Tom Stoppard

Let others sing of war and a hero buffeted by fate. I sing of marriage and a marriage bed, and the endurance of love.With an introduction by the author, this is Tom Stoppard in the voice of Odysseus's wife recalling how the Trojan War 'took away my husband for ten years, and ten more coming the long way home', and Odysseus's dramatic arrival back on Ithaca.Weaving Homeric tropes with the wry wit of a woman of our time, Penelope tells this still vibrant love story from the oldest poem in Western literature.

Stoppard's rich and moving meditation on art and love, set against one of the great shifts of history, as India regained its independence from the grip of the British Empire. If you don't start learning to take you'll never be shot of us. Nothing else counts. It's your country, and we've got it. Everything else is bosh. Flora Crewe, a noted young Bloomsbury Group poet travelling India in 1930, has her portrait painted by a local artist, Nirad Das. More than fifty years later, the artist's son visits Flora's sister, Mrs Swan, in London while Flora's would-be biographer is following a cold trail in India. Indian Ink was first performed at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, and opened at the Aldwych Theatre, London, in 1995. The play was revived at Hampstead Theatre, London, in December 2025.

The new and updated edition of 'Tom Stoppard's extraordinary, epic drama of politics, persecution and protest in twentieth-century Czechoslovakia' (Evening Standard).Rock 'n' Roll spans the years from 1968 to 1990 from the double perspective of Prague, where a rock 'n' roll band comes to symbolise resistance to the Communist regime, and of Cambridge, where the verities of love and death are shaping the lives of three generations in the family of a Marxist philosopher.Rock 'n' Roll premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in June 2006. It was revived at Hampstead Theatre, London, in December 2023. This edition includes an introduction by the author.'The remarkable thing about the play is that it touches on so many themes, registers its lament at the erosion of freedom in our society and yet leaves you cheered by its wit, buoyancy and belief in the human spirit.' Guardian'Stunning.' The Times *****'Lusty, messy, exuberant.' Daily Telegraph ****'No-one writes plays quite like Tom Stoppard.' Time Out ****

"Stoppard is the master comedian of ideas in the English language."--NewsweekCulled from nearly twenty years of the playwright's career, The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays is a showcase for Tom Stoppard's dazzling range and virtuosic talent, and essential reading for fans of modern drama. The plays in this collection reveal Stoppard's sense of fun, his sense of theater, his sense of the absurd, and his gifts for parody and satire.

It is 1936 and A. E. Housman is being ferried across the river Styx, glad to be dead at last. The river that flows through Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love connects Hades with the Oxford of Housman's youth: High Victorian morality is under siege from the Aesthetic movement, and an Irish student named Wilde is preparing to burst onto the London scene. On his journey the elder Housman confronts the younger version of himself and his memories of the man he loved his entire life, Moses Jackson -- the handsome athlete who could not return his feelings.

"Jumpers is simply dazzling. It takes your breath away with its sheer exuberance of literacy, its cascade of words and conspicuous display of intellect. It is also extraordinarily funny. Jumpers is one of the wittiest and most stimulating plays of the last decade or so."--Clive Barnes, New York Times Murder, marriage, and metaphysics link the bizarre series of events in this high-spirited comedy, winner of the Evening Standard's Best Play Award. George Moore is an aging professor of moral philosophy whose quest to compose a lecture on "Man--Good, Bad, or Indifferent?" is put on hold while he ponders the existence of his sock. He is joined by his youthful wife, Dotty, a former musical star on a downward spiral whose charm may explain the corpse in the next room; George's specially trained hare, Thumper; and a chorus of poorly trained gymnasts whose exploits set the stage for this topsy-turvy world.

