It is 1936 and A. E. Housman is being ferried across the river Styx, glad to be dead at last. His memories are dramatically alive. The river that flows through Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love connects Hades with the Oxford of Housman's youth: High Victorian morality is under siege from the Aesthetic movement, and an Irish student called Wilde is preparing to burst onto the London scene.
On his journey the scholar and poet who is now the elder Housman confronts his younger self, and the memories of the man he loved his entire life, Moses Jackson-the handsome athlete who could not return his feelings. As if a dream, The Invention of Love inhabits Housman's imagination, illuminating both the pain of hopeless love and passion displaced into poetry and the study of classical texts. The author of A Shropshire Lad lived almost invisibly in the shadow of the flamboyant Oscar Wilde, and died old and venerated-but whose passion was truly the fatal one?
Editorial Reviews
"Vintage Stoppard in its intelligence and wit." --Matt Wolf, Variety
"Tom Stoppard at his best; manipulative, inquisitive, irresistible...a master at work." --Sunday Times (London)
"So beautifully constructed that the playwright seems to be discovering his play only one jump ahead of the audience. It has that sense of surprise and wonder." --Vincent Canby, The New York Times
"A magical memory play which meanders like an elaborate dream...Stoppard has been inspired to write the most emotionally powerful and enthralling play of his career. Never before has he written with such exciting eloquence." --Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard
"Some of the finest, most passionate, and most disarmingly brilliant dramatic writing that he has given us."--Alastair Macaulay, The Financial Times
About the Author
Tom Stoppard is the author of such seminal works as Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Arcadia, The Real Thing, Travesties, Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, and The Real Inspector Hound.
