British playwright Tom Stoppard, a playful, probing dramatist who won an Academy Award for the screenplay for 1998’s Shakespeare In Love, has died. He was 88.
In a statement on Saturday, United Agents said Stoppard died “peacefully” at his home in Dorset in southern England, surrounded by his family.
“He will be remembered for his works, for their brilliance and humanity, and for his wit, his irreverence, his generosity of spirit and his profound love of the English language,” they said. “It was an honor to work with Tom and to know him.”
When it comes to the world of comic invention and linguistic pyrotechnics, few dramatists of the 20th century could match Stoppard’s scope and sustained success.
From his earliest hit, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, in 1966, through to 1993’s, Arcadia, and, Leopoldstadt, in 2020, Stoppard engaged and amused theatre-goers with a highly individual brand of intellect.
His writing was often philosophical or scientific, but consistently funny, a distinctive style that gave rise to the term Stoppardian. It refers to the use of verbal gymnastics while addressing philosophical concepts.
“I want to demonstrate that I can make serious points by flinging a custard pie around the stage for a couple of hours,” the Czech-born Stoppard said in a 1970s interview.
“Theatre is first and foremost a recreation. But it is not just a children’s playground; it can be recreation for people who like to stretch their minds.”
Early years
Stoppard was born Tomas Straussler on July 3, 1937, in what was then Czechoslovakia, the son of Eugen Straussler, a doctor, and Marta (or Martha), nee Beckova, who had trained as a nurse.
The Jewish family fled the Nazis and moved to Singapore when he was an infant.
But Singapore also became unsafe, and, with his mother and elder brother Peter, he escaped to India. His father stayed behind and died while fleeing after Singapore fell to the Japanese.
In India, Marta Straussler married a British army major, Kenneth Stoppard, and the family moved to England.
Boarding school followed at Pocklington in Yorkshire, northern England, before Stoppard left school at age 17.
He decided not to go to university. Instead, he went straight to work as a reporter on a local newspaper in Bristol, in western England.
While he found reporting daunting, he threw himself into working as a theatre and cinema critic, and his love of drama took hold.
Award-winning career
His breakthrough came with the overnight success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe of, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a tragicomedy centred around two minor characters from Shakespeare’s, Hamlet.
It moved to London’s West End, before winning a Tony Award for best play in the United States.
“What’s it about?” was a frequent response from bemused theatre-goers about the play. Tired of being asked, Stoppard is said to have replied to a woman outside a theatre on Broadway: “It’s about to make me very rich.”
He later questioned whether he had said “very”, Hermione Lee wrote in Stoppard’s authorised biography, but he had undoubtedly managed to transform his previously precarious finances.
Indeed, Stoppard would go on to win numerous awards on both sides of the Atlantic for his work.
He was knighted in 1997, and in 2014, he was crowned “the greatest living playwright” by the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards.
To non-theatre-goers, he is best remembered for his work in cinema, which included the Indiana Jones and Star Wars franchises.
In 1999, he won an Oscar for his screenplay for, Shakespeare in Love, which scooped a total of seven Academy Awards that year.
“He has no apparent animus towards anyone or anything,” said film and theatre director Mike Nichols, who directed the Broadway premiere of Stoppard’s tale of marriage and affairs, The Real Thing.
“He’s very funny at no one’s expense. That’s not supposed to be possible.”
