Tom Stoppard (1937–2025)
Author of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
About the Author
When the National Theatre needed a last-minute substitute for a canceled production of As You Like It, Kenneth Tynan decided to stage Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a work by an unfamiliar author that had received discouraging notices from provincial critics at its Edinburgh Festival debut. show more Of course, the play, when it opened in April 1967, met with universal acclaim. In New York the next year, it was chosen best play by the Drama Critics Circle. In such an unlikely way, Tom Stoppard came to light. Born in Czechoslovakia, a country he left (for Singapore) when he was an infant, he began his literary career as a journalist in Bristol, where play reviewing led to playwriting. After Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Stoppard's reputation suffered through the production of a number of minor works, whose intellectual preoccupations were shrugged off by reviewers: Enter a Free Man (1968; "an adolescent twinge of a play," N.Y. Times), The Real Inspector Hound (1968; "lightweight," N.Y. Times), and After Magritte. But in the 1970s, the initial enthusiasms aroused by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were more than vindicated by the production of two full-length plays, Jumpers (1974) and the antiwar play Travesties (1975), whose immense verbal and theatrical inventiveness made them absolute successes on both sides of the Atlantic. Stoppard's method from the start has been to contrive explanations for highly unlikely encounters---of objects (the ironing board, old lady, and bowler hat of After Magritte), characters (Joyce, Lenin, and Tzara in Travesties), and even plays (Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, The Importance of Being Earnest, Travesties, and The Real Thing, 1982). In the 1970s, Tynan called for Stoppard---as a Czech and as an artist---to engage himself politically. But although political subjects have since found their way into pieces from Every Good Boy Deserves Favor (1977) to Squaring the Circle (1985), politics and art seem to have become just two more of the playwright's irreconcilables, which meet, but never join, in the logical frames of his comedy. The presence of political material---such as the Lenin sections that nearly ruin the second part of Travesties---has occasionally strained the structure of the plays. But in The Real Thing Stoppard is comfortable enough with the satire on art and activism to bring a third subject, love, into the mix. Stoppard has acknowledged his Eastern European heritage nonpolitically, in a series of adaptations of plays by Arthur Schnitzler (see Vol. 2), Johann Nestroy, and Ferenc Molnar. (Bowker Author Biography) Tom Stoppard is the author of many plays, including Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Jumpers, Travesties, and The Invention of Love. He lives in London. (Publisher Provided) show less
Disambiguation Notice:
(dut) The author was born as Tomas Straussler. After the death of his father, his mother married the Brittish Major Stoppard, and Tom since accepted his name.
Image credit: Tom Stoppard, on 13 novembre 2006
Series
Works by Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard Plays 5 : Arcadia + Hapgood + Indian Ink + Night & Day + The Real Thing (1999) 446 copies, 5 reviews
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead [1990 film] (1990) — Director; Screenwriter — 133 copies, 1 review
Where Are They Now? 5 copies
Fifty Years on Stage [2013 TV movie] — Author — 3 copies
Galileo 3 copies
The Dog It Was That Died 2 copies
Toplu Oyunları 2: Aşkın İcadı / Akrobatlar / Hapgood / Merdivenden İnen Saantçı / Kasti Faul 2 copies
M is for Moon Among Other Things 2 copies
Arcadia: Arena Stage 1 copy
TOPLU OYUNLARI 3 1 copy
TOPLU OYUNLARI 1 1 copy
Another Moon Called Earth 1 copy
Neutral Ground 1 copy
New-Found-Land 1 copy
Dirty Linen 1 copy
Teeth 1 copy
Dogg's Hamlet 1 copy
Cahoot's Macbeth 1 copy
Associated Works
The Actor's Book of Contemporary Stage Monologues: More Than 150 Monologues from More Than 70 Playwrights (1987) — Contributor — 193 copies
Know the Past, Find the Future: The New York Public Library at 100 (2011) — Contributor — 133 copies, 4 reviews
The Pleasure of Reading: 43 Writers on the Discovery of Reading and the Books That Inspired Them (2015) — Contributor — 104 copies, 2 reviews
Die englische Literatur 10 in Text und Darstellung. 20. Jahrhundert 2. (2001) — Contributor — 6 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Sträussler, Tomáš (birth)
- Other names
- Boot, William
- Birthdate
- 1937-07-03
- Date of death
- 2025-11-29
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Mount Hermon School
Dolphin School, Nottinghamshire, England, UK
Pocklington School, Yorkshire, England, UK - Occupations
- playwright
screenwriter
translator
journalist
drama critic - Organizations
