180: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Are your school days out of sight when you took English, art, and math? What's your favorite Fahrenheit? How sour are the grapes of wrath? Do you need a challenger? Poor disgusting Salinger. Do you love the written word? What happened to the Mockingbird?

Welcome back to Sophomore Lit, where we reread your 10th grade reading list. I'm John McCoy, and with me is returning co-host David Lohr. Hello there. Hi, David. You want to introduce yourself again to the sophomores out there? I mean... I'm on so many incomparable shows. I don't know. I mean, I'm a playwright. I'm a podcaster. I'm a theater person with, you know, entirely too much time spent in theaters. And theater departments. Well, as...

As the resident theater person, it's always down to either you or my old friend, Phil Gonzalez, who's also a theater person, whenever I want to do a play. Because for some reason... that I've never quite understood. People are very hesitant about reading and discussing plays. Maybe they just don't have the, they don't have the... skills to envision the dialogue being performed.

It's strange because plays used to be published as literature, and that used to be a big revenue maker for the playwrights that they would publish them as books. Oh, yeah. I think part of it is that that's exactly right, that it's hard to imagine it. And in the last few decades, there has been a trend of, you know. Do not use stage directions. And part of that is directors saying, we don't want to feel hamstrung by what the playwright has written.

So just write dialogue, playwright. We'll handle the moving around the stage. But back in the day, you had Thornton Wilder and Eugene O'Neill writing copious stage directions. You can read Our Town and picture everything that's going on. And of course, Our Town is stripped down anyway. But certainly Eugene O'Neill had pages and pages of directions.

The New York Neo-Futurists did a play called The Complete Stage Directions of Eugene O'Neill, which is literally just reading those without the dialogue from the plays. It's fantastic. As I mentioned on my episode about... the time of your life. My favorite example, this is William Soroyan, who wrote three page stage directions that were not actually stage directions. They were explanations of the.

characters' lives and what they meant thematically to the play. Oh, wow. Wow. And so they're quite delightful to read. They're exactly the sort of thing that a director would just... put a big X through these days. Yeah. I mean, I, I was trained, don't put anything like if it's absolutely necessary, you know, if it's, if it's literally just, here is why I am doing this.

Then OK, you put that in. But otherwise, just no stage directions. And I love writing fun stage directions. I do that in radio theater scripts where, you know, I just say, you know, I describe a sound effect and say, good luck, sound boy. knowing that I'm the one who's going to be making the sound effect too. So, you know, it just amuses the actors. But yeah, I do think it's hard to...

picture, to place these things in a reality because it is just dialogue. And it's sometimes you get lost. I mean, it's kind of ironic. in terms of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, you get lost in Who's Who as you're reading it.

Right. Well, this time we are doing Tom Stoppard's 1968, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Probably, I would think probably his most famous play was the one that put him. On, you know, on the boards as a major playwright for his generation. I saw an interview with him where he and he said this this line has dogged him. From 1968 onward, because at the time he was going through lots of interviews and lots of, oh, what is this wonderful play? And everyone would say, what is it about?

And, you know, is it existential? Is it absurd? What is it? What is it about? And he got so sick and tired of answering that question that someone asked him, what is it about? And he said, it's about to make me rich. And, you know, he's not wrong. It did. But, you know, and he said, I feel awful because that was a glib answer. It has dogged me for decades. It taught me to pay. More respect to the questions, but, but he was right. He was right. So this was, um, it, I think it's, it's.

In some ways, it's funny that this play has had the life that it has because it is a play built upon a collective knowledge of Hamlet. pretty much need to understand what's going on. It's also an absurdist play with many, many nods to Waiting for Godot. Some highly surreal things, more like reading. say Ian Asko or six characters in search of an author. Yeah. In spite of the fact that it is in some ways too clever for its own good.

It is still a highly popular play to the point that it was made into a movie in the 1990s. Yeah, I just rewatched the movie again just to brush up on it. And it is kind of fascinating because I'm always fascinated by play adaptations anyway and how they change and how they open it out sometimes or why they don't sometimes. And this is this is the movie is one of the rare times where the playwright directed the film. It's the only film he ever directed.

