Reviewed by:

• Tom Stoppard In Context ed. by David Kornhaber and James N. Loehlin
• Katherine Weiss

Tom Stoppard in Context, a collection of thirty-one short essays, is part of Cambridge University Press’s Literature in Context series aimed to enhance its readers’ appreciation of an author by providing the “literary, political, intellectual, social and cultural” context that has “bearing on his or her work,” as noted on the publisher’s website. To help the reader navigate the “context” provided in this particular volume, editors David Kornhaber and James Loehlin have grouped the essays in six parts: Origins; Influences; Ideas; Aesthetics; Politics; and Page, Stage, and Screen. The volume’s many contributors help to paint a portrait of Stoppard as one of Britain’s eminent playwrights, whose conservatism and extraordinary wit continues to win over audiences.

Stoppard emerges as a deeply intelligent writer and thinker, engaged in big ideas. Parts 3 (“Ideas”) and 5 (“Politics”) examine the ways in which Stop-pard incorporates philosophical, historical, scientific, and mathematical concepts in his plays. Many of the chapters come to a similar conclusion: that Stoppard’s interest in big ideas, despite his lack of a university education, is astonishing. Thankfully, his use of these ideas is not academic. Kornhaber, in chapter 10, sums up Stoppard’s use of analytic philosophy, writing that Stoppard saw “the philosophical potential” of “theatre itself, a potential he often saw as lacking in academic philosophy: the potential to contemplate what it actually means to be human” (87). William W. Demastes takes Stop-pard’s use of ideas a step further, arguing that scientific thought provides the playwright with the very questions of “behavioural consequences” (92), which evolutionary science attempts to answer. For Demastes, Stoppard is content with those questions remaining unanswered.

Part 2, “Influences,” includes chapters on Stop-pard’s debt to Russian literature, William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and Samuel Beckett—the usual suspects and hardly surprising for anyone familiar with Stoppard’s plays. What is surprising, though, is just how often Beckett appears in the book. In addition to Kersti Tarien Powell’s essay, “Samuel Beckett” (chapter 8), the Irish writer appears in all six sections of the book. His presence outdoes Shakespeare’s and Wilde’s. However, in most chapters in which Beckett appears, the discussion amounts to a brief pointing to Stoppard’s debt to Beckett as seen in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. What sets Powell’s chapter apart is that her exploration of Stoppard’s engagement with Beckett goes beyond Stoppard’s 1966 play. She reproduces a poignant section of the London weekly Scene in which Stoppard reviewed the 1962 Royal Court production of Happy Days. Commenting on Stoppard’s assessment of Beckett’s play, Powell writes, “he now found that Happy Days had stripped away too much; that was the danger that Stoppard perceived in experimental drama” (65). In examining both Stoppard’s explicit use of Beckett and his criticism of Beckett, Powell concludes that “[i]n Beckett, Stoppard discovered his dramatic principles and the foundation of his humour” (68).

The volume is also strong in its discussion of Václav Havel’s profound impact on Stoppard’s personal, artistic, and political life. Powell touches on Stoppard’s commitment to Havel, free speech, and human rights, tying it to Beckett’s Catastrophe (1982), a play he dedicated to Havel and which was commissioned by the Association Internationale de Défense des Artistes to protest censorship and Havel’s imprisonment (68). Michael Žantovský’s chapter on Havel (chapter 9) follows Powell’s on Beckett, providing a natural transition to explore the friendship Havel and Stoppard shared and the ways in which Havel moved Stoppard into a more political space. While his work before the mid-1970s avoided politics, Stoppard’s encounter with Havel and his awareness of Havel’s struggles, as well as his embrace of his own origins, led him to become, as Žantovský argues, “fully preoccupied with politics”; although Stoppard continues to address the political in regard to “moral aspects [rather] than with its role as a...

