtly suggests what Scene Three implied with
Max's Miss Julie speechitself borrowed from Henry's play.
That is, the emotion we call love may depend as much on art
as artistic representations of love depend on the "real
life" emotion. As Roland Barthes argues, Without the
always anteriorBook and Code, no desire, no jealousy.
[. # .] Paolo and Francesca love each other according to
the passion of Lancelot and Guinevere [. 1* itself a
lost origin, writing becomes the origin of emotion
As
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Stoppard's characters enter into the endless chain of links
in the code of love, the distinction between the "real"
love of Henry and Annie and the "artificial" love depicted
in plays blurs. But this blurring of "real" love and "arti
ficial" love undoubtedly falls short of Rosencrantz's
elimination of the distinction between "real" and "artifi
cial" death, mainly because we never doubt that Henry and
Annie are "realistic" characters completely contained within
the "realistic" mode. When other scripts intrude, they may
add textual interest and stimulate thought, but they never
disrupt or supercede the controlling frame.
Because we never really doubt the "realistic" terms of
the depiction of Henry and Annie's love, we are not pushed
by the structure of The Real Thing to question the ability
of the theater to adequately represent love. We may con
template the filtering of love through layers of art, but
the play does not demand the sort of radical revision that
Rosencrantz required, for in Rosencrantz there is no stable
ground. One mode replaces another and then another, and no
controlling frame provides a resting place. Perhaps because
we do believe in the representation of Henry and Annie's
love, Stoppard resorts to telling us that love cannot be
represented, whereas in Rosencrantz he showed us that death
cannot be represented. "I don't know how to write love"
(p. 40), Henry, the playwright announces after the Strind
berg reading. He continues,
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I try to write it properly, and it just comes
out embarrassing. It's either childish or it's
rude. And the rude bits are absolutely juvenile.
I can't use any of it. My credibility is already
hanging by a thread after Desert Island Discs.
Anyway, I'm too prudish. Perhaps I should write
it completely artificial. Blank verse. Poetic
imagery. (p. 40)
Then he declares love not so much unknowable, as was death
in Rosencrantz, but simply "unliterary" (p. 40). "It's
happiness expressed in banality and lust" (p. 40), he
insists.
Annie's disappointment that Henry has not been able to
write her play about love creates friction between the pair,
and they argue first about jealousywith Annie complaining
that Henry never expresses jealousyand then about Brodie--
with Henry challenging Annie's use of the term "political
prisoner" (p. 43) and punctuating the dialogue with sar
castic remarks about "Trotsky Playhouse" (p. 41). Henry,
however, does not want to fight with Annie, especially since
he must soon depart to pick up his teenaged daughter, Debbie,
from the riding stables, and he delivers a conciliation
speech which is interesting in itself but doubly so because
it has evoked such polarized readings from Stoppard's
critics. "I love love" (p. 44), he tells Annie.
I love having a lover and being one. The in
sularity of passion. I love it. I love the way
it blurs the distinction between everyone who isn't
one's lover. Only two kinds of presence in the
world. There's you and there's them. (p. 44)
Corballis cites this passage as evidence of Henry's "emo
tional sterility" (p. 45) and rigid, "clockwork" "theories
-230-
4 5
about love" and argues that "at the end of Scene IV we
find him expatiating complacently on the insularity of
46
passion." Zeifman's reading, on the other hand, is more
generous to both Henry and Stoppard. He describes the passage
itself as "moving, sincere"^ and furthermore, "seemingly no
4 Q
longer mediated by theatrical borrowing."
The reconciliation scene is, however, interrupted by
"the alarm on HENRY's wristwatch" (p. 44), which goes off
to signal that it is time to pick up Debbie. Corballis
4 9
reads Henry's "digital-watch-complete-with-alarm" as a
metaphor for his "clockwork" state of mind, for digital
watches were "the target of [. .] ridicule in the featured
scene from 'House of Cards,'"5^ Scene One of The Real Thing.