"One of the great political plays in the English language."--Sunday Times (UK)It is 1968, and the world is ablaze with rebellion. Clutching his prized collection of rock albums, Jan, a Cambridge graduate student, returns to his homeland of Czechoslovakia just as Soviet tanks roll into Prague. When security forces tighten their grip on artistic expression, Jan is inexorably drawn toward a dangerous act of dissent. Back in England, Jan's volcanic mentor Max, a communist Marxist, faces a crisis of his own as his cancer-stricken wife Eleanor, and then his free-spirited daughter Esme, witness the breakdown of his ideals. Winner of the Evening Standard's Best Play Award, Rock 'n' Roll moves between Cambridge and Prague, where lives spin and intersect with history until an unexpected reunion draws together what was worth the fight: the possibility of freedom and love.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Leopoldstadt was the old, crowded Jewish quarter of Vienna, a city humming with artistic and intellectual excitement. Stoppard's epic yet intimate drama centers on Hermann Merz, a manufacturer and baptized Jew married to Catholic Gretl, whose extended family convene at their fashionable apartment on Christmas Day in 1899. Yet by the time the play closes, Austria has passed through the convulsions of war, revolution, impoverishment, annexation by Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust, which stole the lives of 65,000 Austrian Jews alone. From one of today's most acclaimed playwrights, Leopoldstadt is a human and heartbreaking drama of literary brilliance, historical verisimilitude, and powerful emotion.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Leopoldstadt was the old, crowded Jewish quarter of Vienna. But Hermann Merz, a manufacturer and baptised Jew married to Catholic Gretl, has moved up in the world. Gathered in the Merz apartment in a fashionable part of the city, Hermann's extended family are at the heart of Tom Stoppard's epic yet intimate drama. By the time we have taken leave of them, Austria has passed through the convulsions of war, revolution, impoverishment, annexation by Nazi Germany and - for Austrian Jews - the Holocaust in which 65,000 of them were murdered. It is for the survivors to pass on a story which hasn't ended yet.Tom Stoppard's Leopoldstadt was first performed at Wyndham's Theatre, London, in January 2020.WINNER: OLIVIER AWARD FOR BEST NEW PLAY, 2020WINNER: TONY AWARD FOR BEST PLAY, 2023Winner of the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play; the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play; the Drama League Award for Outstanding Production; and the Outer Critics' Circle Award for Outstanding New Broadway Play.'One of Britain's greatest living playwrights to provide his most personal play yet.' The Times'The news that Tom Stoppard has written a new drama ranks as top-end seismic activity.' Daily Telegraph

Young Will Shakespeare has writer's block... the deadline for his new play is fast approaching but he's in desperate need of inspiration. That is until he finds his muse Viola. This beautiful young woman is Will's greatest admirer and will stop at nothing (including breaking the law) to appear in his next play. Against a bustling background of mistaken identity ruthless scheming and backstage theatrics Will's love for Viola quickly blossoms and inspires him to write his greatest masterpiece.

Above all don't use the word good as though it meant something in evolutionary science.Hilary, a young psychology researcher at a brain-science institute, is nursing a private sorrow and a troubling question at work, where psychology and biology meet. If there is nothing but matter, what is consciousness?This is 'the hard problem' which puts Hilary at odds with her colleagues who include her first mentor Spike, her boss Leo and the billionaire founder of the institute, Jerry.Is the day coming when the computer and the fMRI scanner will answer all the questions psychology can ask? Meanwhile Hilary needs a miracle, and she is prepared to pray for one.The Hard Problem by Tom Stoppard premiered at the National Theatre, London, in January 2015.

Tom Stoppard's stimulating, funny play Night and Day is set in a fictional African country, Kambawe, which is ruled by a leader not unlike Idi Amin. The nation is faced with a Soviet-backed revolution which quickly brings newsmen from around the world to cover the story. Using the characters Ruth; her husband, Geoffrey Carson, a mine owner; an Australian veteran reporter, Dick Wagner; and an idealistic young journalist, Jacob Milne, Stoppard pits the ideal of a Free Press against that of working-class solidarity. During the course of the play, each character is given an opportunity to make his case heard as the revolution unfolds. More traditional in style than most of Stoppard's oeuvre, Night and Day is a provocative and funny look at exploitation and corruption, journalistic ethics, freedom of the press, and marital infidelity.

Alongside his many major plays, Tom Stoppard has written several highly acclaimed translations and adaptations of works by other writers, which are collected together here for the first time, together with a new introduction by Stoppard. Five European Plays includes adaptations of plays by four major European dramatists--Johann Nestroy, Arthur Schnitzler, Ferenc Molnar, and Vaclav Havel--Stoppard transports us to settings as diverse as nineteenth-century Vienna and the Czech Republic under communism. From the farcical humor of Rough Crossing, which follows two playwrights on a cruise ship who are struggling to finish a musical comedy before the ship docks, to the tender story of love and secrets in Dalliance, to the chillingly comic depiction of a writer working in Communist Eastern Europe in Largo Desolato, the plays reveal Stoppard as a master of technique, whose language shines in these translations and adaptations just as brightly as in his other works.

