The Play as Intellectual Ping-Pong: Art and Politics in Tom Stoppard's Travesties

Abstract

Throughout history, artists have played many important roles in society.

Generally speaking, the role of the artist is defined by the society he is part of.

Indeed, there are as many ideas as to the role of the artist and, ultimately the purpose

of art in society, as there are types of art. This is, as a matter of fact, neither a new

question- the dialogue has been present within art for centuries- nor probably one

that will ever fully be answered.

Tom Stoppard came to prominence in the mid-sixties, when art and politics

were closely linked, and theatre sought to change the world. Stoppard would have

none of that: his work has no overt message, no political program. In fact, what

Stoppard has resisted both in his plays and in his interviews is any idea of the theatre

as an agent of change, as a form of art which is in any sense expressive and

contributory to the nature of the society of which it is a part. (Philip Roberts, p.85)

This is especially true of Stoppard's early dramatic works which, he told the Gambit

in 1981, "could best be seen in terms of his sense of alienation from the Osbornian

school of angry young men writing socially-engaged drama."(Neil Sammelles,

p.131)

This aspect in Stoppard's early dramatic career did not go unnoticed by the

critics who severely criticize him for his alleged indifference to contemporary

social issues; a tendency which turned his early plays, according to Roberts, into

apolitical opportunities for "wit, parody and metaphysical dalliance."(p.87)