We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
Tom Stoppard is justly praised by many for what are perceived as his technical skills as a dramatist—his wit, his seriousness, his mastery of parody and pastiche (the “country house” detective story in RIH and J, Shakespeare in RGD, Wilde and Joyce in T), his impressive control of dramatic structure (the overlapping of two dramatic worlds and the world of the audience in RIH, the use of a carefully elaborate set in J). Stoppard earns his place as a giant of modern drama from these qualities. They, however, are not what concern me here. His plays are also in various ways riddled with philosophy. My purpose in this paper is to examine the claim that he is a philosopher's dramatist, rather than a dramatist's dramatist or an ordinary thinking man's dramatist. I am not concerned with how far Stoppard himself as a matter of biographical fact may wish to make this claim, although Stoppard has made no secret of his fascination with Philosophy. I make the claim myself in order both to offer an interpretation of certain dramatic texts and to raise certain questions about philosophical method. I hope to show that to understand certain ways in which Stoppard's plays are philosophical is to appreciate something profound about the way in which philosophy and drama are akin—that is, I hope to make critical and (meta-) philosophical points, not historical or biographical points.
1 The following are the plays of Stoppard referred to in this paper; they are all publishec by Faber and Faber, London:
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967)Google Scholar (RGD)
The Real Inspector Hound (1968)Google Scholar (RIH)
Enter a Free Man (1968)Google Scholar (EFM)
After Magritte (1971)Google Scholar (AM)
Jumpers (1972)Google Scholar (J)
Travesties (1975)Google Scholar (T)
Professional Foul (1978)Google Scholar (PF)
Dogg's Hamlet (1980)Google Scholar (DH)
2 See Cohen, Ted, “Metaphor and the Cultivation of Intimacy”, in On Metaphor, ed. Sacks, S. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 9.Google Scholar
3 James, Clive, “Count Zero Splits the Infinite”, Encounter 44 (1975), 68–76, 74.Google Scholar
4 Wittgenstein, L., Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. McGuinness, B. F. and Pears, D. F. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961)Google Scholar; see, e.g., 4.1212, 5.61, 6.124.
5 See, e.g., Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwells, 1958)Google Scholar, sections 371, 373, 496–497, 664.
6 Wisdom, John, “Philosophical Perplexity”, reprinted in his Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (Oxford: Blackwells, 1957), 50.Google Scholar
7 See Robinson, Gabriele Scott, “Plays Without Plot: The Theatre of Tom Stoppard”, Educational Theatre Journal 29 (1977), 37–48, 47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 See, e.g., Berlin, Normand, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: Theatre of Criticism”, Modern Drama 16 (1973), 269–277CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Keyssar-Franke, Helene, “The Strategy of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, Educational Theatre Journal 27 (1975), 85–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 Bennett, Jonathan, “Philosophy and Mr. Stoppard”, Philosophy 50 (1975), 5–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Henning Jensen has responded to Bennett (“Jonathan Bennett and Mr. Stoppard”, Philosophy 52 [1977], 214–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar); I shall discuss Jensen's view of Jumpers below. I should like to thank Jonathan Bennett for drawing my attention to Jensen's paper; it was my carelessness not to have noticed it before.
10 Cahn, Victor L., Beyond Absurdity (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1979)Google Scholar, views the matter in precisely the opposite way. For him, the audience is forced to remain detached from the characters in Godot, while they are able to identify in the classical way with Ros and Guil in ROD (37). This is not the place to debate Beckett. However, I cannot agree with this reading of RGD, and will give my reasons below.
11 Almost the very same words are used by Keyssar-Franke (“Strategy of Rosencrantz and Guildenstein”, 91).Google Scholar
12 James, , “Count Zero Splits the Infinite”, 71.Google Scholar
13 Bennett, , “Philosophy and Mr. Stoppard”, 13ff.Google Scholar
14 This is a theme which Stoppard alludes to in his next play, RIH (cf. 10), but the treatment there is brief. The theme is soon overwhelmed by Stoppard's absorption in problems of dramatic structure for their own. This contrast between RIH and ROD thus helps to point up the strong development of the theme in the latter, the way that it is a genuine theme and not a pretext for technical gimmickry.
