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Tom Stoppard Biography

  • Born as Tomas Straussler on July 3, 1937 in Zlin, Czechoslovakia

  • His father was killed in Singapore after the Japanese invasion

  • His mother escaped with her children to India and married British officer Kenneth Stoppard

  • Both sons took the stepfather’s name

  • Moved to England in 1946

  • At seventeen, Tom quit school

  • Became a journalist and theater critic

 

Tragicomedy

  • Tragicomedy has features of comedy and tragedy

  • Tragedy: presents human suffering

    • Untimely purpose for reading is to demonstrate how deaths occur in tragedies since death is not natural

    • Protagonist has a tragic flaw (hubris)

  • Comedy: amusing and satirical

 

Existentialism

  • A philosophy concerned with finding self and meaning of life through free will, choice, and personal responsibility/accepting consequences of actions

  • Believes in leading an authentic life and being true to your own existence without help from the universe

    • Existence precedes essence

    • An inauthentic life would be blaming others rather than accepting the consequences of personal actions

  • In order to be happy, the one person in charge of life is yourself

  • Finding meaning and purpose in a world that seems meaningless because that is how our perceptions perceive it as

 

Recap of Hamlet

  • King Hamlet dies and others in the kingdom believe he died of a snake bite

  • Claudius, the king’s brother, is crowned the new King of Denmark

  • Claudius marries Queen Gertrude, his sister-in-law

  • The ghost of King Hamlet appears and reveals that Claudius murdered the king

  • Hamlet reenacts the death of his father in a play for Claudius

  • Polonius, Claudius’s chief counselor, is accidentally killed by Hamlet who thinks Claudius is hiding behind the curtains

  • Polonius’s son Laertes wants revenge and puts poison on his sword for a sword fight with Hamlet

  • Claudius poisons wine for Hamlet

  • Gertrude drinks the poisoned wine and dies

  • Laertes stabs Hamlet, and Hamlet stabs him  back with the same poisoned sword

  • Hamlet kills Claudius, announces Fortinbras as the new king, and dies

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