And he did and he wrote the screenplay, his own his own adaptation. Yeah. He said that he felt he was probably the only person who could view it with the proper amount of disrespect to make it into a film. Um, because he was like, I'm the only one who's willing to take violence to the text. And, uh, well, that's interesting. We'll, we'll get into the movie later on, but the, but the movie does strike me as being.

pretty darn close to the stage play, at least in terms of preserving a lot of its dialogue. Yes. There certainly are inventions that he puts in strictly for the movie. But it's not like when William Goldman adapted. his novel, The Princess Bride, into a movie and completely excised huge parts of that book, including the entire framing apparatus of the book.

I thought when I saw that movie, he's the only person who could have done that because he was not only a great novelist, but a great screenwriter. But this is not a podcast about the Princess Bride. This is a podcast about...

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Would you like to just kind of briefly introduce what this play is about since Mr. Stoppard doesn't seem to want to answer the question. Well, and and even even as he tried to get as he tried to explain how he describes it at the time of that interview, he. Kind of goes both ways on, you know, it's about existentialism. It's about absurdism. He he does say, you know, he does admit, yes, of course, Godot, of course. But that really it's almost more of.

Beckett's novels that influenced him. Just the idea of, as he said, the tone of helpless, wry bemusement about life and death and living life. in peripheral vision, right? Everything is over here and you're on this side going, what's going on over there? And that, that he realized. That he could build this with frames within frames within frames and almost like a proscenium within a proscenium within a proscenium, which is kind of insane. But I love it. It's one of my favorite plays.

And it was a huge influence on me. And I think, like, I was aware of it even before then. But I think the first time I read it was in 10th grade. It might be the first time I've been on here with something that I actually did in 10th grade. Well, that's a pretty impressive 10th grade class. Oh, it wasn't a class. It was my mom. Well, there's a pretty impressive 10th grade mom. Yeah. She was just like, you're ready for this. And so what it is, is it's the story of Hamlet inside out.

Because, of course, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are bit players in the story of Hamlet. And they have a certain number of scenes and they're there for a certain purpose. And that's all we know of them. We know nothing about them. Outside of those scenes, all we know is that they were young friends of Hamlet's at school. That's it.

Apparently, it was Stoppard's manager who said, hey, you know, you should write a play about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Didn't say anything else. Didn't give him any other clue what that play would be. But he thought. You know, actually, that that's kind of a good idea. And the more he thought about it and, you know, he turned it over for a couple of years and he realized that it was a play about being peripheral characters. And so.

The the language of Shakespeare, when when the two plays intersect, the language is there. And when the Hamlet characters go away, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are like, what the hell just happened? What's going on here? I don't know. And they do seem to realize they're in a cycle that's going to repeat. And...

The more people put on the play of Hamlet, the more people are going to repeat this cycle. And they still, all those cycles, they still have no idea who they are, what they do, and why they're there. Right. In the original play, of course, they are purely devices to move along certain points of plot. The point where... Claudius wants to send Hamlet away to England, and he has Rosencrantz and Guildenstern take him there. He's given them a letter.

to have Hamlet executed when he arrives, which Hamlet... switches out and replaces with a letter saying that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern should be put to death. And it's funny because this is a device. that I learned when I was a grad student. And I love it because it just shows how completely up... up one's butt literary terms can get because there is a there's a term for this device which is it's called a bellerophonic letter oh yeah after bellerophon who was the

killer of the chimera in Greek mythology. Not a well-remembered hero, certainly compared to Heracles or Theseus or Perseus. Or Jason. But a guy who had a story and in the story, he was given a letter that told the recipient to kill him. And and I was told in grad. school well this happens quite often in literature and to my mind I can only think of that myth and this play in which this happens

Yeah, I can't think of anyone else. I mean, I'll trust that. You know, after we get off, I might go look. I don't know. But wow. Wow. And famously, you know, in a play where nearly everyone dies, where nearly all the main characters die, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are killed offstage.

in what's something of an afterthought, you know, they, they, their, their fate is revealed in pretty much the last, uh, speech given in the, in the play. Um, it's like, oh yeah, you remember those two guys? Yeah, they're dead too. It's fine. It is the most tell-don't show in all of Shakespeare, maybe.

