The Vehicle Versus the Idea

chapter 3 The Vehicle versus the Idea

I live a lot longer with the idea in a play than with the story which I’m us- ing to carry them. So I tend to be still trying to get the story right when we are rehearsing or even, God help us, reviving the play.1 stoppard … You have to integrate the internal profound subject with the narrative subject.2 stoppard ∵

Stoppard is at his best when the idea of his play fits hand in glove with its vehicle, the second of the pattern of methods that emerges from Stoppard’s plays. Of the two elements it is ideas which form the kernel of the creative process for Stoppard.3 He says, ‘When ideas combine, then it begins to feel like the possibility of a play’.4 This combination of the ideas and what, on the face of it, are some unlikely vehicles in his plays is part of the Stoppardian act of us- ing Occam’s razor in the creative process. In the most successful combinations of vehicle and idea there is one key connection that delivers up the possibilities of the union – the link, for example, in Arcadia connecting the contrast

1 2 3 4

1 Stoppard, in conversation with P. Wood, programme notes to 1976 production of Jumpers at the Royal National Theatre. 2 Stoppard, in an interview with M. Bragg, ‘The South Bank Show’ in P. Delaney (ed), Tom Stop- pard in Conversation, page 121. 3 See Stephen Schiff, ‘Full Stoppard’ in P. Delaney (ed), Tom Stoppard in Conversation, page 215: ‘Ideas are what Stoppard’s plays have always been about – or, rather, they’re about the idea of Ideas for the ideas themselves are not so much explored as they are dressed up in exquisite jabber and sent out on parade’. 4 Stoppard, in an interview with R. Twisk, ‘Stoppard Basks in a Late Indian Summer’ in P. Delaney (ed), Tom Stoppard in Conversation, page 254.

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between classical and Romantic landscape gardening and the contrast between old, Newtonian science and modern Chaos Theory or the comparison between spying and quantum mechanics in Hapgood. But, the principle of parsimony has a second application to the vehicle. Having produced a fusion to which there is only one satisfactory explanation it also is most frequently applied to remove the vehicle and leave merely the kernel of the idea; most notably in Carr’s memory-impaired conclusion to Travesties, the apotheosis of George Moore’s argument about the existence of God, Housman’s ‘storm in a teacup’ or Herzen’s dream finale in Salvage. Stoppard’s plays tend to arise out of a single, sudden revelatory idea: ‘To put it crudely’, he says, ‘it’s a bit like waiting to be struck by lightning, because in order to invest the amount of energy and time necessary to write a play, one really has to be bowled over by a thought and I stumble about trying to leave myself receptive to this kind of violation almost, but when it actually happens, it’s a moment of sublime bliss’.5 Stoppard explains in the context of Hapgood how he finds his ideas: ‘Finding an idea for a play is like picking up a shell on a beach. I started reading about mathematics without finding what I was looking for. In the end I realized that what I was after was something which any first- year physics student is familiar with, namely quantum mechanics. So I started reading about that’.6

The subject matter of the play exists before the story and it is always something abstract. I get interested by a notion of some kind and see that it has dramatic possibilities. Gradually I see how a pure idea can be married with a dramatic event. But it is still not a play until you invent a plausible narrative. Sometimes this is not too hard – The Real Thing was fairly straightforward. For Hapgood, the thing I wanted to write about seemed to suit the form of an espionage thriller. It’s not the sort of thing I read or write.7

He goes on, ‘I am not a mathematician but I was aware that for centuries mathematics was considered the queen of sciences because it claimed cer- tainty. It was grounded on some fundamental certainties – axioms – which 5 6 7

5 Stoppard, in an interview with JR. Taylor, ‘Our Changing Theatre, No. 3: Changes in Writing’ in P. Delaney (ed), Tom Stoppard in Conversation, page 24. 6 Stoppard, in an interview with S. Guppy, ‘Tom Stoppard: The Art of Theater vii’ in P. Delaney (ed), Tom Stoppard in Conversation, page 179. 7 Stoppard, in an interview with S. Guppy, ‘Tom Stoppard: The Art of Theater vii’ in P. Delaney (ed), Tom Stoppard in Conversation, page 179.