Even better than 'Arcadia,' and that's really saying something.

***

(from a 2004 blog post)

Damn, that is a smashin' play. The circularity of it all got a little tiresome towards the end ("Mr. Stoppard doesn’t borrow other dramatists’ plots. He has no need. He has no plots" -- John Heilpern in the Observer), and was the most annoyingly-Stoppardian thing about it, but I loved the long monologues about literary scholarship and Latin love poetry, real prose structures, and most of AE's lines direct from his own mouth -- or pen, rather. Those are probably just the things that would make it unpalatable to a larger audience, but hell, if they want to watch Baywatch, let them eat cheesecake. The play offers great possibilities mandere for the actors playing AE, Housman, and Wilde (and why is Wilde stuck in there? As kinsman and foil to the poet-scholar, inevitably; but at his appearance if you know he died in 1900 the brain skips in that groove, 1900-1936, 1900-1936, until Stoppard shows his poetic license and registration) but the other characters are mostly ciphers, except for a few moments with Chamberlain. It'd be lovely to see what great elderly character actors could do with monuments such as Jowett and Ruskin, though. (I freely admit my heart warmed toward Housman not just because I learned he was at "their" St. John's College but also that he gutted Jowett like a fish.) Further showing up the rather false flashiness of pairing Wilde and Housman, as Michael M. Thomas observes, "Housman would have been writing Last Poems in Cambridge at almost the exact same time as, 80 miles to the southwest in London, T.S. Eliot would have been putting the finishing touches on The Wasteland....What a pairing! If ever there was a made-for-Stoppard juxtaposition, wouldn't it be these two men, dry in a dry season?"

But in a very real sense that doesn't matter, given such stuff as Housman's two different sayings of "Corruption?" -- "Oh, corruption" and not just the is-love-real-or-is-it-only-invented arguments which give the play its title, but also one of the best moments in theatre ever: "You think there is an answer: the lost autograph copy of life's meaning, which we might recover from the corruptions that have made it nonsense. But if there is no such copy, really and truly there is no answer." And in that you see text and breath alloyed together, as if they weren't really separate at all.

Invention is sort of a lot more unwieldy and awkward than the sleekness of Arcadia, but at the same time, everything happens _offstage_ in Arcadia -- Byron, Thomasina's (spoiler), what happens to Septimus -- and Housman is on the stage so much in Invention it's quite the opposite, he's there _all the time,_ and the emotion just sears your heart. -- I do quibble with some of the ways he _portrayed_ Housman -- he has AE crying out to Mo, "You're half my life!" when in reality what we have is

He would not stay for me, and who can wonder?
He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.
I shook his hand and tore my life in sunder
And went with half my life about my ways

in a poem. Which Mo probably never read. And deliberately didn't understand, if he did read it. And I really doubt AE would have blurted out anything like that. I can understand why Stoppard does it, but...well, anyway, it's a quibble.

Anthony Lane's NYorker article on the play is really amazing. "Lost Horizon: the Sad and Savage Wit of AE Housman" (He says in either the intro to Nobody's Perfect or a Tina Brown encomium that her query about the piece was, 'Is Housman hot?')

This play is about the life, yearnings, studies and poetry of A. E. Housman. It is such an intricate play, interweaving themes and characters across a lifetime! At points, young Housman converses with and questions 77 year-old Housman. It also features imaginary conversations between the newly dead Housman and Oscar Wilde, and a bird's-eye view of the passage of Britain's Amendment Act of 1885 which criminalized intimate relations between men. It is a play of intense beauty with many quotations of and allusions to Horace, Catullus and other classical poets. Near the end, Housman's character recites The Colour of His Hair.

