English 333 Stoppard and Bennett

Th 7:30-9:30

Jefferson Hunter

Comparative study of the plays, films, and television dramas of Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett, in their roles as intellectual entertainers, experimenters in different media, and transmitters of English tradition. The works to be read or viewed include re-writings of Shakespeare (Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead) and of Oscar Wilde (Travesties); films and dramas about espionage (Enigma, A Question of Attribution, An Englishman Abroad); a series of television monologues (Talking Heads); reassessments of history, both private (The Invention of Love) and public (The Madness of George III); plays and films about school life (Forty Years On and The History Boys); drama about actors (The Real Thing); drama about a slightly deranged street person (The Lady in the Van). Enrollment limited to 12.

I hope in this seminar to introduce students to a range of complex and interesting dramatic works and, by playing the two dramatists off against each other, to help students see more clearly what each is doing. There are some striking similarities between Stoppard and Bennett (both came from the periphery to London, both are formidably cultivated, both have moved easily from theater to film and television and back again, both have had great popular success and become Establishment figures), as well as some obvious differences. Stoppard’s work shows more intellectual dazzle and formal innovativeness, with sources and antecedents from the Continent as well as England; the homebody Bennett keeps close to Yorkshire and London. Bennett is openly autobiographical, Stoppard elusive. In shaping characters, Bennett is drawn to the excessively modest, the provincial, the shy, the about-to-be-defeated; Stoppard to more theatrical, extravagant, metropolitan, empowered types. And so on. I’d like students in the seminar to learn to acknowledge the differences while still sensing the value of discussing the two figures together, in a semester-long comparison.

Some other topics to be brought up as part of our work: the process of adaptation from play to film, as with The Madness of George III and The Madness of King George, or the play and film versions of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead and The History Boys; the place of music, especially rock music, in the late work of both Stoppard and Bennett; formal differences between cinema and television works; the place of Stoppard and Bennett in contemporary English culture.

Readings will be chiefly in the primary works, though with brief assignments also in biography of the dramatists, criticism, and reviews; I’m especially interested in helping students see how reviews and other journalism can inform us about important productions of plays. Written work for the students will include a reading journal due at every class meeting and a substantial final project, presented first as an oral report, then as a 15-20 page essay. In class, discussion will be the norm (and will be graded).

Students interested in this seminar please come to my office during pre-registration period.