The Real Inspector Hound and Metafiction
THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND
Dramatic criticism of the play by Tom Stoppard | |
| |
|In The Real Inspector Hound Stoppard makes fun of the critical jargon used by reviewers; when they make quasi-official |
|pronouncements, they are pompous and silly. Of course the satire is especially effective when it is partly self-satire, coming |
|from a former theater critic who knows these pretensions from the inside. |
|KENNETH J. RECKFORD, Aristophanes' Old-And-New Comedy |
|In the twentieth century Tom Stoppard has gone further than most in exploring the comic potential of theatre-within-theatre. The |
|Real Inspector Hound starts out sanely enough with two theatre critics, Moon and Birdboot, watching and commenting upon a corny |
|country-house mystery, the cliché-sodden whodunnit parodying its genre just as the critics' cliché-sodden commentary parodies its|
|genre. Yet at an early stage the theatrical levels begin to blur, as Moon claims to have seen Birdboot out on the town with |
|Felicity, one of the fictional females. Midway through--when nobody else is onstage--Birdboot ventures to answer the persistently|
|ringing stage-phone only to find it is his real wife who is speaking (possibly suspecting his fictive flirtations). Once |
|"onstage," he gets caught up in an embarrassing barney with Felicity that turns into an almost verbatim reproduction of the |
|clichés from an earlier (fictive) confrontation scene between Felicity and Simon Gascoyne. Birdboot has in a sense "become" |
|Simon, adopting his dramatic role. Not surprisingly Birdboot is soon to bite the metatheatrical dust, and Moon, rushing onstage |
|to the body of his fellow critic, finds himself playing
Dramatic criticism of the play by Tom Stoppard | |
| |
|In The Real Inspector Hound Stoppard makes fun of the critical jargon used by reviewers; when they make quasi-official |
|pronouncements, they are pompous and silly. Of course the satire is especially effective when it is partly self-satire, coming |
|from a former theater critic who knows these pretensions from the inside. |
|KENNETH J. RECKFORD, Aristophanes' Old-And-New Comedy |
|In the twentieth century Tom Stoppard has gone further than most in exploring the comic potential of theatre-within-theatre. The |
|Real Inspector Hound starts out sanely enough with two theatre critics, Moon and Birdboot, watching and commenting upon a corny |
|country-house mystery, the cliché-sodden whodunnit parodying its genre just as the critics' cliché-sodden commentary parodies its|
|genre. Yet at an early stage the theatrical levels begin to blur, as Moon claims to have seen Birdboot out on the town with |
|Felicity, one of the fictional females. Midway through--when nobody else is onstage--Birdboot ventures to answer the persistently|
|ringing stage-phone only to find it is his real wife who is speaking (possibly suspecting his fictive flirtations). Once |
|"onstage," he gets caught up in an embarrassing barney with Felicity that turns into an almost verbatim reproduction of the |
|clichés from an earlier (fictive) confrontation scene between Felicity and Simon Gascoyne. Birdboot has in a sense "become" |
|Simon, adopting his dramatic role. Not surprisingly Birdboot is soon to bite the metatheatrical dust, and Moon, rushing onstage |
|to the body of his fellow critic, finds himself playing