We would never love anybody if we could see past our invention.

what the fuck actually!!!!!!!!!!!!! really good. really really good. tom stoppard when i fucking get you—

act I had me lost because i’m not a classics scholar. act II had me lost in an altogether different way; swept out by emotion, desperate for—something. resolution? it’s agonizing. what can i do but admire and admire the mind at work that made this—every piece chosen and placed exquisitely. i need to see it onstage sometime

combines two things i love: gay people and classical studies

Not as spectacular as his Arcadia, but few things are. This was a very good, very innovative deep-dive into the life of an amazing classicist/poet AEH, who was overshadowed in his life and after by Oscar Wilde. Reflections on a life of achievement and missed opportunities, as revealed piecemeal after opening with his death and being rowed across the river to the afterlife. Lots of classic Stoppard debates/discussions on Greek and Roman poets, the invention of the love poem, textual investigation/accuracy versus poetical mood/feeling, and many other clever themes and subtle allusions. Great short play.

you know when phoebe bridgers sings "when i think too much about it, i can't breathe" ?

that's how i feel about tom stoppard's plays

Tom Stoppard is never easy to follow but the structure of this play is the craziest of everything I've ever read. I know you're supposed to pay attention to the words and content first but they're alright while the structure, the way -- the ways -- everything is laid out in front of readers eyes is stunning. Makes you feel dizzy, makes you feel perhaps the way AEH feels standing on the shore, not there yet, not here already, perhaps the way he felt his whole life. An absolutely glorious play. I can only hope I'll get a chance to see it on stage one day.

Though true to his usual loquacious brilliance, Stoppard is a bit indulgent in this work. I found myself rolling my eyes after fourteen obscure literary references and nineteen syllable words. All right Tom, we know you're brilliant. Quit showing off. Just write us a thought-provoking story.

Lol I need to read it again because I'm still confused (per usual with Stoppard), but I think it's quite good.

I still prefer Rosencrantz by far...
"Making a stand against the natural
and merciful extinction of the unreadable! How very British of it. Bring back the manuscript. . .

As ever with Stoppard, this play is about at least three things: The transmission of truth and falsehood from ancient texts (and the consequent value of classical scholarship), the paradox of the Victorians putting "the classics" on the highest possible pillar and yet abominating homosexuality (which the Greeks and Romans eulogised), the meaning and "creation" of modern conceptions of love (and the beloved other) and the life of A. E. Housman as an unrequited homosexual whose beloved other was a straight friend. This may not sound promising but as Ben Elton puts it "Don't worry. There will be d*ck jokes." Actually, this reads very well as a text and makes you feel that you are missing less by not seeing it performed (though of course, who can be sure?) It is a play that relies more on the script and characters rather than some of Stoppard's plotting and visual pyrotechnics. If you were going to read a Stoppard play, this would be one of the ones (or "The Real Thing" or "Arcadia").

I had read this play a couple of years ago but was unable to finish it because of time constraints. However, I soon realized that I may have cast the book aside not because of time constraints but because the play was just not good! In fact, it has taken me almost a week to even write this review because I have been conflicted on how to describe it and how to phrase my reactions to the story.

The Invention of Love tells the life story of the poet A.E Housman as seen from his eyes after he has died and is traveling down the River Styx. He watches as scenes from his life are played out in front of him. Many include his professors and fellow scholars at Oxford University as they express their views of Housman. It soon becomes clear that Housman's life was complicated by his homosexuality. This is further clarified in the second act in which Oscar Wilde becomes a character in the play.

Though the plot seems simplistic, there are a great deal of underlying themes that make the play an interesting read. Stoppard litters the play with allusions to mythology and classical literature. Classical creatures such as Hades make various appearances as Stoppard connects mythological tales to Housman's life. It also explores the mythology of life and how people view their own lives as they live it as opposed to reflecting on it after the events have occurred. Stoppard allows Housman to talk to his younger self as well as the other characters in the play which creates an interesting tension and dynamic.

Despite Stoppard's quirky way of storytelling, there is no saving this play. The classical allusions come off as being bombastic and simply an excuse for Stoppard to brag of his knowledge on the subject. At times Housman's soliloquies are overblown and merely a lecture on mythology. The theme of homosexuality is nothing new or introspective and actually feels like a cheap trick used to "increase ratings" (as they do on television shows). Overall, I was under-whelmed. I was hoping for more mythology and less narcissism.

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