Zeifman, though, reads the watch in the larger context of
Stoppard's allusive play, arguing that "if theater keeps
ambushing 'real life,' so 'real life' constantly evokes
theater,"51 for after "Henry bravely risks his own 'voice'
by declaring his love for Annie," the alarm on the watch
53
startles us, "breaking [the] tender love scene" and
reminding us "that what we have been watching is indeed a
scene: a 'theatrical' moment deliberately created and then
shattered."5^ He observes that "We have heard that sound
beforespecifically, in the opening moments of Genet s
The Maids, where it similarly destroys the illusion of
reality."55 Zeifman's reading is not only more generous
than Corballis's, but also more comprehensive and perceptive,
-231-
for in the London production I attended, Henry's speech
was indeed every bit as moving and sincere as Zeifman de
scribes it, not at all the sort of sterile and complacent
passage Corballis suggests. Corballis's reading of Henry's
love for Annie suffers in general from his attempt to reduce
the complexity and allusiveness of the "love" plot to the
simplicity and straightforwardness of the "political art"
l
plot. While Zeifman can be faulted for ignoring the second
plot almost completely, his reading of the "love" plot easily
surpasses Corballis's.
When Act Two opens, Henry and Annie are two years
older, and in spite of Annie's attempts to instill in Henry
an appreciation of "good" musicclassical musicHenry
remains^ hopelessly attached to "Buddy Holly and Richie
Valens" (p. 46). But while he may not have much of an ear
for "good" music, his ear for "good" scripts remains, we
learn, as finely tuned as ever. It transpires that Brodie
has, at Annie's urging, written a television play explain
ing his "symbolic," hence "political," arson in the hope
that bringing his imprisonment to the attention of the
public will effect his release. Annie has asked Henry to
read the play and give his opinion, which he is reluctant
to do given the wretched state of the script. When pressed,
though, Henry volunteers to read some of it aloud for
Annie as well as for the audience. Brodie's script is,
as Corballis argues, "gauche and unmarketable," consisting
-232-
of patently awful exchanges about British trains not run
ning on time even though Britain is, Brodie contends, a
fascist country like Mussolini's Italy. Henry is justly
appalled by both the "extremely silly and bigoted" (p. 49)
content and "the problem that [Brodie] can't write" (p. 49).
The debate which follows is reminiscent of the repeated
debates within Travesties about the relative merits of craft
and political motivation in producing art. Annie takes the
position that the author and his motivations take prece
dence over writing ability. She rebuts Henry's accusation,
"if it wasn't Brodie you'd never have got through it"
(p. 49), by arguing, "But it i_s Brodie. That's the point"
(p. 49). She further charges that Henry is "bigoted about
what writing is supposed to be like" (p. 49). She con
tinues with the rather credible argument that "You judge
everything as though everyone starts off from the same
place, aiming at the same prize. Eng. Lit. Shakespeare out
in front by a mile, and the rest of the field trying to
close the gap" (p. 49). Henry rejects her argument, though,
by replying that "writing rotten plays is not in itself
proof of rehabilitation. Still less of wrongful convic
tion" (p. 50), and that any sympathy the public might have
felt for Brodie will vanish after "they've sat through his
apologia" (p. 50) because "it's half as long as Das KapitajL
and only twice as funny" (p. 51).
-233-
Their debate, which is absolutely central to the
"political art" plot, continues for several minutes of
playing time, and as it approaches its culmination, it
begins to bear an ever increasing resemblance to the sub
stance, and finally the structure, of the confrontation
between Tzara and Joyce in Travesties. When Annie charges
that Henry is "jealous of the idea of the writer" (p. 51),
that he wants "to keep it sacred, special, not something
anybody can do" (p. 51), her argument recalls Tzara's posi
tion that "making poetry should be as natural as making
57
water," for both would like to make authorship more "demo
cratic," something anyone, no matter how untalented, can do
Annie asks Henry, "What's so good about putting words
together?" (p. 51), unknowingly setting herself up for the
play's most convincing rebuke, for like Joyce, Henry is a
gifted reassembler of words. She is, however, allowed one
last credible argument before her position is destroyed by
her husband's unquestionably superior counter-argument.
"You teach a lot of people what to expect from good writing
(p. 51), she begins, "and you end up with a lot of people
saying you write well" (p. 51). Brodie, she continues,
"really has something to say, something real" (p. 51), un-
li]^0 Henry, who has "to think up something to write about
just so [he] can keep writing" (p. 51).
