Tom Stoppard
born July 3, 1937, Zlín, Czech. [now
in Czech Republic]
Czech-born British playwright whose work is
marked by verbal brilliance, ingenious
action, and structural dexterity.
Stoppard’s father was working in
Singapore in 1938/39. After the Japanese
invasion, his father stayed on (and was
killed), but Stoppard’s mother and her two
sons escaped to India, where in 1946 she
married a British officer, Kenneth Stoppard.
Soon afterward the family went to live in
England. Tom Stoppard (he had assumed his
stepfather’s surname) quit school and
started his career as a journalist in
Bristol in 1954. He began to write plays in
1960 after moving to London.
His first play, A Walk on the Water
(1960), was televised in 1963; the stage
version, with some additions and the new
title Enter a Free Man, reached London in
1968. His play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead (1964–65) was performed at the
Edinburgh Festival in 1966. That same year
his only novel, Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon,
was published. His play was the greater
success: it entered the repertory of
Britain’s National Theatre in 1967 and
rapidly became internationally renowned. The
irony and brilliance of this work derive
from Stoppard’s placing two minor characters
of Shakespeare’s Hamlet into the centre of
the dramatic action.
A number of successes followed. Among the
most notable stage plays were The Real
Inspector Hound (1968), Jumpers (1972),
Travesties (1974), Every Good Boy Deserves
Favour (1978), Night and Day (1978),
Undiscovered Country (1980, adapted from a
play by Arthur Schnitzler), and On the
Razzle (1981, adapted from a play by Johann
Nestroy). The Real Thing (1982), Stoppard’s
first romantic comedy, deals with art and
reality and features a playwright as a
protagonist. Arcadia, which juxtaposes
19th-century Romanticism and 20th-century
chaos theory and is set in a Derbyshire
country house, premiered in 1993, and The
Invention of Love, about A.E. Housman, was
first staged in 1997. The trilogy The Coast
of Utopia (Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage),
first performed in 2002, explores the lives
and debates of a circle of 19th-century
Russian émigré intellectuals. Rock ‘n’ Roll
(2006) jumps between England and
Czechoslovakia during the period 1968–90.
Stoppard wrote a number of radio plays,
including In the Native State (1991), which
was reworked as the stage play Indian Ink
(1995). He also wrote a number of notable
television plays, such as Professional Foul
(1977). Among his screenplays are The
Romantic Englishwoman (1975), Despair
(1978), and Brazil (1985). He directed the
film version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead (1991), for which he also wrote the
screenplay. In 1998 the screenplay for
Shakespeare in Love, cowritten by Stoppard
and Marc Norman, won an Academy Award. His
numerous other honours include the Japan Art
Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for
theatre/film (2009). Stoppard was knighted
in 1997.