 审阅者：

• 
  汤姆·斯托帕德在上下文中编辑。作者：大卫·科恩哈伯 (David Kornhaber) 和詹姆斯·N·洛林 (James N. Loehlin)
•  凯瑟琳·韦斯

《汤姆·斯托帕德语境》是由三十一篇短文组成的合集，是剑桥大学出版社“语境文学”系列的一部分，旨在通过提供“文学、政治、知识、社会和文化”背景来提高读者对作者的欣赏。正如出版商网站上所指出的，“对其工作有影响”。为了帮助读者了解这本书中提供的“背景”，编辑大卫·科恩哈伯和詹姆斯·洛林将这些文章分为六个部分：起源；影响；想法；美学;政治;以及页面、舞台和屏幕。该书的众多贡献者将斯托帕德描绘成英国著名剧作家之一，他的保守主义和非凡的智慧继续赢得了观众的青睐。

斯托帕德是一位非常聪明的作家和思想家，致力于伟大的想法。第三部分（“思想”）和第五部分（“政治”）探讨了斯托帕德在他的戏剧中融入哲学、历史、科学和数学概念的方式。许多章节都得出了类似的结论：尽管斯托帕德没有受过大学教育，但他对伟大想法的兴趣令人惊讶。值得庆幸的是，他对这些想法的运用并不是学术性的。科恩哈伯在第十章中总结了斯托帕德对分析哲学的运用，写道斯托帕德看到了“戏剧本身的哲学潜力”，他经常认为学术哲学中缺乏这种潜力：思考作为人类实际上意味着什么的潜力。 ”（87）。威廉·W·德马斯特斯（William W. Demastes）将斯托帕德对思想的运用更进一步，认为科学思想为剧作家提供了“行为后果”的问题（92），而进化科学试图回答这个问题。对于德马斯特斯来说，斯托帕德对这些尚未得到解答的问题感到满意。

第二部分“影响”包括关于斯托帕德受俄罗斯文学、威廉·莎士比亚、奥斯卡·王尔德和塞缪尔·贝克特影响的章节——这些都是常见的嫌疑人，对于熟悉斯托帕德戏剧的人来说这并不奇怪。然而，令人惊讶的是贝克特在书中出现的频率。除了克斯蒂·塔里恩·鲍威尔 (Kersti Tarien Powell) 的文章“塞缪尔·贝克特”（第 8 章）之外，这位爱尔兰作家还出现在本书的所有六个部分中。他的存在超越了莎士比亚和王尔德。然而，在贝克特出现的大多数章节中，讨论都只是简短地指出斯托帕德对贝克特的亏欠，正如《罗森克兰茨》和《吉尔登斯特恩之死》中所见。鲍威尔这一章的与众不同之处在于，她对斯托帕德与贝克特订婚的探索超越了斯托帕德 1966 年的戏剧。她重现了伦敦周刊《Scene》中的一段令人心酸的部分，其中斯托帕德评论了 1962 年皇家宫廷制作的《快乐时光》。鲍威尔在评论斯托帕德对贝克特戏剧的评价时写道，“他现在发现《快乐时光》剥离了太多；这就是斯托帕德在实验戏剧中察觉到的危险”（65）。在研究斯托帕德对贝克特的明确使用和他对贝克特的批评时，鲍威尔得出结论：“在贝克特身上，斯托帕德发现了他的戏剧原则和幽默的基础”（68）。

该书还强烈讨论了瓦茨拉夫·哈维尔对斯托帕德个人、艺术和政治生活的深远影响。鲍威尔谈到了斯托帕德对哈维尔、言论自由和人权的承诺，并将其与贝克特的灾难（1982）联系起来，这是他献给哈维尔的一部戏剧，受国际艺术家保护协会委托，抗议审查制度和哈维尔的监禁（68 ）。迈克尔·赞托夫斯基关于哈维尔的章节（第 9 章）是继鲍威尔关于贝克特的章节之后，提供了一个自然的过渡来探索哈维尔和斯托帕德的友谊，以及哈维尔如何将斯托帕德带入一个更具政治性的空间。虽然斯托帕德在 20 世纪 70 年代中期之前的作品都回避了政治，但斯托帕德与哈维尔的相遇以及他对哈维尔斗争的认识，以及他对自己出身的接受，导致他变得“完全专注于政治”，正如桑托夫斯基所说；尽管斯托帕德继续从“道德方面[而不是]其作为......的角色来解决政治问题。