Even Henry concedes that her argument is persuasive
"Jesus, Annie, you're beginning to appal me. There's
-234-
something scary about stupidity made coherent" (p. 51)
but he immediately asks for his cricket bat, which will
serve a function akin to the scrap-filled hat Joyce conjured
from while rebutting Dadaism. If anything, Henry's cricket
bat is an even more effective visual metaphor than Joyce's
hat, for it is free of any hint of the sham, the cheap
trickery, that one inevitably associates with magicians'
hats. "This thing here" (p. 52), he begins, "which looks
like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular
wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the
whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor" (p. 52). "If
you get it right" (p. 52), he explains, "the cricket ball
will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all
you've done is give it a little knock" (p. 52). Plays are
like cricket bats, Henry maintains. In a well-crafted play,
ideas, when given "a little knock" (p. 52), will "...
travel ..." (p. 52). But Brodie's play is merely "a lump
of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket
bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel
about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about
shouting 'Ouch!'" (p. 52). Well-crafted plays, like well-
sprung cricket bats, are not "better because someone says
[they are] better" (p. 52): they are simply better because
they work. Like Joyce's speech on the Trojan War, Henry's
cricket bat speech has the unmistakable ring of Truth.
-235-
And just as Joyce argues that the job of the artist
is to gratify men's "urge for immortality,"58 so Henry
ultimately rests his case by citing the immortalizing func
tion of art: "If you get the right [words] in the right
order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which
children will speak for you when you're dead" (p. 54). But
Henry's position does not really need the reinforcement of
Joyce's speech in Travesties but buttress its credibility,
for in addition to the highly effective cricket bat metaphor
and the dependable immortality argument, Henry offers a
stunning rebuke to the content of Brodie's play which serves
to erase any doubts about the Truth value of his stance. He
charges that Brodie announces "every stale revelation of the
newly enlightened" (p. 53) and proceeds with a short list:
"war is profits, politicians are puppets, Parliament is a
farce, justice is a fraud, property is theft . It's
all here" (p. 53). He describes reading Brodie's play as
an experience like that of "being run over very slowly by
a travelling freak show of favourite simpletons" (p. 53).
Annie, though not speechless as Tzara was after Joyce's
rousing finale, can only respond by pulling Henry's latest
script out of his typewriter and reading aloud the movie
adventures of "Kronk and Zadok" (p. 55), two science fiction
spaceship pilots. Henry interrupts her reading to rebut,
"That's not words, that's pictures[. . .] Anyway, alimony
doesn't count" (p. 54). Before she leaves, though, Annie
-236-
reminds Henry, "You never wrote" (p. 55) my play, the one
he promised her as a gift, the one about love. Though
Henry concedes this point"That's true, I didn't. I
tried" (p. 55)and in conceding lends credence to Annie's
charge that he cannot write about important things, real
things, his admission of failure does little to undermine
the credibility of his larger defense of craft. In a certain
sense, it even supports his argument that writers should
privilege craft over content, for the one time he tried to
start with content, with the topic of love, he failed. A
critic willing to venture into the treacherous realm of
autobiographical revelation might even suggest that Stop
pard's own voice can be heard here, tentatively admitting
the mistake of certain later plays, the mistake of trying
to start with a topic, an issue, and in doing so, sometimes
sacrificing the very elegance of craft that the real life
playwright, no less than his character-playwright, values
so highly.
The scene ends as Henry offers to follow Annie to
Glasgow while she rehearses 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, but
though she argues that she is going to stay in London
to "get Brodie's play off the ground" (p. 55), the follow
ing scene opens with her "sitting by the window of a moving
train" (p. 55) bound for Glasgow, proving that Henry has
won on this issue as he so clearly won the argument about
art. Billy, the actor who will play Giovanni opposite her
-237-
Annabella, enters the train compartment, and in a Scottish
accent like Brodie's, first asks, "Is this seat taken?"
