A SAMUEL FRENCH, LTD. TITLE

The Invention of Love

Full-Length Play, Drama  /  1w, 12m

Tom Stoppard

The Invention of Love
by Tom Stoppard

"From the bare bon's of the dry life of A. E. Housman ... Tom 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 ... It's a tremendous, scaring vision of a sacrificed life." - Evening Standard

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The Invention of Love

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  • Cast Size
    Cast Size
    1w, 12m
  • SubGenre
    Subgenre
    Period

Details

Summary
It is 1936 and A. E. Housman is being ferried across the Styx, glad to be dead at last. His memories, however, are dramatically alive. The river flowing through this play connects Hades with the Oxford of Housman's early manhood, where high Victorianism in art, literature and morality is being challenged by the aesthetic movement and an Irish student called Wilde is about to burst onto the scene. By century's end, the poet and scholar Housman, the greatest, most caustic and wittiest classicist of his time, has secured his reputation in the sixty three poems collected in A Shropshire Lad. The Invention of Love uses the free form of memory to give a sympatric account of Housman in the age of Oscar Wilde, and it asks whose passion was really the fatal one?
Cast Attributes
Keywords
  • Setting Various simple settings
  • Features Period Costumes

Media

"From the bare bon's of the dry life of A. E. Housman ... Tom 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 ... It's a tremendous, scaring vis

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Authors

Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard’s most recent play, Leopoldstadt, opened at Wyndham's Theatre in 2020 and transferred to Broadway in 2022. It won multiple Awards, including an Olivier Award and Tony Award for Best Play. He wrote his first play, Enter a Free Man, whilst working as a journalist i ...

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