Stoppard's masterful adaptation of Chekhov's best-loved play has been lauded by critics for its shining prose as well as its faithfulness. The play opens at a country estate, where a group of friends and relations have gathered to see the first performance of an experimental play, written and staged by the young man of the house, Konstantin. Among the audience are Konstantin's mother, the actress Arkadina, and her lover, the famous novelist Trigorin. Their glamorous presence not only disrupts the performance, but soon takes on a more profound significance in the lives of all those present. This edition of The Seagull includes an introduction by Stoppard which addresses the issues faced by translators since its first appearance in English in 1909.

From Tony Award-winning playwright Tom Stoppard, Indian Ink is a rich and moving portrait of intimate lives set against one of the great shafts of history--the emergence of the Indian subcontinent from the grip of Europe. The play follows free-spirited English poet Flora Crewe on her travels through India in the 1930s, where her intricate relationship with an Indian artist unfurls against the backdrop of a country seeking its independence. Fifty years later, in 1980s England, her younger sister Eleanor attempts to preserve the legacy of Flora's controversial career, while Flora's would-be biographer is following a cold trail in India. Fresh from the critically acclaimed off-Broadway performance in 2014, Indian Ink is reemerging as an important part of Stoppard's oeuvre and the global dramatic canon, a fascinating, time-hopping masterwork.

The Real Thing is one of Tom Stoppard's most enduring and highly acclaimed dramatic works, first performed in 1982 at The Strand Theatre in London, starring Felicity Kendal and Roger Rees. The Real Thing begins with Max and Charlotte, a couple whose marriage is on the verge of collapse. Charlotte is an actress who has been appearing in a play about marriage written by her husband, Henry. Max, her leading man, is also married to an actress, Annie. Both marriages are at the point of rupture because Henry and Annie have fallen in love. But is it the real thing? Tom Stoppard combines his characteristically brilliant wordplay and wit with flashes of insight that illuminate the nature--and the mystery--of love, creating a multi-toned play that challenges the mind while searching out the innermost secrets of the heart. Winner of the Tony Award for Best Play, The Real Thing is brilliant and heartfelt, an extraordinary theatrical exploration of marriage, fidelity, and the creative life.

"It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them."--Tom Stoppard, Arcadia In a large country house in Derbyshire in April 1809 sits Lady Thomasina Coverly, aged thirteen, and her tutor, Septimus Hodge. Through the window may be seen some of the "five hundred acres inclusive of lake" where Capability Brown's idealized landscape is about to give way to the Gothic style: "everything but vampires," as the garden historian Hannah Jarvis remarks to Bernard Nightingale when they stand in the same room 180 years later. Bernard has arrived to uncover the scandal which is said to have taken place when Lord Byron stayed at Sidley Park. Tom Stoppard's masterful play takes us back and forth between the centuries and explores the nature of truth and time, the difference between the Classical and the Romantic temperament, and the disruptive influence of sex on our orbits in life--"the attraction," as Hannah says, "which Newton left out."

Young Will Shakespeare has writer's block... the deadline for his new play is fast approaching but he's in desperate need of inspiration. That is until he finds his muse Viola. This beautiful young woman is Will's greatest admirer and will stop at nothing (including breaking the law) to appear in his next play.Against a bustling background of mistaken identity ruthless scheming and backstage theatrics Will's love for Viola quickly blossoms and insp

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is one of the most enduring and frequently performed plays of contemporary theater and has firmly established itself in the dramatic canon. Acclaimed as a modern masterpiece, it is the fabulously inventive tale of Hamlet as told from the worm's-eye view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare's play. In Tom Stoppard's best-known work, this Shakespearean Laurel and Hardy finally get a chance to take the lead role, but do so in a world where echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, where reality and illusion intermix, and where fate leads our two heroes to a tragic but inevitable end. Revised and reissued to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the play's first performance, this definitive edition includes a new introduction and previously unpublished ancillary material.

'Tom Stoppard's Travesties is witty, playful and wise. Forty years on, it is starting to look timeless as well.' Sunday Times'It is a champagne cocktail, compounded of a balletic nimbleness of invention, a bewildering intricacy of design which reaches the sublime heights where mathematics merge with poetry, and the audacious juggling of a master conjuror.' Sunday Telegraph 'A dazzling pyrotechnical feat that combines Wildean pastiche, political history, artistic debate, spoof reminiscence, and song-and-dance in marvellously judicious proportions. The text itself is a Joycean web of literary allusions; yet it also radiates sheer intellectual joie de vivre, as if Stoppard were delightedly communicating the fruits of his own researches.' GuardianTravesties was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre, London, in June 1974. This edition includes a new preface by the author, and revisions made by him for a revival at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London, in October 2016.?