15 In Colby, DouglasAs the Curtain Rises (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1978), 29ff.Google Scholar
16 Jonathan Bennett has passed on to me a view of the late David Pole—that if one regards Ros and Guil in Hamlet as one person split into two dramatic roles, then that person is far more than a cardboard minor character. This may well be right. If it is, then Stoppard's achieve ment in ROD is genuinely to create two separate and flat characters, while putting them to good dramatic and philosophical use.
17 Robinson, , “Plays Without Plot”, 43.Google Scholar
18 Cahn, , Beyond Absurdity, 35–39.Google Scholar
19 Locke, John, Essay Concerning Human UnderstandingGoogle Scholar, Book II, chap. 27.
20 Parfit, Derek, “Personal Identity”, Philosophical Review 80 (1971), 3–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This paper discusses the effect of brain bi-section on personal identity, particularly in relation to the persistence of memories. It has become a modern classic, releasing a flood of literature still in spate.
21 Berlin, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, 270ff.Google Scholar
22 See Jumpers, 87, for another reference to this issue.Google Scholar
23 See, e.g., Quine, W. V., Word and Object (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960)Google Scholar, especially chap. 2.
24 The phrase is Quine's; cf. his The Web of Belief, with Joseph Ullian (New York: Random House, 1970)Google Scholar. Quine's point of course isthat we only have webs of belief. Thus Quine cannot allow the possibility of the kind of mistake Stoppard is here representing.
25 See Phil Inv., sections 1–21, 41–3 and elsewhere.
26 The importance of Stoppard's Preface was brought home to me by David Goldblatt, although he would not, I think, agree entirely with the following paragraphs of this paper.
27 I have written generally about Wittgenstein's views on language elsewhere (“Wittgen stein's Philosophy of Language”, Dialogue 12 [1973], 683–699Google Scholar; “Wittgenstein and the Foundations of Knowledge”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 11 [1977–1978], 103–123Google Scholar, esp. sect. 4–5), and also specifically as they relate to his views on aesthetics (“Wittgenstein on the Beautiful, the Good and the Tremendous”, British Journal of Aesthetics 14 [1974], 258–271).Google Scholar
28 It could of course be argued that Stoppard knows of this discrepancy, and that the Preface is therefore another piece of dramatic philosophizing! Relevant to this speculation is the fact that DH is importantly different from the 1970 Dogg's Our Pet which was Stoppard's first attempt along these lines. The early dialogue there consists entirely of monosyllables, and therefore what we have in DOP is what we have in Phil. Inv., section 2. The Preface to DOP, however, is not significantly different from that of DH.
29 This fact has been insufficiently appreciated by philosophers. One who has presented the matter aright is Stanley Cavell; see The Claim of Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 173–174.Google Scholar
30 Ibid., 189.
31 Cf. Phil. Inv., 222e. T. 38–39, makes a similar point about Dada art.
32 Cavell, , Claim of Reason, 179Google Scholar; see the whole passage 168–180.
33 See 24–26, 27–30. 52–55, 66–67, 71–72, 86–87.
34 Bennett, , “Philosophy and Mr. Stoppard”, 5, 8.Google Scholar
35 Hayman, Ronald, Tom Stopparci (London: Heinemann, 1978), 101.Google Scholar
36 Robinson, , “Plays Without Plot”, 46Google Scholar. Cahn (Beyond Absurdity, 116–117Google Scholar) refers to J as “effective parody”, but as “not simple parody”: however, his explanation of the philosophical significance of the play is inept. I shall show this below.
37 Robinson, . “Plays Without Plot”, 217.Google Scholar
38 As does Lucinda Gabbard, “Stoppard's Jumpers: A Mystery Play”, Modern Drama 20 (1977), 87–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
39 In a long speech (52–55), George presents in true Moorean style a commonsense aesthetic, making his points directly and illustrating them with quite straightforward examples—the massage from Mozart, the elephant trumpeting, and so on. This procedure contrasts effectively with the way the position in moral philosophy is put across.