I'm sure it had something to do with the number of players Shakespeare had and how people were doubling things up. Yeah. But... So anyway, as you say, Stoppard takes these characters and leads them through what's going through their minds offstage, which is generally... sort of bewilderment at their situation. The fact that they don't have any real memory of their lives past the point that they were sent for to come to court.

And they're trying to figure out what it was that they did. And they're trying to figure out what relationship they have to all these people. They're told that they were childhood friends of Hamlet. And there's a really, I think, a really hilarious, at least it was to me, running joke, which is in the play, they are... They are charged by Claudius to...

interact with Hamlet and find out what's causing his melancholy. Right. And they're saying like, I don't know. He, you know, his father was killed and his uncle has just taken the throne and married his mother. I don't know why he's upset. Yeah. Beats me. It's crazy. You know, maybe, maybe he ate a bad piece of chicken. I don't know. Yeah. It's Hamlet is such a strange play.

And, I mean, just to go off on a quick tangent about Hamlet, one of the things I enjoy about the Kenneth Branagh Hamlet film is that... You know, when you look at him as Hamlet and you look at Derek Jacoby as Claudius, and they look strikingly similar. And when we finally get... A glimpse of Hamlet's father as a statue looks nothing like Hamlet. And there's just it's not in the text.

I don't know if he meant this intentionally, but there is just this sort of little undercurrent of maybe Claudius is his father. Maybe they were fooling around before. Who knows? And so that's that's always that's sort of been like an added thing on top. It's like, well, gee, if he has any suspicions about that, that might be part of the trauma, too.

It's just it's it's a fascinating thing to play with. Now, there is also a running joke that that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, nobody can tell them apart. Right. And even they can't tell each other apart. When you see it performed, and especially in the movie, I think that Rosencrantz is presented as a bit more guileless and a little bit more full of wonder at the world. And Guildenstern is presented.

as more suspicious and full of anxiety about things. But in some ways, they're just halves of the same character. Yes, they are, no pun intended, two sides of the same coin.

Because, of course, coin flipping is a thing in the show and the improbability of continuously getting heads every time you flip. And I guess that is kind of a question. To play with, you know, what would happen if they got tails? What happens if you change? What happens if something goes differently? And of course, when you're in a play and someone else does the play, it's the same play.

It doesn't change. You know, one of the one of the things Stoppard said in this one interview was that, again, trying to explain what it's about. He said, you know, in a way, it's about life. It's about being stuck in a finite world, which they don't ever understand, even by the end of the play. But, you know, it's what we do. We try to make sense of what's going on. We try to preserve ourselves and then we die. And he brought in a quote by the poet Philip Larkin.

from one of his his last poems it might even be his last real poem where he says most things may not happen this one will like there there is One certainty in life. I mean, they always say death and taxes, but even if you don't pay taxes, you're eventually going to die. We know that. And so it is sort of... Trying to make sense of life up to the point where you don't have life anymore. Right. And it is it is about what it's like when you.

Find yourself in the periphery when you are a bit player in a story that's unfolding around you that you don't have any control over, which I think. is something that can resonate with all of us. It certainly resonates with me considering the state of the world today of looking from the sidelines, trying to make sense, trying to see what it is that... you could do that might have any effect over your outcome.

Unfortunately for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, that's nothing. You know, they literally can do nothing to stave off what's coming.

Now, there is the third major character in the play, which is the player, who is also in Hamlet's, in the original Hamlet, the leader of the acting troupe that comes and... What's the play's name in Hamlet? The Murder of Gonzago. Right. The murder of Gonzago. And this is another thing, you know, that Shakespeare is known for these plays within a play. He's known for it here. He's known for it in Midsummer Night's Dream. This idea of.

