The Invention of Love

By Tom Stoppard

It is 1936 and A. E. Housman is being ferried across the river Styx, glad to be dead at last. His memories are dramatically alive. The river that flows through Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love connects Hades with the Oxford of Housman's youth: High Victorian morality is under siege from the Aesthetic movement, and an Irish student called Wilde is preparing to burst onto the London scene.

On his journey the scholar and poet who is now the elder Housman confronts his younger self, and the memories of the man he loved his entire life, Moses Jacksonthe handsome athlete who could not return his feelings. As if a dream, The Invention of Love inhabits Housman's imagination, illuminating both the pain of hopeless love and passion displaced into poetry and the study of classical texts. The author of A Shropshire Lad lived almost invisibly in the shadow of the flamboyant Oscar Wilde, and died old and veneratedbut whose passion was truly the fatal one?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Release date: Nov 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9780802191700

Book preview

cover.jpg

THE INVENTION OF LOVE

Also by Tom Stoppard

Plays

Leopoldstadt

The Hard Problem

Five European Plays: Nestroy, Schnitzler, Molnár, Havel

The Real Inspector Hound

After Magritte

Jumpers

Travesties

Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

Dogg’s Hamlet and Cahoot’s Macbeth

Arcadia

The Real Thing

Hapgood

Indian Ink

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

Voyage: The Coast of Utopia Part I

Shipwreck: The Coast of Utopia Part II

Salvage: The Coast of Utopia Part III

Rock ’n’ Roll

The Coast of Utopia: A Trilogy

Television Scripts

A Separate Peace

Teeth

Another Moon Called Earth

Neutral Ground

Professional Foul

Squaring the Circle

Parade’s End

Fiction

Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon

THE INVENTION OF LOVE

Tom Stoppard

Grove Press

New York

Copyright © 1997 by Tom Stoppard

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [e-mail].

Any use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is expressly prohibited. The author and publisher reserve all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that The Invention of Love is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and all British Commonwealth countries, and all countries covered by the International Copyright Union, the Pan-American Copyright Convention, and the Universal Copyright Convention. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved.

First-class professional, stock, and amateur applications for permission to perform it, and those other rights stated above, must be made in advance to United Agents LLP, 12-26 Lexington Street, London, W1F 0LE and by paying the requisite fee, whether the play is presented for charity or gain and whether or not admission is charged.

For permission to use copyrighted material, the author is grateful to the Society of Authors as the literary representative of the estate of A. E. Housman.

From: The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman by A. E. Housman, copyright © 1936 by Barclays Bank Ltd.; copyright © 1937, 1938 by Laurence Housman; copyright © 1965, 1966 by Lloyds Bank Ltd.; copyright © 1964, 1967 by Robert E. Symons; copyright © 1939, 1940 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, Inc.

First published in 1997 by Faber and Faber Limited

First Grove Press edition: September 1998

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-8021-6078-2

eISBN 978-0-8021-9170-0

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

groveatlantic.com

For Václav Havel

NOTE TO SECOND EDITION

This text is slightly altered from the first edition in places where I have brought it into line with the performance at the Royal National Theatre. I am indebted to Richard Eyre for his patience and guidance. It is none too soon, too, to express my gratitude to two classicists, David West and Peter Jones, for unstinting kindness.

T. S.

January 1998

PRODUCTION CREDITS

The Invention of Love opened at the Cottesloe Theatre, Royal National Theatre, London, on 25 September 1997.

The cast in order of speaking was as follows:

The Invention of Love had its American premiere, performed by the American Conservatory Theater (Carey Perloff, Artistic Director), at the Geary Theater, San Francisco, on 6 January 2000.

The cast in order of speaking was as follows:

The Invention of Love premiered on Broadway in New York on 29 March 2001 at the Lyceum Theatre.

The cast in order of speaking was as follows:

CHARACTERS

AEH, A. E. Housman, aged 77

Housman, A. E. Housman, aged from 18 to 26

Alfred William Pollard, aged from 18 to 26

Moses John Jackson, aged from 19 to 27

Charon, ferryman of the Underworld

In Act One:

Mark Pattison, Rector of Lincoln College, aged 64, a classical scholar

Walter Pater, critic, essayist, scholar, fellow of Brasenose, aged 38

John Ruskin, pre-eminent art critic, aged 58

Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol, aged 60

Robinson Ellis, a Latin scholar, aged 45

In addition, the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University and a Balliol Student

In Act Two:

Katharine Housman, sister of AEH, at the ages of 19 and 35

Henry Labouchere, Liberal MP and journalist, at the ages of 54 and 64

Frank Harris, writer and journalist, at the ages of 29 and about 40

W. T. Stead, editor and journalist, at the ages of 36 and 46

Chamberlain, a clerk in his 20s, then 30s

John Percival Postgate, a Latin scholar, aged about 40

Jerome K. Jerome, humourist and editor, aged 38

Oscar Wilde, aged 41

In addition, Bunthorne, a character in Patience by Gilbert and Sullivan, and the Chairman and Members of the Selection Committee

The two groups of characters appearing only in Act One or Act Two, respectively, may be played by the same group of actors.

References in the stage directions to river, boats, garden, etc., need