Dramatic Horizons of Significance in Stoppard's Plays
Dramatic Horizons of Significance in Stoppard's Plays
Before turning to Stoppard's play, however, I'd like to linger for a few moments on those plays we have read in Liberal Studies: some Greek tragedies, Aristophanes's Clouds, and Shakespeare's Tempest and, most importantly, Hamlet. These all contain elements that seem to be lacking in Stoppard's play--and our initial confusion, if there is any, may stem in large part from our sense that we're missing something that we are used to.
Traditional drama presents human actions in a social context. The action characteristically moves from a normal situation which is upset, through a series of conflicts as the characters seek to cope with this upset, towards a final conclusion in which something is resolved and a normality (even if a transformed one), is restored. In the plays we have read the conflict may be deeply ironic and the ending tragic (as in, say, Oedipus the King) or it may be robustly funny (as in, say, The Clouds) or more fantastic (as in, say, The Tempest) but there is an overall logic to the action, and the plot has a discernible shape: a beginning, middle, and end. By the conclusion of the play, in other words, through the actions of the participants, something has been dealt with, resolved.
In these plays, furthermore, there is a discernible and consistent logic in the actions of the characters. As viewers, we are invited into their world, introduced to its logic, and follow the unfolding of the conflict according to the rules laid down by the play itself. The style of the play may be very formal (e.g., in verse), or it may be colloquially vulgar slapstick, or it may be theatrical fantasy, but throughout there is a logic which the playwright does not violate, and we thus know where we stand in relation to the depicted fiction and to the people in it.
I stress this point because our familiarity with traditional and many conventional plays depends upon a consistency in the logic of the represented fiction. If the logic and dialogue are very close to everyday life, we call the style naturalistic, or slice of life, or kitchen-sink drama; if the style is full of magic or non-natural events, we call the style fantasy. Both styles are equally effective (although many of us have our preferences), but we usually demand from them consistency--so that the world of...