The Plays of Tom Stoppard for Stage, Radio, TV and Film Paperback - 2002

From the rear cover

Tom Stoppard has written well over thirty plays for stage, radio and television, as well as a considerable number of film scripts. He is a professional writer in many media, and has won prizes in all of them. Best known for his stage writing, the number of academic books, reviews and articles on his drama runs into hundreds. As the recent commercial success of Shakespeare in Love made us aware, Stoppard is an artist whose work blurs the distinction between 'high' and 'low' cultures, bringing cerebral quality to popular form. There has been, however, undue critical concentration on four or five plays, and a guide to the whole drama of this most readable - as well as viewable - of playwrights is now very necessary.

In this Readers' Guide, Terry Hodgson provides a general background to Stoppard's oeuvre, elucidating his main themes through selective quotation from the critics and from Stoppard's own illuminating interview comments. The book summarises stage techniques and modes of critical approach, and focuses throughout on Stoppard's concern with the nature of creativity. This theme is particularly evident in important plays written in the 1990s - Arcadia, Indian Ink and The Invention of Love - key works by this seminal playwright about which there has been little comment so far.