The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays

254 Pages·1998·0.91 MB·English

by  Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard’s other work includes: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
Dead, Jumpers, Travesties, Night and Day, After Magritte, The Real Thing,
Enter A Free Man, Hapgood, Arcadia, Indian Ink (a stage adaptation of his own
play, In the Native State) and The Invention of Love. Arcadia won him his sixth
Evening Standard Award, The Olivier Award and the Critics Award.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Travesties and The Real Thing won
Tony Awards.
His radio plays include: If You’re Glad I’ll Be Frank, Albert’s Bridge (Italia
Prize), Where Are They Now?, Artist Descending A Staircase, The Dog It Was
That Died, In the Native State (Sony Award).
Work for television includes: Professional Foul (Bafta Award, Broadcasting
Press Guild Award). His film credits include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
Dead which he also directed (winner of the Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival).
also by the same author

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD
THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND
ENTER A FREE MAN
AFTER MAGRITTE
JUMPERS
TRAVESTIES
DIRTY LINEN AND NEW-FOUND-LAND
NIGHT AND DAY
DOGG’S HAMLET, CAHOOT’S MACBETH
ROUGH CROSSING and ON THE RAZZLE
(adapted from Ferenc Molnár’s Play at the Castle
and Johann Nestroy’s Einen Jux will er sich machen)
THE REAL THING
THE DOG IT WAS THAT DIED AND OTHER PLAYS
SQUARING THE CIRCLE with EVERY GOOD BOY DESERVES
FAVOUR and PROFESSIONAL FOUL
HAPGOOD
DALLIANCE AND UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY
(a version of Arthur Schintzler’s Das weite Land)
ARCADIA
INDIAN INK
(an adaptation of In the Native State)
THE INVENTION OF LOVE

Screenplay
ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD: THE FILM

Radio Plays
THE PLAYS FOR RADIO 1964–1983
IN THE NATIVE STATE

Fiction
LORD MALQUIST AND MR MOON

The Real Inspector Hound and Other
Plays

TOM STOPPARD

Introduced by the Author
This collection copyright © 1993, 1996 by Tom Stoppard
The Real Inspector Hound copyright © 1968 by Tom Stoppard
After Magritte copyright © 1971 by Tom Stoppard
Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land copyright © 1976 by Tom Stoppard
Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth copyright © 1980 by Tom Stoppard

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or
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without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may
quote
brief passages in a review.

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
Originally published in 1993 by Faber and Faber

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

CAUTION: These plays are fully protected, in whole, in part, or in any form
under the
copyright laws of the United States of America, the British Empire including the
Dominion of Canada, and all other countries of the Copyright Union, and are
subject to
royalty. All rights, including professional, amateur, stock, motion picture, radio,
television, recitation, and public reading, are strictly reserved. Professional
applications
for permission to perform them, etc., must be made in advance, before rehearsals
begin,
to Peters, Fraser and Dunlop Ltd., 503/4 The Chambers, Chelsea Harbour,
London SW10 OXF, and amateur applications for permission to perform them,
etc., must
be made in advance, before rehearsals begin, to Samuel French, Inc.,
45 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stoppard, Tom.
The real Inspector Hound: and other plays / Tom Stoppard.
p. cm.
Originally published as: Plays one.
Contents: The real Inspector Hound—After Magritte—Dirty
linen—New-found-land—Dirty linen—Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s
Macbeth.
eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9533-3
I. Title.
PR6069.T6R4 1998
822V914—dc21 97-51694

Manufactured in the United States of America

Grove Press
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

98 99 00 01 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS

Preface

The Real Inspector Hound

After Magritte

Dirty Linen

New-Found-Land

Dirty Linen (concluded)

Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth
PREFACE

The earliest of these plays, The Real Inspector Hound, grew out of a few
pages I wrote in i960 and came back to in 1967. There were no critics in the
story when I began it. Moon and Birdboot started off simply as two people in an
audience, until it occurred to me that making them critics would give them
something to be, and give me something to play with. As for Higgs, Moon’s
first-string senior, he remained an off-stage character until (well into the 1967
version) I realized that he was the perfect answer to my problem: who was the
corpse under the sofa?
I mention these things because nobody quite believes the playwright’s line
about characters taking over a story. I never quite believe it myself. Looking
back at Hound, I can’t see the point of starting to write it if one didn’t know the
one thing which, more than any other, made the play worth writing: that Higgs
was dead and under the sofa. When the idea came it seemed an amazing piece of
luck, and I constantly remember that because my instinct, even now, is to want
to know more about the unwritten play than is knowable, or good to know. So,
whenever I finally set off again, knowing far too little and trusting in luck, I
always gain courage from remembering the wonderful day when Moon and
Birdboot led the lagging author to the discovery that – of course! – ‘It’s Higgs!’
After Magritte, Dirty Linen (incorporating New-Found-Land) and Dogg’s
Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth were all written for Ed Berman’s Inter-Action
company between 1972 and 1980. Circumstances have changed even more
dramatically for Pavel Kohout than for Ed Berman but I have let the original
Introductions stand as a marker for the spirit of the time. The Almost Free
Theatre, the Fun Art Bus and the rest of them were phenomena of a decade
which was simultaneously playful and desperately serious; and perhaps that still
describes Berman himself, now operating from a mooring on the Embankment,
on a boat which only moves up and down with the tide, but which couldn’t be
called mothballed while Berman is on the bridge.
Czechoslovakia is a different country now, a great joy to all concerned but not
without its ironies, for while there is no longer a need for an underground Living
Room Theatre, the above-ground theatre has lost the generous subsidies which
came with obedience under Communism, and times are hard.
After Magritte often serves as a companion piece to The Real Inspector
Hound, which I think is appropriate in at least one way: neither play is about
anything grander than itself. A friendly critic described Hound as being as useful
as an ivory Mickey Mouse. After Magritte may be slightly less useful than that.
Both plays are performed more often than the other two. The ‘role of the theatre’
is much debated (by almost nobody, of course), but the thing defines itself in
practice first and foremost as a recreation. This seems satisfactory.
TOM STOPPARD
1993