Not only does Tom Stoppard brilliantly compress one of Shakespeare's longer plays into 15 minutes, he even adds on a 2 minute encore!! A hilarious edition of one of Shakespeare's lasting works. A great play for a cast to perform (trust me, I know!). Loads of fun to read AND perform.

This is a little known but great play. It is not so much that the actual wording is so good, in fact, any cast looking at this would think that it is gut-wrenchingly stupid. It is all in the presentation. Shakespeare's longest play ever... cut down into fifteen minutes. Who needs the rest anyway?

A spy-thriller jest on wave/particle theory (and The Heisenberg Principle), which depends for its solution on twins.

This is probably my favorite play - but a word a warning. It is one of the most complex plays on the market, so watch out. It may require one having to draw out scenes and re-read parts, and even then, it can be confusing at parts. It's about double agents and english/russian spies combined with extremely complex science and physics, so if you like that kind of thing, this book is right up your alley. I also recommend some of Tom Stoppard's other plays: Dirty Linen, The Dog It Was That Died, Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth, and Indian Ink. And of course, his classics: Arcadia and Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dea

This play took me by surprise. Clever though it is, it has little in the way of Stoppard's usual intellectual fireworks. Instead it is an affectionate look at the love-hate relationship between Great Britain and India, as reflected and refracted through the eyes of individuals, both past and present.

The play once again uses the device of alternating past and present action, with the present characters attempting to comprehend the past -- but the effect is very different from that in "Arcadia", even though it brings in Stoppard's frequent theme of the nature of evidence. This time the intellectual enquiry plays a second fiddle to a more "soft focus" look at people in their historical contexts.

You probably need to know Brits quite well to fully appreciate the play's wry self-deprecations (not to mention its making gentle fun of American Academia), but it doesn't matter -- "Indian Ink" is rich enough to be rewarding on many levels.

Another erudite romance from Stoppard. The subject: Empire, and Indian independence. Impossible to put down.

Its true: this is the best novel of the last 40 years!!! i am so increadibly fond of the stoppard aesthetic which in novel form here reaches a sublimity which is quasi-orgasmic. in the great tradition of stein, becket and joyce, this novel soars with joy while grounding itself with intense realism.

Tom Stoppard's only novel, and one of the best books I've ever read. Mr. Moon, weighed upon by the crushing pressures of modern society (pressures which, it seems, bother no-one else), toys with a home-made bomb as he dutifully records the revised history of sponsor Lord Malquist. Stoppard brings comic genius and keen philosophical insight to bear on the "human condition". Cowboys, Jesus on a donkey, lions, French maids, Oh My.

This play is very funny in places, very moving in places, very absorbing in places -- all of it in an apparently seamless whole of the high Stoppardian quality. How does the man do it? How does one write a dissertation on the art of writing using a cricket bat as a teaching aid? To quote another recent Stoppard's work: "It's a mystery!..."

As what is considered a turning point in Stoppard's ability to write romance, The Real Thing includes the usual ingenius commentary on life and art this time woven through a love story. Thus, the play can be enjoyed for the usual Stoppardian elevated language and fascinating explanations of quality art as well as its touching yet clever romantic plot. Moreover, it is this plot that sets it apart from Stoppard's earlier work. The characters in The Real Thing make up complex relationships and display emotions that add another facet to Stoppard's masterful control of the language. Dialogue seemlessly drifts between discussions of language to discussions of life, all the while maintaining the level of quality for which Stoppard is famous. It is a wonderful play demonstrating wit, intelligence, cleverness, and overall entertainment in a variety of ways.

As Ros. and Guil. used Hamlet and Travesties used the Importance of Being Ernest, The Real Thing contains certain references to 'Tis Pity She's a Whore that make that Jacobean tragedy a helpful piece of background reading.

this play was hilarious. Rough Crossing is wonderful, and in usual Stoppard form, filled with quirky characters. Dvornechek (sp?), the waiter who keeps drinking the cognac he brings for his passengers, is one of the funniest characters i've come across. the others have their little "traits," too, adding up to a wonderfully confusing show.

These two plays (in one volume) are ones that only true Stoppard devotees have read. When Stoppard's "accomplishments" are listed, they always include ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, JUMPERS, ARCADIA, and the likes. But they almost never include these two plays. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved all of the plays listed above (and just about everything else Stoppard has written), and I heartily recommend them. But "ROUGH CROSSING" AND "ON THE RAZZLE" certainly ought to be on the list. Both are adaptations of other plays (but in the same way that ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD is an adaptation of HAMLET -- that is, Stoppard takes the other plays as a starting point and goes from there) and both are absolutely hilarious. "ROUGH CROSSING" is the story of a producer, director, musician, and a couple of actors on a boat bound for New York and a Broadway theater. The only glitch is that they have to write the musical before they get there! In typical Stoppard form, the lead actor (Adam) has a speech impediment, so that he is always responding to a character after several other characters have already said something. Stoppard's genius lies in his ability to make Adam's statements mean different things depending on what they are responses to! The writing is difficult to describe, but a true treat to read. "On the Razzle" is equally complicated and equally funny. If you are a Stoppard fanatic or have never heard of the man before, GET THIS BOOK! You WILL enjoy it

