Line #34 Creator/TomStoppard


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/9787a336_04bc_4326_ac89_934bec59e5da.jpeg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:300:]]
3	Tom Stoppard (born Tomáš Straussler, 3 July 1937) is a Czech-born British playwright, most famous for ''{{Theatre/Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead}}''.
4
5	Other plays include ''[[{{Theatre/Arcadia}} Arcadia]]'', ''Theatre/TheRealInspectorHound'', ''After Magritte'', ''The Real Thing'', ''Theatre/TheInventionOfLove'', ''Rock 'n Roll'', ''Travesties'', ''Jumpers'', and ''Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth'', and ''[[{{Theatre/Leopoldstadt}} Leopoldstadt]].''
6
7	Also wrote/co-wrote ''Film/{{Shakespeare in Love}}'', ''Film/{{Brazil}}'' and ''Film/EmpireOfTheSun'', and is reported to have done uncredited dialogue rewrites on ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'' and ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade''.
8
9	He is often associated with the [[{{Absurdism}} Theatre of the Absurd]] partially due to the general tone of his work and partially because ''Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead'' is essentially one big ShoutOut to the [[TropeCodifier genre's codifier]], ''{{Theatre/Waiting for Godot}}''.
10	----
11	!!Works by Tom Stoppard include:
12	%%Alphabetical order
13	* ''[[{{Theatre/Arcadia}} Arcadia]]''
14	* ''The Coast of Utopia'' trilogy (''[[Theatre/TheCoastOfUtopiaVoysge Voyage]]'', ''[[Theatre/TheCoastOfUtopiaShipwreck Shipwreck]]'' and ''[[Theatre/TheCoastOfUtopiaSalvage Salvage]]'')
15	* ''{{Film/Despair}}''
16	* ''Theatre/TheHardProblem''
17	* ''Theatre/IndianInk''
18	* ''Theatre/TheInventionOfLove''
19	* ''[[{{Theatre/Leopoldstadt}} Leopoldstadt]]''
20	* ''Theatre/ProfessionalFoul''
21	* ''Theatre/TheRealInspectorHound''
22	* ''[[Theatre/RockNRoll2006 Rock'n'Roll]]''
23	* ''Theatre/RosencrantzAndGuildensternAreDead''
24
25
26	!!Other works by Tom Stoppard provide examples of:
27
28	* AuthorAppeal: Stoppard likes translation scenes like Creator/QuentinTarantino likes feet.
29	* BilingualBonus: The opening lines of ''Travesties'' may seem like nonsense words, but when you sound them out it becomes a limerick in French introducing the speaker, [[UsefulNotes/{{Dada}} Tristan Tzara]], who actually [[GeniusBonus used this technique of playing with sound and meaning in his own writing/performance]].
30	* {{Bulungi}}: Stoppard’s play ''Night and Day'' is set in “Kambawi”, which comes complete with a dictator who MajoredInWesternHypocrisy.
31	* {{Catchphrase}}: In ''On The Razzle'', the ServileSnarker Melchior uses the word "Classic" constantly. This leads to the following exchange with his new employer:
32	-->'''Zangler:''' Only you'll have to stop using that word. It's stupid.\
33	'''Melchior:''' There's nothing stupid about the word. It's just the way some people use it without discrimination.\
34	'''Zangler:''' Do they?\
35	'''Melchior:''' Oh, yes. It's absolutely classic.
36	* CulturalTranslation: ''On the Razzle'' is an adaptation of the play ''Einen Jux will er sich machen'' by Johann Nepomuk Nestroy, rather than a straight translation, because much of the humor in the original was too specific to 19th-century Austria to work in English. (Similarly, the same play has been adapted for American audiences by Creator/ThorntonWilder as ''Theatre/TheMatchmaker'', which became the basis for the musical ''Theatre/HelloDolly''.)
