Sir Tom Stoppard, the early Plays
3. Enter a Free Man
Sir Tom Stoppard's play Enter a Free Man (Originally called A Walk on the Water, made for TV, 1963) is a more complex play built up on the simple foundations of A Separate Peace (1960). The chief difference is that George Riley of Enter a Free Man, having a wife and daughter, has a commitment to a social group. Thus he has not opted out of society to the extent that Brown has, but when he opts out of paid employment the issue of the individual's responsibility to others is more immediate and concrete.
Another important difference is that Riley takes upon himself an active role, that of inventor, whereas Brown wanted to do nothing and have nothing expected of him; even his painting was 'only to please Matron really' (p.14.). Riley has taken on a responsibility to himself as well as to his family, and therefore he can fail, whereas Brown, in his passive isolation, was escaping the possibility of failu re. In fact Riley is a failure, both as the head of a family and as an inventor and it is this fact that creates the tension of the play, because it forces us to consider that his actions might be justified in principle even if they fail in practice.
The positive side of George Riley is his independent creative spirit. He stands for the freedom of the. individual to use his own mind and follow his own principles.
'I was given a mind and I use it. I don't go through life as if it was a public escalator with nothing to do but watch the swimsuits go by.' (p.48)
He finds the ordinary routines of life meaningless and pointless, and he has the courage to follow his creative promptings in spite of the ridicule and indifference of those around him.
'A man must resist. A man must stand apart, make a clean break on his own two feet. Faith is the key - faith in oneself.' (p.16)
In terms of general principles his ideas are quite sound; to invent a produ ct useful in daily life, make a prototype in his own workshop, then form a partnership to go into business manufacturing the product. But he is quite out of touch with reality, his inventions always have a flaw which he has not foreseen. His thinking is logical, but at the expense of common sense and practicality. He does not realise that his prospective partner is merely making fun of him, and he avoids the guilt he ought to feel about being financially dependent on his daughter by believing that he will soon be worth millions from his inventions. He is living in a world of his own.
In making George so lacking in self-awareness Stoppard has avoided having his 'hero' face up to his responsibilities, or the guilt he ought to feel at their neglect. All the opposition to George comes from his daughter Linda, who points out his inadequacies,
'If he was honest he'd come down and say I've decided that some people are cut out to make a living and some people are cu t out to lie in bed, and I'm the bed type.' (p.60.)
This splitting up of the issue into two characters, one 'for' and one 'against' is characteristic of Stoppard's technique. He has said that he writes Plays as a means of contradicting himself, (see Bigsby: Tom Stoppard: Writers and Their Work p.24), and his Plays are often structured around the kind of dialectic process expressed by Moon in Stoppard's novel Malquist and Mr. Moon (1966):
'I distrust attitudes, he went on, because they claim to have appropriated the whole truth and pose as absolutes. And I distrust the opposite attitude for the same reason . . . when someone disagrees with you on a moral point you assume that he is one step behind in his thinking, and he assumes that he has gone one step ahead. But I take both parts, O'Hara leapfrogging myself along the great moral issues, refuting myself and rebutting the refutation towards a truth that must be the compound of two opposite half-truths. And you never reach it because there is always something more to say. But I can't ditch it.' (p.53.)
Enter a Free Man ends on a note of compromise and re-establishment of harmony. George and Linda both make failed attempts to escape the situation by leaving home, then understand each other better when they return. George makes steps towards coming to terms with reality by deciding to go to the labour exchange, and Linda grows more tolerant towards his 'eccentricities'. George's wife has always tolerated his odd behaviour without expecting him to be a success, in fact she married him because he was 'different', and she defends him as an individual, against Linda's attack on his social status.
'There's lots of people like your father different. Some make more money because they're different. And some make none because they're different'. (p.57)
'If he was going to be a failure anyway, he was better off failing at something he wanted to succeed at . He got hol d of a bit of enthusiasm. That was worth a lot.' (p.59)
It is notable in his first two Plays Stoppard gives equal weight to the human relationships and to the issue under examination. John Brown and Nurse Maggie strike up an affectionate relationship, and at the end of the play she is as reluctant to let him leave the hospital as she was to let him enter at the beginning. And in Enter a Free Man much time is spent on the home life of the Rileys, showing how having the father in a parasitic role causes tension and argument between the mother and daughter.
This aspect of the play is not very successful though, Linda and Persephone are not convincing characters; their behaviour is 'wooden' because Stoppard is more interested in them as spokespeople for and against George, than as characters in their own right. At this early stage in his career Stoppard seems to have realised that his talents did not lend themselves to the portrayal of characters and relationships.
The same is true of his novel Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon (1966) in which the characters are entirely flat, being representatives of stereotyped life-styles. The John and Maggie, or George and Linda/Persephone type of relationship, in which a couple co-exist in a fluctuating state of affection, misunderstanding and antagonism is recurrent in Stoppard's work. It can be found in almost every play. But the emotional content of his Plays is at an absolute minimum, the characters being primarily vehicles for the exploration of an issue. There is often room, however, for an actor to create a convincing character to fit Stoppard's script; Michael Horden's portrayal of George in Jumpers at the National Theatre being a good example.
Read the full version of this essay at: http://www.literature-stud y-online.com/essays/stoppard.html
Ian Mackean runs the site http://www.literature-study-online.com, which features a substantial collection of English Literature Resources and Essays, and where his sites on Books Made Into Movies, and Short Story Writing can also be found. He is the editor of The Essentials of Literature in English post-1914, published by Hodder Arnold. When not writing about literature or short story writing he is a keen amateur photographer, and has made a site of his photography at http://www.photo-zen.com
Author:: Ian Mackean
Keywords:: Tom Stoppard,Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,English Literature,Plays,Drama,British,Theatre
Post by History of the Computer | Computer safety tips
No comments:
Post a Comment