Euripides Redux

(or, What you should know, if “Stoppard in an Hour” is just too long).

Born: July 3, 1937 (Born Tomas Straussler) in Ziln, Czechoslovakia.
Parents: Martha and Eugene Straussler.
Jewish Family, fled Eastern Europe in 1939.
Moved to a British sector of Singapore, fled with Mother as Japanese forces invaded in 1941 to Darjeeling, India. Father stayed behind to fight, was captured and died in a prison camp.
Mother married Kenneth Stoppard, a Protestant, and hid the fact that she (and Tomas’ father were Jewish).
At the end of the war, the family moved to Derbyshire, England.

Tomas (now Tommy Stoppard) was educated first in an American Methodist school in Darjeeling, then an English Academy in Derbyshire. He grew up believing only one of his Grandparents had been Jewish, only learning his true ancestry in his 60’s.

Stoppard finished his O Levels in Greek and Latin, but never pursued a University education. He found work as a journalist at the Western Daily Press in 1954, and began reviewing theatre in 1958 (he claims that a 1958 production of “Hamlet” with Peter O’Toole).

While his first play, “A Walk on the Water” was picked up by television networks to be broadcast as a “play of the week,” it’s premiere was overshadowed by the Kennedy Assassination.

After a conversation with Peter O’Toole on his production of Hamlet, Stoppard set to work on his famous “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” originally a one act titled “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern meet King Lear.” A later two-act version was optioned by the RSC, and expanded into a three-act play—though this did not result in a production. At the same time, his new wife Jose became pregnant with their first son.
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” was eventually produced at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival by student actors, and was optioned and produced by the National Theatre. This helped catapult Stoppard into the spotlight.

Fast forward through a number of successful (and not-so-succsessful) plays and one acts to 1993. Stoppard’s love life has been something of a roller coaster: a second child with Jose, followed closely by an affair with Dr. Mirriam Moore-Robinson, whom he later married and had another child with. He divorced Mirriam in 1992, after a somewhat public affair with actress Felicity Kendall. Arcadia premiered one year later. During this time he was also working on the script for the film “Shakespeare in Love.” He ended his relationship with Kendall in the late 90’s, after “Shakespeare in Love” premiered.
(From: Stoppard in an Hour. By Alexeff, Mikhail. Smith and Krauss, Inc. 2009.)
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A few bits that fascinated me: as a playwright who is often criticized as “too heady” or “unreasonably academic,” Tom had very little in the way of higher education. As an auto-didact, did he identify strongly with Thomasina? He has been quoted as saying that he was “bored by the idea of anything intellectual,” and had felt “bored and alienated by everyone from Shakespeare to Dickens.”

In addition, he had just been through a fairly public affair and divorce (his second, both of which occurred amid, though not necessarily because of, affairs on Tom’s part). How might this inform Septimus’ philandering?

Finally, Stoppard is also quoted as saying: “I came here [Great Britain] when I was eight, and I don’t know why, I don’t particularly want to understand why, but I just seized England and it seized me.” I wonder if his early status as something of an enthusiastic outsider influenced how he wrote about both 1809 and 1993 England in Arcadia.