(p. 55), and then comments, "You'd think with all these
Fascists the trains would be on time" (p. 56). Billy is,
of course, drawing his lines from Brodie's play, which he
has also read. Annie is suitably startled by his line about
Fascists"Jesus, you gave me a shock" (p. 56)but while we
may join her in being temporarily dislocated by the intrusion
of Brodie's script, the dialogue quickly ushers us back to
the solid ground of the controlling, "realistic" frame.
Zeifman argues that "this scene reverses the Pirandellian
59
trick of the opening scene," for while we think we are
watching a scene from a playBrodie's play, from which
6 0
Henry has just finished reading," the scene is in fact
"'really' happening." While Zeifman is accurate in noting
the reversal, it is somewhat misleading to equate the
thorough dislocation of Scene One with the relatively minor,
short-lived dislocation in this train scene, for in a matter
of only four lines of dialogue the confusion is sorted out
as Brodie's play is unambiguously identified as a play ,
within the larger, stable play. As Billy begins to flirt
boldly with Annie, though, finally dropping into his lines
from 'Tis Pity She's a Whore to express his attraction for
Annie/Annabella, the scene subtly foreshadows the final
scene's resolution of the nagging Brodie problem. Annie
has tried throughout the play to maintain the impression
-238-
that Brodie's participation in the anti-missiles demonstra
tion was motivated by the right reasonspublic, altruistic
reasons. But the private desires motivating Billy in this
train sceneand Billy will act the part of Brodie when the
arsonist's play is finally airedare, we will learn in the
play's closing moments, precisely the same kind of desires
that had motivated Brodie to follow Annie to the march.
Stoppard separates the train scene, which ends with
Billy courting Annie through the mediation of 'Tis Pity She' s
a Whore, from its parallel scene, in which Billy/Giovanni
and Annie/Annabella will again exchange Ford's passionate
dialogue, with a straightforward domestic scene. While
Annie is away in Glasgow, Henry visits Charlotte's home to
say good-bye to his daughter, Debbie, who is "going on the
streets" (p. 61) in Henry's phrase, though she insists that
she is merely going "on the road, not the streets" (p. 61).
The scene is decisively grounded in the "realistic" mode,
and while it is not a notably playful scene, it does serve
several thematic ends. Henry's conversations with both
Charlotte and his daughter firmly establish him as "the
last romantic" (p. 65), not just in matters of love, but,
as Henry reveals, in "work, music, literature, virginity,
[and] loss of virginity" (p. 67) as well. Charlotte's
warning, "You've still got one to lose, Henry" (p. 67),
points to the metaphorical loss of virginity he will ex
perience when Annie threatens his romantic ideals by having
-239-
an affair with Billy. Charlotte's search for the playbill
listing the name of the actor who played Giovanni opposite
her Annabella,.and who also, not coincidentally, took her
virginity, points just as clearly to Annie's upcoming affair.
And when the 'Tis Pity She's a Whore scene opens, it
fulfills the expectations created in the "realistic" domestic
scene, for Annie and Billy are indeed embarking on an affair.
Zeifman argues that this scene from Ford raises the ques
tion, "who are we watching make loveAnnabella and Giovanni,
6 2
or Annie and Billy?" He maintains that "the 'artificial'
and the 'real,' theatre and life, have begun to overlap and
6 3
merge, to bleed into one another." Though his reading of
the love plot is on the whole perceptive, in this particular
case his interpretation suffers, I think, from forcing the
Rosencrantz model onto a scene which is not, in fact, dis
locating and in the end does very little to blur the dis
tinction between plays and real life. The Ford scene is,
after all, perfectly plausible in the "realistic" terms of
the controlling frame: Annie and Billy are both actors,
and like Charlotte and the actor who once played Giovanni
to her Annabella, they find the rehearsal situation an
inviting opportunity to strike up an affair. Rather than
breaking the outside context, then, the Ford scene meshes
smoothly with the "realistic" frame of the play.