- Western Daily Press (reporter ∙ critic)
Bristol Evening World (feature writer ∙ humor columnist ∙ drama critic)
BBC Radio
Standpoint
Shakespeare Schools Festival
Index on Censorship (show all 9)
Amnesty International
Committee Against Psychiatric Abuse
The London Library (president) - Awards and honors
- John Whiting Award (1967)
Royal Society of Literature (Fellow, 1972)
Order of the British Empire (Commander, 1978)
Knight Bachelor (1997)
Academy Award (Best Original Screenplay, 1998)
Golden Globe (Best Screenplay, 1998) (show all 24)
American Theater Hall of Fame (1999)
BAFTA (Best Original Screenplay, 1999)
Order of Merit (2000)
American Academy of Arts and Letters (2000)
Honorary doctorate, Yale University (2000)
Honorary degree, Cambridge University (2000)
The London Library (2002)
Dan David Prize (2008)
PEN Pinter prize (2013)
Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement (2013)
PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award (2015)
British Academy (Honorary Fellow, , 2017)
David Cohen Prize (2017)
America Award in Literature (2017)
Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award (2017)
Laurence Olivier Award (1994, 2006, 2020)
Tony Award for Best Play (1968, 1976, 1984, 2007, 2023)
Honorary Patronage, University Philosophical Society, Trinity College, Dublin - Agent
- Anthony Jones (PFD)
- Relationships
- Stoppard, Miriam (wife|divorced)
- Short biography
- Tom Stoppard was born Tomáš Straussler to a Jewish family in Zlín, Czechoslovakia. With their parents Eugen Straussler, a doctor employed by the Bata shoe company, and Martha Becková, he and his brother fled the country in 1939 to escape Nazi occupation. \The family went to Singapore, where Bata had a factory. Tom, his mother and brother fled to Australia in 1941. Tom spent three years in a boarding school in Darjeeling, India. In 1945, his mother married Kenneth Stoppard. Tom attended the Dolphin School in Nottinghamshire, and later Pocklington School in Yorkshire. He left school at age 17 and began working as a journalist for the Western Daily Press in Bristol. IHe also wrote short radio plays and in 1960, moved to London and launched himself as a playwright with A Walk on the Water, later re-titled Enter a Free Man.
- Nationality
- Czechoslovakia
UK - Birthplace
- Zlín, Czechoslovakia
- Places of residence
- Zlín, Czechoslovakia (birth)
Singapore
Darjeeling, India
Bristol, Gloucestershire, England, UK
London, England, UK - Place of death
- Dorset, England, UK
- Map Location
- England, UK
- Disambiguation notice
- The author was born as Tomas Straussler. After the death of his father, his mother married the Brittish Major Stoppard, and Tom since accepted his name.
Members
Reviews
In an alternate world V.I. Lenin, James Joyce, Tristan Tzara, a British consular official named Henry Carr and others get together, argue and discuss politics, kind of.
Joyce calls Tzara “an over-excited little man with a need for self-expression far beyond the scope of your natural gifts.” Carr believes “there was nothing wrong with Lenin except his politics.”
The role of art is a hot topic. Lenin: “Literature must become party literature. Down with non-partisan literature!” The show more Dadaist Tzara: “The difference between being a man and being a coffee mill is art. But art created patrons and was corrupted.” A librarian named Cicely: “The sole duty and justification for art is social criticism.” And so on.
The language is key here. The flow, the word play, the rhyming, the humor, the politics. It’s profound ridiculousness.
Carr: Do you know Gilbert and Sullivan?!
Cicely: I know Gilbert but not Sullivan. show less
Joyce calls Tzara “an over-excited little man with a need for self-expression far beyond the scope of your natural gifts.” Carr believes “there was nothing wrong with Lenin except his politics.”
The role of art is a hot topic. Lenin: “Literature must become party literature. Down with non-partisan literature!” The show more Dadaist Tzara: “The difference between being a man and being a coffee mill is art. But art created patrons and was corrupted.” A librarian named Cicely: “The sole duty and justification for art is social criticism.” And so on.
The language is key here. The flow, the word play, the rhyming, the humor, the politics. It’s profound ridiculousness.
Carr: Do you know Gilbert and Sullivan?!
Cicely: I know Gilbert but not Sullivan. show less
My sisters and I were kind of obsessed with this play (and movie) when we were younger. So when I saw this book at a garage sale for ten cents, I had to buy it. Then I spent most of the afternoon in a lawn chair in my yard, reading it.
It was, of course, every bit as clever in this later reading. But it was perhaps more biting in its commentary on how much control we have over our own lives -- and when do we know if we're living our own stories, or are just side stories in someone else's show more play?