This lesser known play by Tom Stoppard has all the verbal pyrotechnics and rapier sharp wit as his other work, all the interpersonal tension and all the questions left unanswered for the audience until late in the play. It centers on two men who are writing a dictionary. As the play opens, they come into their office to find it vandalized. As they pick up the thousands of pieces of paper, they discuss who could have done it, the one man's wife (and other's mistress?), petty arguments, past triumphs, and anything else their search through their words brings up. It's brilliant comedy.

Seldom does a play this funny manage to be this intellectually fertile. Using a humorous and absurd story about protocols for memorandum-writing, Havel addresses weighty postmodern semantic issues such as over and under- signification, the surplus of meaning, and the floating/decentered signifier. I enjoyed the play partly for those facets, but it is highly enjoyable and intellectually stimulating even for those who aren't interested in the formal study of semantics and language. Despite all these weighty issues, the humor is brilliant, and this is one of the rare plays that made me laugh out loud, just from reading it, not even seeing it staged.

For those not in the know, the author of this play spent much of his life as a political dissident and activist in Czechoslovakia, and was elected that country's president after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. It is interesting to think about how Havel's thoughts on bureaucracy and memorandums inform his life as a political leader and statesman.

Tom Stoppard loves multilayered writing and drama, creating comedy or even farce.

This play is an allusion to An Inspector Calls. It uses travesties, double or triple identities like Shakespeare in his comedies. It is a direct descendant of Samuel Beckett's absurd drama. It is an allusion to Murder by Death. It is thus a parody of many models and even a parody of a parody.

But it is also built with a mirror projecting the audience onto the stage, then projecting this projected audience into the play, and the actors into this projected audience of critics. This is again a multifaceted mirror.

Finally no one is true, no one is false, no truth is true, and no truth is false. All theories are purely abstract, absurd and abscond fantasies. The last layer of parody and criticism is directed at the police of course as for the plot of the play, and the critics as for the performance of the play and the play itself.

Stoppard is a hard hitting satirist cast loose onto the public, the critics and society. Catch out of it what you can. And nothing if you can't catch anything. Too bad for you. Stoppard will not cry.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

To be frank, I've seen the movie more times than I'd like to admit. I was going to give this book four stars based on the movie (the movie was excellent, but not the year's best, even if it is my preferred one), but that wouldn't be honest. This review is about the screenplay, not the movie. Besides, the best part of the movie is the script, anyway. Boastful, light-hearted, and delightful, this romp plays around with you, targeting you with its acid wit. It is also completely fictional, so don't expect much truth in it, even if the background and some of the history is real (including the subtle fact that Shakespeare really didn't have his own stories, with exception to two of his plays). There was no Viola, nor was there a Lord Wessex. This script is not to be taken seriously. But even if you are serious, you'll find yourself defrosting around the edges by the time you flip to page two.

Great movie. Fun to see and HEAR. Very refreshing to watch a highly entertaining movie for educated adults. FYI to reader from Tenafly - ROMEO AND JULIET was written in 1596, TWELFTH NIGHT in 1600. The only KNOWN facts about Shakespeare are his date of birth, his marriage to Anne Hathaway, the birth of his children, and his death. Besides, this was a movie not a documentary. Relax and enjoy.

Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard wrote the screenplay of Shakespeare in Love. The film is marvellous and so powerful that no one can resist that love drama. The story of Romeo and Juliet is itself so frightfully emotional that no one can resist the charm of the tragedy and the pain of the love story. So many artists, in so many genres and arts, have tried themselves at adapting this story, this play, this tragedy to their stages or screens or canvasses, and all have been inspired so deeply by Shakespeare's story that Romeo and Juliet have become a true galaxy of masterpieces and stars. The latest ever produced is Shakespeare in Love and the screenplay is richer, more poignant and freer than the images of the film. The screenplay is enriched with stage directions that are so brilliant, so precious that the text, the dialogue, what is going to become the words of the actors, is enhanced and beautified by them. After a while we don't even know what is the gem and what is the golden bed that carries the gem. The screenplay is by itself a work of art, a masterpiece, and the film, if you watch it again afterwards, finds tremendous new meanings and undeemable finesse in the recollections you may have kept of all those lines that are not said, that are not shown, that are at best translated into images, settings, flying visual impressions that the words of the stage directions anchor in your memory, your heart and your brain with delicate tendrils that cannot break anymore. Any lover of Shakespeare, any lover of literature, any lover of love dramas and hate tragedies must read that screenplay to see how laughter and tears can intermingle in an unbreakable alliance. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Universities of Paris, IX and II.