Likewise, the following scene, though repeating the
pattern of discovered adultery from Scenes One and Three,
-240-
works more to reinforce the air of "realism" surrounding
Henry and Annie's relationship than to call it into ques
tion. As in Scene Three, Annie enters breezily, drops off
her coat, and again faces a barrage of questions, this time
from Henry instead of Max. After discovering that Henry
has rifled through her belongings just as Max had once
rifled through Charlotte's in House of Cards, Annie tells
Henry, "You should have put everything back. Everything
would be the way it was" (p. 70), echoing Max's Scene One
lines, "You should have just put [your passport] in your
handbag. We'd still be an ideal couple" (p. 13). But aside
from the patterning effect of these parallels, the scene
proceeds in a very "realistic" fashion, for just as
Charlotte had predicted in Scene Two, Henry does not in
"real life" respond to the discovery of adultery with ele
gant speeches about Rembrandt placemats. As Henry's normally
polished syntax shows signs of strain, the scene increasingly
supports rather than undermines the distinction Charlotte
made between "plays and real life" (p. 22). Henry's
desperate questioning of Annie stands in sharp contrast to
Max's composed, even flippant speeches in Henry's play,
encouraging the perception that Henry's relationship with
Annie, unlike the relationship depicted in House of Cards,
is in fact "the real thing."
After a very brief scene depicting the filming of
Brodie's play, during which we learn that Henry has
-241-
apparently given in to Annie's demands and rewritten the
piece, the play shifts back to Annie and Henry for another
highly "realistic" domestic scene. The expectation created
by the play's openingthat we would witness a "realistic"
portrayal of the impact of adultery on marriageis finally
fulfilled in The Real Thing's penultimate scene, for we do
indeed get a glimpse of Henry's attempt to behave well while
Annie carries on her affair with Billy. Billy and Brodie
are, as Corballis observes, "almost composite personali-
64
ties," and the evidence that Annie is tiring of her affair
with Billy points toward the play's conclusion, when Annie
will reject Brodie outright, and, in rejecting him, pre
sumably remove Billy from her life as well. Perhaps the
most interesting passage in this scenewhich by itself
probably deserves the "rather dull"^ evaluation Corballis
gives to the play as a wholeis Henry's explanation of why
he rewrote Brodie's play. He tells Annie, "I write in
order to be worth your while[. . .] Without you I
wouldn't care" (p. 77). But because he loves Annie, he
explains, "I change my socks, and make money, and tart up
Brodie's unspeakable drivel so he can be an author too,
like me" (p. 77). He notes, however, that his rewrite does
not seem "to have done him much good" (p. 77) and suggests
that maybe "the authorities saw that it was a touch meretri
cious" (p. 77). Then, recalling Debbie's mention of
"meretrix, a harlot" (p. 62), he contemplates aloud the
-242-
Latin root of the term "meretricious""Meretrix, meretricis.
Harlot" (p. 77). His suggestion that he has prostituted
himself by rewriting "Brodie's unspeakable drivel" (p. 77)
might tempt a critic given to drawing autobiographical con
nections to suggest that, as in the cricket bat scene,
Stoppard's own voice can be heard speaking through Henry,
expressing some regret, however tentative, that he ever
compromised his position that craft must take precedence
over "the desire to be taken for [a] properly motivated"
(p. 33) member "of the caring society" (p. 33).
The final scene emphatically reinforces the impression
that Henry has prostituted himself, for when the contro
versial Brodiealternatively a "political prisoner" (p. 42)
or "an out-and-out thug" (p. 34)finally makes an appear
ance, he conforms completely to Henry's "thug" description.
Lenin may have received a severe thrashing in Travesties'
second half, but the portrayal of Lenin looks almost subtle
in comparison to this devastating denunciation of Brodie.
After watching a videotape of Henry's revised version of
his play, Brodie admires Henry's video machine and notes,
"I'll have to nick one sometime" (p. 80). But Brodie is
not just a thief, he is also disgustingly sexist, as his
increasingly lewd comments about Annie reveal, and a bigot
as well, as his slur against homosexuals indicates. Stop
pard adds to these character flaws arroganceBrodie main
tains that his play was better before Henry "wrote it
-243-
clever" (p. 81)and ingratitude, for he informs Henry, "I
don't owe you" (p. 81), because, as he sees it, the rewrite
did nothing to secure his release: "I'm out because the
missiles I was marching against are using up the money they
need for a prison to put me in" (p. 81). Finally, Brodie's
revolting behavior prompts Annie to reveal that when she met
him on the train, "he didn't know anything about a march"
(p. 82), that he was merely impressed to meet the actress
who had starred in his favorite childhood television series.
