Tom Stoppard, 1937-2025

Commentary ^ | 29 Nov 2025 | John Podhoretz

[Rummyfan]

Tom Stoppard did something no writer had ever done before: He wrote his masterpiece at the age of 82, after having written other masterpieces that would have been the capstones of any other writer’s career in his thirties, his forties, his fifties, and his sixties. That masterpiece was Leopoldstadt, and it was first staged in January 2020—45 years after the initial production of his first unambiguously great work, the astoundingly inventive and thrillingly alive farce called Travesties. It had come to the stage eight years after Stoppard had stunned the theatrical world at the age of 29 with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, an unclassifiable homage-tribute-jape that tossed Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett into a blender. But like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Travesties was something of a literary game, and Stoppard was determined to prove he had deeper stuff within him. He did so with The Real Thing in 1981, a bracing and complex autobiographical comedy about an anti-Communist writer who discovers his radical-chic wife is having an affair and how his desperate efforts to transmute this human catastrophe into amusing art cannot spare him from the pain of the real world.

No one in this era produced more, better, or more consistent work over a longer period of time than Stoppard. Between television, radio, and theater, he wrote 34 plays. Those plays delved into heady intellectual terrain, from the disputes of liberal theorists in pre-revolutionary Russia (The Coast of Utopia) to the mysteries of quantum physics (Hapgood) to the British intellectual ferment at the beginning of the 19th century (Arcadia). Rich, immensely ornate, and written with a grandeur and ambition all but unknown in contemporary letters, Stoppard was literally without peer. For the screen, he had credits on 13 films, and won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love….

---

TOPICS: History; Miscellaneous; Society
KEYWORDS: arcadia; hapgood; johnpodhoretz; leopoldstadt; samuelbeckett; shakespeareinlove; therealthing; tomstoppard; travesties

[rlmorel]

I enjoyed watching “Shakespeare in Love” but when it won the Oscar over “Saving Private Ryan”, that was when I finally stopped watching the Oscars.

[ClearCase_guy]

I saw “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” performed at the American Repertory Theater at Harvard when I was perhaps 15. (Around 1975 or so). Really changed my whole thinking about theater. A play within a play, about a play. And about existentialism. And about language. And funny as hell. I eventually saw “The Real Inspector Hound”, “Travesties”, “Jumpers”, and “Dogg’s Hamlet/Cahoot’s MacBeth”. Stoppard was definitely my favorite playwright. RIP.

[Honorary Serb]

Memory Eternal!

[FreedomPoster]

While I’ve heard of it, have never seen it, not much of a theater person. But generally enjoyed Shakespeare in high school, despite not liking one of the teachers in particular.

I wonder if Steyn will comment on Stoppard’s passing? It would seem to be in his space.

Based on your comments, I may have to find a production to stream. Send a link if you have a known good one, please.

[ClearCase_guy]

I don’t know off hand where it’s being streamed, but this wikipedia entry might be of interest:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosencrantz_%26_Guildenstern_Are_Dead_(film)

The film stars Gary Oldman and Tim Roth who are no slouches. I have not seen the film — as it says in the wikipedia article, the play is very much a play. It is good to see it on a stage. It doesn’t work quite so well as a film. I think that’s probably safe to say about his other plays.

[Flycatcher]

If you liked that Stoppard play, you would certainly enjoy Pirandello’s masterpiece “Six Characters in Search of an Author” as well as e e cumming’s only play, entitled “Him.” Both are literary masterpieces and both were written decades before Stoppard came along.

[TBP]

Stoppard now joins Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

[Orosius]

If I’m not mistaken, English was Stoppard’s second language, too. He was born Czech.