Shakespeare loves to make in miniature the action that's happening outside, you know, it's like that one Bjork. video where she keeps going deeper and deeper into the same story of herself. And she sees it on a film and she sees it on a play and she sees it as puppets, which is what they do in the movie version of this. And the interesting thing about the player is he first appears as sort of a...

What, you know, in Shakespeare's time would be called a body, a, you know, sort of licentious guy who is given to vice and who. confirms all the bad ideas people might have about actors and acting troops. And by the end, he turns into something much more sinister, sort of the agent of fate that's going to seal things for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Yeah, I mean, one thing I love about the film, and I've...

I've had this, not argument, but sort of disagreement with one of my closest friends for like 35 years now. She prefers the play performed in a void. And I prefer the film performed in the realistic settings, mostly because in the film, early on when they when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern meet the player. and the tragedians and they open out their, their wagon into a stage and they, you know, they're like,

You know, we can we can do you blood, love and rhetoric. We can do you blood and love without the rhetoric. We can do blood and rhetoric without the love. But we can't do love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. That has been in my brain for about 40 years. And the the way they use, you know, stepping up onto the stage of the wagon eventually.

literal transition to elsinore castle and then you have the puppet show the dumb show you know all the different forms of play the murder of gonzago all within this And and even the ship and then the ship at the end is is kind of unrealistic. And at the very end, when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are actually finally dead, we pull back.

And there's the wagon and they fold up the stage and they drive away. And it's as if their little theater wagon is a TARDIS because it is larger on the inside. And... Where was I going with that? I got lost. I got lost. Stop it. But that it's, it is just this sort of sense of the player. early on yeah is is literally just a body but by the end of it it's like yes no matter what happens to you you are in a play the player is going to play it through

He's going to finish the action of the play and then they're going to go on. And, you know, the action of this play ends with the two of them dead. Stoppard. like to say that he didn't, he didn't want his art to be useful in any way. And, and, and I think he would resist any, any political. interpretations of the play. Nonetheless, I think there's an implied criticism here of the fact that Hamlet is one of these

great men plays. The idea that there are these great figures in history who the story is really about. There are people who are special who we focus on. We focus on our hero. on the villain and all everyone else becomes sort of inconsequential and This play takes to task that whole idea because Hamlet is obsessed, you know, as he is with his vengeance and with confirming in his mind that Claudius killed his father and what have you.

But he's steamrolling over everyone around him. He could have simply taken the letter away from... Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but he has to also replace it with a letter that dooms them in a kind of a heartless way, you know, in a way that he doesn't, he doesn't chose him not particularly. caring about anyone. Hamlet comes through this play, I think. The funny thing is that in the play Hamlet, the big question everyone has is, is he actually insane or is he putting on a show?

so that people can't discern his motives. And in this play, I think... Hamlet is presented as a maniac. Yeah. Just kind of like running roughshod over everyone around him. Oh, I agree. I agree. He's he's quite out of control.

It's odd. I, you know, it's kind of funny. Hamlet almost is like a non-entity in this play to me because I, the things I remember about this, it's almost never the scenes with Hamlet. But but then I love wordplay and that's, you know, that's why I'm going to remember things like, you know, blood is compulsory or the the whole heads and tails thing. Right, or the extended questions game. Yeah. It's a very, very funny play. Yes. But it's...

expects the audience to be very smart and to be able to pick things up. It's unlike, say, Ian Esco, it has... I think it clearly makes its own kind of sense. It's funny to say that it's absurdist because it's absurdist in the sense that it posits that life is absurd.

in the way that Jean-Paul Sartre would say life is absurd and that it is meaningless until we give it meaning. And so it's up to us to give it meaning. Although this play is a little bit more nihilistic than questions whether or not there can be. But on top of all that, it is very funny to watch. And I watched the film too.

preparation for this. I'd seen it when it came out and it's been many years since I've seen it. And I'd totally forgotten that it was Gary Oldman in one of his first big film roles and Tim Roth. I was questioning as I was watching it, why is it, you know, I often feel like, I often...