"By the time we got to Liverpool Street he would have
followed me into the Ku Klux Klan" (p. 82), she admits.
Annie only reveals the obvious about Brodie, who has
by this time been reduced to a mere caricature, a one
dimensional, black-hatted villain. But her explanation for
standing by him for so long, "What else could I do? He was
my recruit" (p. 82), not only reveals the truth about her
self, but also serves to complete the vindication of Henry,
who, we recall, had wisely argued in Scene Two that "Public
postures have the configuration of private derangement"
(p. 33). Annie's pose of public altruism is shattered,
for, as Corballis argues, the scene confirms "that her
loyalty was a matter not of abstract principle but of per
sonal guilt."66 She signals the end of her loyalty to this
unqualified thug as she "picks up [a] bowl of dip and
smashes it into his face" (p. 82).
-244-
If there has been all too little subtlety in both the
characterization of Brodie and the conclusion of Annie's
attachment to him, at least Brodie's parting shot at Henry
restores some degree of depth to this rather bombastic
scene. In mock sympathy, he confides to Henry, "I don't
really blame you. The price was right" (p. 82), using the
same terms of prostitution to describe the revision that
Henry himself had earlier used. As he recalls Annie's visit
while he was in prison, Brodie indicates that he fully
understands why Henry sold himself to gain Annie's favors:
"There was a thrill coming off her like she was back on the
box, but there was no way in[. . .] You know what I mean"
(p. 83). With that, Brodie makes his exit, neatly solving
the Brodie problem and, we must assume, the Billy problem
as well.
While The Real Thing, like Travesties, banishes the
villain who threatens art before moving into its happy end
ingnot only do Henry and Annie embrace in reconciliation,
but Max, who last appeared in Scene Three, calls to say he
is engaged to be marriedthe structural similarity between
the two plays' resolutions is overshadowed by the vast
stylistic differences between them. In Travesties, Stoppard
had revived the playful, derivative style for one last dance
before the final curtain, but the conclusion of The Real
Thing remains firmly and unambiguously grounded in the
straightforward "realistic" mode which has, except perhaps
-245-
for the brief Miss Julie reading in Scene Four, increasingly
dominated the play since the close of the dislocating open
ing scene. If the conclusion of The Real Thing bears little
stylistic resemblance to the resolution of Travesties, it
bears still less to the uncertain, thoroughly dislocating
play of styles which ushers in Rosencrantz1s last curtain.
The stylistic differences between The Real Thing and Rosen
crantz profoundly affect the substance of the two plays as
well, for while Rosencrantz's final dance of styles refused
closure, creating doubts about the theater's ability to
bring us the "reality" of death, The Real Thing1s unambiguous
"realism" creates just the opposite effect. In spite of
Henry's speech announcing "I don't know how to write love"
(p. 40), Stoppard's latest play leaves us firmly convinced
that love can be adequately represented on the stage, that
the "realistic" mode is up to the task of bringing us the
Truth about love, certainly, but about the incompatibility
of art and politics also. While Stoppard's Rosencrantz-
6 7
style games in Act One may be "as pleasing as ever," I
fear that Corballis is correct to conclude that they are
simply "tinsel on the surface of a play that plods its
ft fi
way" toward a clear-cut, "realistic" resolution.
If The Real Thing seems to plod rather than to dance,
perhaps it is because we judge it in relation to the early,
sparkling Stoppard style instead of simply comparing it to
other "realistic" plays. As a "realistic" play, it is at
-246-
least moderately successful, for Henry and Annie's love is,
on the whole, quite convincing, and though the caricatured
Brodie threatens the credibility of the "political art"
plot, this second strand clearly survives the threat, and
Henry's cricket bat speech retains its aura of Truth. But
Stoppard's own construction of the play invites critics to
measure The Real Thing against Rosencrantz, his most dazzling
achievement, for he attempts to revive for his treatment of
love the strategy that had served him so well before as he
explored the limits of the theater's ability to bring us
the "reality" of death. And compared to Rosencrantz's sus
tained challenge to the Truth of competing modes of repre
sentation, The Real Thing's sporadic stylistic games seem
rather unimpressive, to say the least.