But as my friend Heather points out, "at least there is the comfort of companionship." show less
It was, of course, every bit as clever in this later reading. But it was perhaps more biting in its commentary on how much control we have over our own lives -- and when do we know if we're living our own stories, or are just side stories in someone else's show more play?
But as my friend Heather points out, "at least there is the comfort of companionship." show less
Sidley Park, 1809: Septimus Hodge, an urbane and witty young man, is the tutor of Thomasina Coverly, a 13-year-old mathematical genius. He also has romantic liaisons with several different women on the estate, one of which results in a challenge by the lady’s husband. Sidley Park, present day: A group of scholars studying the history of Sidley Park believe they have discovered an incredible find: the presence of Lord Byron at the park in 1809. As the two stories progress, they start to show more overlap more and more, until finally both stories are played out simultaneously on the same stage.
If the idea of combining literature, time paradoxes, sex, mathematics, and Newtonian determinism appeals to you, you should definitely read this play! It’s an unconventional work in several ways: the stage directions are extremely long and detailed, the action from two different time periods occurs at the same time, and several of the characters never speak a single line or even appear on stage. Stoppard is obviously being postmodern or avant-garde or something of the kind, and I’m quite sure I didn’t understand everything in the play, but I found it fascinating all the same. Thomasina’s mathematical equations were particularly interesting to me, especially when they became a sort of metaphor for the action of the play as a whole. I definitely recommend it! show less
If the idea of combining literature, time paradoxes, sex, mathematics, and Newtonian determinism appeals to you, you should definitely read this play! It’s an unconventional work in several ways: the stage directions are extremely long and detailed, the action from two different time periods occurs at the same time, and several of the characters never speak a single line or even appear on stage. Stoppard is obviously being postmodern or avant-garde or something of the kind, and I’m quite sure I didn’t understand everything in the play, but I found it fascinating all the same. Thomasina’s mathematical equations were particularly interesting to me, especially when they became a sort of metaphor for the action of the play as a whole. I definitely recommend it! show less
On receiving the news of the death of Tom Stoppard, I read his play The Real Inspector Hound, a piece that I have never seen performed, although its initial production was around the time of my own birth. Stoppard wrote this play after Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, and it uses many of the same techniques of dramatic layering and collapsing of contexts. Where Rosencrantz & Guildenstern relies on the audience to know Shakespeare's Hamlet, The Real Inspector Hound simply hangs its hat on show more a bog standard murder mystery.
The first two characters, Moon and Birdboot, are theater critics who have come to see the play. As their framing conversations proceed, it becomes evident that the two of them represent homicidal and adulterous culpability respectively. The "theater criticism" they offer is largely irrelevant to what is happening in the crime scene at Muldoon Manor, but their private anxieties cross and parallel it with juxtapositions of dialogue.
At the end of the first act, there is an enigmatic suspension, and then the play begins again, but Birdboot is drawn into the scene, taking the role of the suspect Simon. Later still, Moon is conscripted to play as the police inspector who arrived late in the first act. Thus the critics demonstrate their own projection into the drama, which is nothing more than a backdrop to their own preoccupations. A couple of twists ensure that they get their just desserts.
Despite the apparent difficulty of engineering the first reveal of the critics in the reflected house, I think it would be simple enough in the sort of small space where this brief play with a cast of eight would be likely to be staged. It is full of Stoppard's typical wit, and reflection on it does reveal a certain measure of profundity. show less
The first two characters, Moon and Birdboot, are theater critics who have come to see the play. As their framing conversations proceed, it becomes evident that the two of them represent homicidal and adulterous culpability respectively. The "theater criticism" they offer is largely irrelevant to what is happening in the crime scene at Muldoon Manor, but their private anxieties cross and parallel it with juxtapositions of dialogue.
At the end of the first act, there is an enigmatic suspension, and then the play begins again, but Birdboot is drawn into the scene, taking the role of the suspect Simon. Later still, Moon is conscripted to play as the police inspector who arrived late in the first act. Thus the critics demonstrate their own projection into the drama, which is nothing more than a backdrop to their own preoccupations. A couple of twists ensure that they get their just desserts.
Despite the apparent difficulty of engineering the first reveal of the critics in the reflected house, I think it would be simple enough in the sort of small space where this brief play with a cast of eight would be likely to be staged. It is full of Stoppard's typical wit, and reflection on it does reveal a certain measure of profundity. show less
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read in 2026 (1)
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AP Lit (1)
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scav (1)
1970s (1)
Read in 2014 (1)
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 113
- Also by
- 26
- Members
- 23,599
- Popularity
- #887
- Rating
- 4.0
- Reviews
- 303
- ISBNs
- 402
- Languages
- 13
- Favorited
- 116