get angry with an author when I feel like they're just being abusive to their characters. Because I feel like you created these characters. Why are you beating them up? You know, why are you just creating them to be mean to them? And it's not because I think that they... have any reality beyond the fictional world. It just feels like a dumb game to me. And yet, when I watch this, these are characters who are very helpless, whose fate is sealed.

from the title of the play. And still, I found it quite amusing. I found the characters engaging. And it has that level of tone that allows you to both...

approach the existential horrors that it touches on and yet sort of come home at night and feel good about watching the play. I think you're right. I think it's the essential innocence. of the characters and the idea that we're not watching this because we want to find out what happens to them. We know what's going to happen to them. We watch because... We're curious to see how they act up to that point, right? How, you know, what do they think of what's going on?

What do they think of what's happening when the Hamlet play is going on over there? Because... That's kind of an interesting question. I can see why, you know, riding in a car with his manager and his manager goes, hey, you know, this might make a good play. And and he said, yeah, it just immediately he had he didn't he doesn't normally take ideas from other people or say, hey, what do you think I should write? But that was one where it just immediately started.

Building idea off idea off idea. And, you know, it is. It's it's fascinating watching Gary Oldman because. And especially, I mean, it's the first thing I ever saw him in. So all the rest of his career has been like, wow, you can do a lot of different things, man. And yet, you know, a lot of his characters are maybe a little closer to who he is as a person than this. But this is what is always like my baseline Gary Oldman.

There is just such an innocence to him in the movie. And especially when Stoppard added in all these... jokes about physics and science that are, they're, they're visual gags. They're not what we think of with Stoppard, but they're delightful. I mean, basically. He invents a Big Mac. He invents an airplane. He discovers the principle behind the little swinging beads toy that you see on like every.

therapist's desk what is it called newton's cradle thank you um you know he he discovers water displacement you know all these kind of things and and then he tries to show tim roth and it always goes horribly wrong um and you know it's it is kind of delightful that he's using that again as as a way of saying here is this character who

Almost gets it. He doesn't understand why these things are happening, but he kind of gets it. And then when he tries to explain it, it all comes out wrong. It's interesting that he that those are the things he added.

uh to the movie because as you say they are all visual gags and they have very little added dialogue so in a way it's kind of like what we were talking about uh earlier that he's he's taking uh that space that doesn't have stage directions and filling it with what he wants um but in this case of course he's the he's the author i i think it's it it interests me that when he has this

new canvas to work on, the cinematic canvas, his approach is to go more Chaplin-esque. Yeah. Or Laurel and Hardy, or...

Right. For someone who's known for his wordplay, to do that is quite interesting. We might as well talk about this as an adaptation because I'm going to circle around to this, but back to... Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. But when I was in college, I spent a semester in And I got to see a production of a Stoppard play there called Artists Descending a Staircase, which is not well known, but it was an adaptation of an earlier radio play that Stoppard wrote.

which was called Crap's Last Take. And when I saw that, you know, I was happy to see at that time what was a new Tom Stoppard production because, you know, when in your life are you going to see that? But... It struck me as being obviously adapted from radio because radio drama, if it's done well.

is constantly playing with the ambiguity that comes from the fact that the audience can't see anything. Right. It's playing with the fact that you have to fill in what the action is from what you hear. And so in some ways it didn't. really work as well as a stage play. Now, this was a stage play. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was a stage play made into a film. And as you say.

he kind of opens up his world here. This was, you know, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead as a stage production is sort of the quintessential black box production, if you know what that means from a theatrical position. point of view. That's like no minimal or no set with quite often in the round and the audience very close up to the action. And Stopper takes a completely different...

approach in the film. And I find it interesting that that's something you really like, because I know that that has been a criticism that people have levied against the film as they felt like it didn't really make that transition well.

I'm kind of agnostic about that. I kind of like both approaches. But why do you think it works so well in this case? Well, I love the... realism of the settings because it sets that absurdism apart it it makes it even more striking that this is weird when you're in a black box theater and don't get me wrong i love producing black box shows. I love being simple. I love no sets. Um, but when you're in a room that is a black void, of course it's absurd. Of course it's, you know,

It's going to be strange. And so setting it in these realistic settings and having them, you know, go down all these staircases in a castle to find themselves in the same room and then go. This place is mad. And then try to, you know, climb and go up the staircases and then they wind up in the exact same room again. It's a very Escher like castle in the movie.