37	* DoubleMeaningTitle: ''After Magritte''. In art terminology, "after" means a work in the style of or inspired by, so "after Magritte" means that it incorporates Creator/ReneMagritte's surrealism. On a more prosaic level, the play is about what happens to a group of people after they go to see an exhibition of Magritte's paintings.
38	* DoubleReverseQuadrupleAgent: ''The Dog It Was That Died'' is about Rupert Purvis, a British secret agent who was approached by the Russians to act as a double agent. His British chief knows he was approached and encouraged him to play along so that the Russians would think they were in control of the situation, but on the other hand his Russian handler knows that the chief knows, and encouraged him to play along so that the British would think they were in control of the situation... the effort of figuring out who he's actually working for and whether he's actually achieving anything eventually lands him in a mental institution.
39	* DrivenToSuicide: At the beginning of ''The Dog It Was That Died'', Purvis attempts suicide by throwing himself off a bridge, but survives after landing on a passing barge (and specifically on the bargeman's dog, which doesn't survive). [[spoiler:Near the end of the play, he makes another attempt, which succeeds]].
40	* {{Fictionary}}: ''Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth'' features a language which contains the same words as English but with different meanings assigned to them, inspired by a thought experiment by Creator/LudwigWittgenstein. HilarityEnsues, since for example, "Cretinous pig-faced git" means "What's the time, sir?" in Dogg, but "Afternoon, squire" means "Get stuffed, you bastard". The purpose of ''Dogg's Hamlet'' is to gradually get the audience to grips with understanding Dogg, at which point they're ready to watch ''Cahoot's Macbeth'', in which characters who speak both languages can use it for hidden meanings.
41	* FrenchAccordion: The trope is used for a joke in Stoppard's radio play ''Artist Descending a Staircase'', which consists of a sequence of nested flashbacks. At one point, one character begins reminiscing sentimentally, apparently about UsefulNotes/{{Paris}}, saying that memories can be triggered by "... a phrase of music ... a river flowing beneath ancient bridges ...", and the script then calls for "''Cliché Paris music, accordion" and a flashback begins. But the next line is a different character saying "I must say I won't be entirely sorry to leave [[UsefulNotes/{{London}} Lambeth]]-- the river smells like a dead cat, and the accordionist downstairs is driving me insane".
42	* FunWithForeignLanguages:
43	** ''Professional Foul'', set at an international philosophical colloquium, features a scene in which an academic's speech causes consternation among the interpreters required to translate it for non-English-speakers because it makes heavy use of wordplay that only works in English.
44	** ''Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth'' revolves around a series of encounters between speakers of English and speakers of Dogg, a language which sounds like English but assigns different meanings to the words. HilarityEnsues, since for example, "Cretinous pig-faced git" means "What's the time, sir?" in Dogg, but "Afternoon, squire" means "Get stuffed, you bastard".
45	* GenerationalSaga: ''Rock 'n' Roll'' covers a period from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, and has three generations of protagonists with the intermediate one being the odd one out.
46	* GotMeDoingIt: In ''Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth'', the protagonist spends the first act surrounded by {{Strange Syntax Speaker}}s, and by the end of the act, they've got him doing it too. In the second act, he starts passing it on to other people.
47	* HistoricalDomainCharacter:
48	** ''Travesties'' gives important roles to Creator/JamesJoyce, [[UsefulNotes/{{Dada}} Tristan Tzara]], and UsefulNotes/VladimirLenin (who were all actually in Zurich at the same time at one point).
49	* ImagineSpotting: ''Travesties'' is presented to the audience through the recollections of an UnreliableNarrator, Henry Carr. In one scene, as his HotLibrarian love interest gives a long lecture on politics, she accuses him of tuning out and imagining her naked. He denies this, but as she continues lecturing the lighting changes, music plays, and she starts performing a striptease. A minute later, Carr sheepishly [[NoFourthWall asks the audience]] if they "noticed anything" in that last scene...