Because it provides such conflicting evidence,
The Real Thing offers at best only a cloudy indication of
Stoppard's future work. While we might be tempted to read
both the revival of the dislocating stylistic games and
Henry's convincing condemnation of "political art" as signs
that Stoppard, after a bout with activism, will return to
the apparently apolitical, playful style of early works,
we must pause to note that The Real Thing's stylistic games
are mere window dressing on an otherwise "realistic" play,
and further, that Henry's condemnation of "committed" but
poorly crafted art remains firmly in the Truth-centered,
message-oriented mode of Stoppard's own later, "committed"
-247-
plays. Henry's qualms about "politically committed" plays
may be evidence of Stoppard's own reservations, but such
connections are always suspect, especially with a play
wright who has previously proven as slippery as Stoppard,
and the unambiguous "realism" he adopts to present these
qualms weighs heavily against the conclusion that Stoppard,
like his character-playwright, will never compromise him
self again by writing "committed" plays.
As much as those critics who prefer "the early stuff"
might wish it otherwise, The Real Thing must finally be
seen not so much as a tentative but promising return to
the delightful, playful tradition of the early plays, but
as another example of the message-oriented style which
characterizes his later work. This strikes me as most
regrettable, for Stoppard's early plays, especially Rosen-
crantz, are not only more theatrically effective than the
"rather dull," "realistic," later plays, but potentially
more politically effective as well. By firmly avoiding
overt political content in Rosencrantz, Stoppard created
room to play with the larger concepts of Truth, "realism,"
and "originality," key concepts which (to borrow a phrase
from the playwright himself) form "the moral matrix, the
moral sensibility, from which we make our judgments about
9
the world." As he playfully challenged Truth and
"realism" in Rosencrantz, Stoppard gently nudged us toward
a revision of the notions that authors write to bring us
-248-
the Truth, that art exists merely to mirror life. The
blending and clashing of openly borrowed theatrical styles
not only caused us to question the ability of any single
mode of representation to bring us the Truth about "reality,"
but it also implicitly challenged the model of originality
in authorship, for Rosencrantz is an undisguised "tissue of
quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.
Rosencrantz1s implicit challenge to originality becomes
explicit in the first half of Travesties as Stoppard not
only borrows boldly and pervasively again, but depicts his
Author-Fathers assembling master narratives from borrowed
scraps as well.
In issuing a sustained challenge to the traditional
concept of authorship, Stoppard worked in Rosencrantz and
the first half of Travesties to topple a model whose
political affiliations are profoundly conservative. Draw
ing its structure from both the biblical tale of the crea
tion and the model of masculine reproduction, the tradi
tional view of the author reinforces a theocentric, exclu
sively masculine world view. But by refusing the white robe
and beard of the God-like Author, Stoppard strived in early
plays to make room for texts which clearly have no single,
legitimate Father, which do not seek to provide the One
legitimate theoretical discourse. Unfortunately, in
response to repeated misreadings of his refusal of mastery
as aimless frivolity and reprehensible "parasitism,"
-249-
Stoppard has more recently abandoned his structural
challenges to this decidedly unprogressive model to pursue
a more limited, thematic expose of the folly of "political
art." While these later plays may be easily accessible
precisely because they conform to traditional ideas about
how authors should write and how theater should function
they do not even approach the genuinely dislocating, pro
foundly political achievement of the structurally playful,
boldly derivative, and delightfully uncertain early plays.
Notes
'Torn Stoppard, The Real Thing (London: Faber and
Faber Limited, 1983)/ p. 62.
2
Michael Hinden, "Jumpers: Stoppard and the Theater
of Exhaustion," Twentieth Century Literature 27 (Spring
1981): 1-15.
3
John M. Perlette, "Theatre at the Limit: Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead," forthcoming in Modern Drama.
^Carol Billman, "The Art of History in Tom Stoppard's
Travesties," Kansas Quarterly 12 (Fall 1980): 52.
^Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
(New York: Grove Press, 1967), p. 63.
Hersh Ziefman, "Comedy of Ambush: Tom Stoppard's
The Real Thing," Modern Drama 26 (June 1983): 140.