And I mean, of course, that's all film editing, but still. And I just I love how that kind of sets the absurdity a little more in relief. Now, I will say. This is something I haven't noticed until recently. I think I noticed it the last time I watched it before this. Because I watched it a few times. I've taught it and things. That's just it's a fun movie. But but I will say it has too many close ups and quick cuts between close ups so that.

you kind of lose some of the impact of the dialogue in terms of being rapid fire back and forth. And the best... moments in the film are when he has them in a two shot and he doesn't do any cutting and he just lets them do the speed of the dialogue whereas when it's cutting between two close-ups You get the rhythm, you get the speed, but is that the actors or is that the director and the editor? So it is a little odd in terms of an acting tour de force.

The play is amazing to watch because they have to do the whole thing in chronological order every every night. But I do still I do still love it in a proper setting. One of my favorite productions of it, several years ago, Kentucky Shakespeare Festival did it here, where they had done Hamlet in the summer. Because they always do free Shakespeare in, we also have Central Park in Louisville. And they got to do a special production in the winter at the Kentucky Center for the Arts.

And what they did was they got the same cast to play the parts from Hamlet. And then they brought the set from Hamlet from Central Park, put it up. but facing away from the audience. So it was literally the backstage of Hamlet and just being able to play with the setting and play with the. The theatrical setup that way was, again, was more interesting than just doing it in a black void. The play script calls for a void. Okay.

But but it was originally the first time it was produced was at the Edinburgh Festival, Edinburgh Festival. And so it was produced in a small room. I mean, you know, students saving money. Yeah. You know, when I was on this semester in London, my teacher there for theater was the critic. Michael Billington of, I think, The Guardian. I'm not sure which he works for, but he's kind of a major figure in letters in Britain. And he likes to tell the story that he once ran into Tom Stoppard.

walking out of a library carrying a pile of books on Wittgenstein. And he said, he said to... looking down at them to Stoppard, oh, is this your next play? And Stoppard said, yes. And it was, he came out then with the play Dogs, Hamlet, Cahoots, Macbeth, which was another Stoppard play. that draws on Shakespeare. I like that, but that's a much harder sell because it is so steeped in a very specific bit of...

Wittgenstein's theory of language. So you have to be the kind of person who enjoys watching a play about Wittgenstein's theory of language to enjoy Dogs Hamlet. But, but Stoppard is known for the, for, for, for his, his Shakespeare stuff. He, he was called in to be a, a punch up writer for Shakespeare in Love. And, and, and, and Stoppard has had quite. a career in screenplay writing. He co-wrote the screenplay for Brazil and some others. Shakespeare in Love.

is sort of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead light. Yes. It's a much more palatable deconstruction of Romeo and Juliet and of... of Shakespeare's life, you know, made for a kind of a more mainstream audience. But I do, I do like that film too. Yeah, it's lovely. I, I watched it once. I watched it twice and I'm, I'm good. I'm good. I do appreciate the work he did with Shakespeare's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Very lovely work.

He adapted John le Carré's The Russia House. And I think that's a film where the script is better than the movie. But if you really want... a fantastic out of nowhere. And this is something I never would have watched this on my own because I'm not a big Tolstoy fan. And I didn't know he had done this. He did the script for the recent Anna Karenina with, I think, Keira Knightley as Anna. And it is terrific. And it does, it's got some of those stoppered tricks in it.

Well, that reminds me that I need to do Anna Karenina on the podcast, although that's quite an undertaking. You know, I had one listener write to me saying that I really should do The Count of Monte Cristo. And I looked at the book and... Actually, I have an abridged copy of it that is over a thousand pages long. It's a lot. So the things I do for this podcast, I think reading through all of Atlas Shrugged, it was like the, that was my Rubicon. I'm not, I don't think I'm going back from that.