50	* ItMakesSenseInContext: The play ''After Magritte'' starts with a surreal Magritte-like tableau. The rest of the play is the perfectly rational explanation for the tableau occurring.
51	* LiteraryAllusionTitle: ''The Dog It Was That Died'' is a line from a poem by Creator/OliverGoldsmith about a mad man and a mad dog.
52	* MajoredInWesternHypocrisy: ''Night and Day'' is set in the fictional African nation of Kambawi, whose dictator, President Mageeba, is adept at dealing with westerners thanks to his education.
53	-->'''Mageeba:''' I have very happy memories of London. Student days, you know. I learned everything about economic theory. It has proved a great handicap.
54	* {{Malaproper}}: In ''On the Razzle'', Zangler the shop owner does this regularly, usually, but not always correcting himself.
55	-->'''Zangler:''' Do you suppose I'd let my airedale be hounded up hill and--my ''heiress'' be mounted up hill and bank by a truffle-hound--be ''trifled with'' by a ''mountebank''?
56	* MindScrew: Something of a Stoppard signature.
57	* PopCultureUrbanLegends: Throughout the '80s and '90s, a large amount of UsefulNotes/{{Whovians}} believed that Stoppard wrote the ''Series/DoctorWho'' serials [[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E3Kinda "Kinda"]] and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS20E2Snakedance "Snakedance"]], owed to their unusually cerebral nature and the fact that the name attached to them, "Christopher Bailey," wasn't credited with much else in the way of TV work, leading people to believe it was a pseudonym. This was eventually debunked when Bailey turned out to be an actual person, granting interviews in 2002 and 2011.
58	* ProsceniumReveal: The prologue of ''The Real Thing'' is revealed to be a play written by one of the characters (and a foreshadowing of later events).
59	* TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized: Much of ''The Coast of Utopia'', set during the 19th century in Europe, primarily Russia and France, and featuring the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin as a major character.
60	* SceneryPorn: The London production of ''Voyage'', the first in Stoppard's trilogy ''The Coast of Utopia'', utilized a backdrop of photorealistic video imagery projected on a massive white semi-circular screen that curved around the stage. During scene changes, the video would pan to the next frame -- for example, from the yard to the manor. Overall, the effect was pretty stunning.
61	* SmithOfTheYard: In ''After Magritte'', Police Inspector Foot is always referred to as Foot of the Yard. This appears to irritate him considerably, although so do many other things.
62	* SpySpeak: ''The Coast of Utopia'', any time Mikhail Bakunin is around.
63	-->'''Bakunin''': The Green Canary flies at Dawn!
64	* StrangeSyntaxSpeaker: Most of the cast in ''Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth''
65	* StylisticSuck: ''The Real Thing'' features a playwright asked to rewrite a play by a young political agitator. The brief dialogue we hear from the play is utterly awful.
66	* {{Tableau}}
67	** ''After Magritte'' opens with a surreal tableau, the meaning of which is explained in the opening dialogue, and ends on another.
68	** Taken to a logical extreme in ''The Coast of Utopia'', where the characters are arranged like ''Art/LeDejeunerSurLHerbe'' for no real reason other than [[RuleOfCool "it looks cool"]].
69	* ViewersAreGeniuses: By a dramaturg/English major for dramaturgs/English majors. ''Arcadia'' is written for math majors.
70	* WordSaladHumor: ''Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth'' features a made-up language which contains the same words as English but assigns completely different meanings to them. The result seems a lot like word salad, and derives humor thereby (although there is enough underlying structure that by the end of the play most of the audience will have picked up some of the language and be able to follow the gist of what's being said).
71	-->'''Dogg:''' Cuff-laces empty cross... Crazy jogs... Poodle fire... Melon legs arc lamps... pelvic wiggle stamp... grinning... grape-soot pergolas... fairly pricks double... elegant frantically... plugs -- Fox Major.

Context Creator / TomStoppard