7
Zeifman, p. 140.
O
Richard Corballis, Stoppard: The Mystery and the
Clockwork (New York: Methuen, 1984), p. 139.
9Corballis
, P.
148
''^Zeifman,
P-
140.
11
Zeifman,
P*
140.
-250-
^2Zeifman, p.
140.
13_ _
Zeifman, p.
140.
14
Zeifman, p.
140.
^Zeifman, p.
141.
16 *
Zeifman, p.
141.
17
Zeifman, p.
141.
^Zeifman, p.
141.
19
Zeifman, p.
141.
2^Zeifman, p.
141.
21
Zeifman, p.
143.
22Corballis,
P.
138.
22Corballis,
P-
138.
24
Corballis,
P-
138.
2~*Corballis,
P-
138.
2^Corballis,
P-
139.
2^Corballis,
P-
139.
2^Corballis,
P-
139.
2^Corballis,
P-
139.
2^Corballis,
P-
139.
2^Corballis,
P-
139.
22Corballis,
P-
139.
22Corballis,
P-
139.
74
^Corballis,
P-
139.
^Corballis,
P-
146,
2^Corballis,
P-
143.
"^Corballis t
P-
146.
-251-
^Corballis, p. 146.
"^Corballis, p. 148.
40
Corballis, p. 148.
^"''Corballis, p. 147.
^Corballis, p. 148.
^Corballis, p. 148.
44
Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller
Hill and Wang, 1974), pp. 73-74.
^Corballis, p. 143.
^Corballis, p. 143.
4 7
Zeifman, p. 145.
48
Zeifman, p. 145.
^Corballis, p. 143.
^Corballis, p. 143.
^Zeifman, p. 145.
"^Zeifman, p. 145.
^Zeifman, p. 146.
^Zeifman, p. 146.
^Zeifman, p. 146.
^Corballis, p. 140.
57
Tom Stoppard, Travesties (New York: Grove
1975), p. 62.
5 8
Stoppard, Travesties, p. 62.
so
Zeifman, p. 143.
^Zeifman, p. 142.
6 1
Zeifman, p. 142.
^Zeifman, p. 145.
(New York
Press,
-252-
^Zeifman, p. 145.
64
Corballis, p. 145.
^Corballis, p. 148.
^Corballis, p. 140.
^7Corballis, p. 147.
^Corballis, p. 147.
6 9
Tom Stoppard, "Ambushes for the Audience:
a High Comedy of Ideas," Theatre Quarterly 4 (May1
1974): 14.
70
Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author,"
Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill
1977), p. 146.
Towards
July
in Image-
and Wang,
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L
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Barbara Stephenson was born in Miami, Florida, in
1958, but she grew up far from the city lights in rural
central Florida. She received her education in the Florida
public schools. After delivering a high school Valedictory
address in 1976, she received her A.A. from Lake-Sumter
Community College in 1977, earning a perfect grade point
average in spite of the haste. Upon graduating with high
honors from the University of Florida in 1979, with a B.A.
in English and Latin American area studies, she travelled
in Europe for three months before returning to the Univer
sity of Florida to begin graduate work in English. She
received her M.A. in the spring of 1981, studied ancient
Greek drama in Greece that summer, and then returned to
the University of Florida yet again to embark on doctoral
studies in English. After completing her dissertation,
Ms. Stephenson will work for the United States Department
of State as a Foreign Service Officer specializing in
political affairs.
-258-
I certify that I have read this study and that in my
opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality,
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Sidney R. Homan, Chairman
Professor of English
I certify that I have read this study and that in my
opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality,
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Richard B. Kershner, Jr.
Associate Professor of English
I certify that I have read this study and that in my
opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality,
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
John M. Perlette
Associate Professor of English
I certify that I have read this study and that in my
opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality,
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
I certify that I have read this study and that in my
opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly
presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality,
as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
David L. Shelton
Associate Professor of Theater
This dissertation was submitted to the Graduate Faculty of
the Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts
and Sciences and to the Graduate School and was accepted
as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy.
December, 1985
Dean, Graduate School
LD
1780
1985
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