No, that was my thing. When I took AP English in 12th grade, the teacher handed out a list of books to everyone in the class and said, you know, pick what you want from this list and we'll discuss it. And then he looks at me and he goes. I know you've already read all these. What do you want to do? And just because I was that kid, I went, hey, how about Atlas Shrugged? And he looked at me and just went, oh. Okay. And we did it. And wow, I learned to hate Ayn Rand. It was great. It was great.

That 100 page, quote, hour long radio speech that Dagny gives. Wow. Anyway. Well, since we're all we're way off topic anyway. The other class that I took when I was in London was a class on Augustan literature, which is 18th century English literature, people like Pope and Dryden. And I had to read. Tom Jones for that. Tom Jones, Tom Jones is a monstrously long book. Yes, it is. I had this very funny professor who had.

anger issues with the main female character Sophia from that novel and he said I always remember towards the end of the class there was a part where he said I think there's something that emerges when you've read Tom Jones, maybe... 20 times. And he paused and he said, and Tom Jones is a book that you will read 20 times in your lifetime. I'm like, yeah, good luck on that. Oh, no. No, no, no. But he basically said.

Fielding is profoundly angry with Sophia. And he goes, and I am too. Sometimes I wish I could take her across my lap and give her a good spanking. And we all looked at him with horror and we're like, you've just told us way too much. your interior life yeah my my parents always had a again not an argument but a Not sharing the same opinion on Fielding and Thackeray and Tristram Shandy. And my father loved all those books and my mother hated all of them.

Those were always fun conversations. Well, I'll tell you, if I ever do a podcast on Tristram Shandy, I can guarantee you that will be my least downloaded episode. Oh, my God. Yeah, I, I, I, again, I sort of went to Tom Jones once and I can't imagine reading it a second time.

Okay, well, since we're so far off topic here, I think we should wrap this up. And I like to give my co-host the last word. So is there anything you'd like to say about Stoppard or this play? Well, I would say if if I had to pick one playwright who was a huge inspiration for me, even though a lot of my work doesn't necessarily feel like Tom Stoppard.

I owe a lot to Tom Stoppard because Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead is one of the first things that made me realize, hey, you don't have to do a play like. long day's journey or, you know, you can do something interesting. You can go weird. And you can do it with wordplay and you can have fun with it and you can still say profound things through ridiculous comedy. And so it's it is one of my most special plays. It's.

Not my favorite Stoppard, but it's very close. It's like, you know, like millimeters apart. My favorite Stoppard play is Arcadia, which... I could tell stories about that for an hour. Well, maybe we'll do that later. But I just I love the way he plays with ideas. I love. that he can be very bantery and silly and profound and make you want to go and read up all the influences that got him to the point where he wrote the play.

You know, I learned more about the laws of thermodynamics after his play Hapgood, which is a spy story. It's a spy story that's all about physics, you know, and. The range of things he's written about since Rosencrantz and even since Arcadia. You know, what is, oh, why am I blanking on the name of it? It's right here next to me. The Hard Problem was a play he did several years ago that's about science and technology and the brain. And then just recently, his play...

Oh no, it starts with an L. Hold on. I'm going to look this up because I want to get it right. Let's see. I mean, it won the Tony. It won, you know, all kinds of things. Leopold stock. Thank you. I was literally getting right to it. Set in the Jewish community of early 20th century Vienna. It is a beautiful play. And there is a National Theater live version of it that they broadcast every now and then. If you ever get a chance to see it, do see it. It's a beautiful play.

And to think that he's still writing that well after all these decades. It's just, oh, it gives me hope. Okay.

Thanks again to guest host David Lohr. If you have an idea for a book, a story, a poem, or anything else to cover on a future episode, Or if you have a suggestion for a guest host, or if you just like to say hi, you can write me at sophomore.literature at gmail.com. You can also keep up with me at my blog at... JohnMcCoy.org, where I discuss this podcast, literature, pop culture, the works. Subscribe and you'll get new posts by email. Sophomore Lit has a t-shirt.

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