40 Cahn (Beyond Absurdity, 123Google Scholar), quotes the approval Harold Clurman's assertion that the thesis of the Play is “not revealed through action; it is only stated”. In my view, this thought has the facts precisely reversed. The “thesis” is “revealed through action” and is not “stated”.
41 See Stevenson, C. L., Ethics and Language (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944)Google Scholar, passim.
42 Edwards, Paul, The Logie of Moral Discourse (Glencoe: Free Press, 1955)Google Scholar, especially chap. 5.
43 Hare, R. M., The Language of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952)Google Scholar, especially chap. 5 and 6.
44 Cahn is just completely wrong about McFee. He identifies McFee with the views of A. J. Ayer. Ayer, however, is an Emotivist, not a Naturalist (see his Language, Truth and Logic [2nd ed.; London: Gollancz, 1946], chap. 6Google Scholar). The difference between Emotivism and a subjectivist Naturalism turns on whether moral judgments are thought of as assertions which have truth-values. The Naturalist thinks that they are and do; that is, “This is morally right” is true just in case the speaker thinks that this is morally right. The Emotivist on the other hand thinks that moral judgments are expressions of emotion without truth-values. Ayer himself explains the distinction as carefully as anyone and presents as well as anyone the core of the case against such a form of Naturalism (ibid., 104–105). Cahn persists in this confusion in that he regards the amorality of Archibald Jumpers as also a manifestation of Emotivism, when it would most comfortably be taken as a form of Naturalism.
45 Gabbard (“Stoppard's Jumpers”, 88Google Scholar) seeks to interpret this passage looking only for Absurdist moral points, and thus entirely misconstrues it. She takes George here to be assimilating morality to a system of rules which can be changed, and thus to be asserting the pointlessness of life. This is simply wrong.
46 See Moore, G. E., Principia Etilica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903)Google Scholar, especially chap. 1 and 3.
47 Cahn (Beyond Absurdity”, 119–120Google Scholar) regards the occurrence of the word “intuition” in this speech as the definitive proof that George is a full-scale Moorean Intuitionist. But we have in George's speeches none of the epistemological paraphernalia essential to Moorean Intutionism—the doctrine of simple non-natural properties and intuitionism as an idiosyncratic form of cognition. George in fact distinguishes between intuition and knowledge at 71, a passage which Cahn quotes as showing that he identified the two. Cahn is not so far wrong when he speaks of George relying on something indefinable within him—but this is certainly not the formal indefinability of G. E. Moore's moral value.
48 Cahn, , Beyond Absurdity, 114–115.Google Scholar
49 See the chapter on Zeno in Kirk, G. S. and Raven, J. E., eds., The Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Oxford: Cambridge University Press, 1960)Google Scholar, especially 292–293.
50 James, , “Count Zero Splits the Infinite”, 75–76.Google Scholar
51 Parish, Gillian. “Into the Looking-Glass Bowl: An Instant of Grateful Terror”, University of Windsor Review 10/2, 14–29Google Scholar: see 28 especially.
52 Hayman, , Tom Stoppard. 108–109.Google Scholar
53 Bennett, , “Philosophy and Mr. Stoppard”, 8.Google Scholar
54 Jensen, , “Jonathan Bennett and Mr. Stoppard”Google Scholar, passim.
55 “Metaphysics and Verification”, reprinted in Phil & Psych, 51ff.
56 Jensen, , “Jonathan Bennett and Mr. Stoppard”, 216.Google Scholar
57 See his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1980).Google Scholar
58 Rorty, Richard, “From Epistemology to Romance: Cavell on Skepticism”, Review of Metaphysics 33 (1980–1981), 759–774.Google Scholar
59 Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the University of Chicago and to the American Society for Aesthetics meeting at Milwaukee (October 1980). I am grateful for criticism and encouragement to Len Conolly, Judith Mitchell and Fred Radford of the Department of English, University of Alberta, to Ted Cohen, and to David Gold-blatt, my commentator at Milwaukee.
