I’ve really been getting into Stoppard lately, but—all right, most of this play went over my head.

I got most of the references in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Travesties, but this one is about Victorian literary men who I’m mostly only glancingly familiar with: A. E. Houseman, Walter Pater, John Ruskin, Benjamin Jowett, Jerome K. Jerome, and, oh, look, Oscar Wilde makes a late appearance.

Too erudite for this Yank. But it’s Stoppard, so it has some great lines.

Charon: Everyone is here, and those that aren’t will be. …
AEH: …Well, I don’t suppose I’ll have time to meet everybody.
Charon: Yes, you will…

Kissing girls is not like science, nor is it like sport. It is a third thing when you thought there were only two.

Like everything else, like clocks and trousers and algebra, the love poem had to be invented. After millenniums of sex and centuries of poetry, the love poem as understood by Shakespeare and Donne, and by Oxford undergraduates—the true-life confessions of the poet in love, immortalizing the mistress, who is actually the cause of the poem—that was invented in Rome in the first century before Christ.

The French are the best cooks, and during the Siege of Paris I’m sure rats never tasted better, but that is no reason to continue eating rat now that coq au vin is available.

Life is brief and death kicks at the door impartially.

Euripides wrote a Pirithous, the last copy having passed through the intestines of an unknown rat probably a thousand years ago if it wasn’t burned by bishops—the Church’s idea of the good and the beautiful excludes sexual aberration, apart from chastity, I suppose because it’s the rarest.

Wilde: …before Plato could describe love, the loved one had to be invented. We would never love anybody if we could see past our invention.

Saw this last night at the Hampstead Theatre and despite savage reviews— the couple next to us walked out at intermission— I loved it. It’s a play about bravery, naïveté, old fashioned honor, and regret. Fifty years from now, what will you warn yourself today? Will you say to be more careful? More honest? More free? As A.E. Houseman’s regrets pile on, it’s hard to not love this prickly, intensely erudite man who never had the courage to be who he could have been.

the thing about stoppard's plays is that when they're about historical figures, you have to be knowledgeable and invested in them to enjoy the play. thats what i have with byron, and it's one of the many reasons why i love arcadia so much. so basically, im sure this play is amazing and esoteric, but i simply have not heard about hausman before. also it's not arcadia....

The pleasure of reading a Stoppard play is the pleasure of being bewildered, confused, and then feeling proud of oneself if one gets an obscure reference.

I knew about Walter Pater, John Ruskin, and Oscar Wilde and a fair amount about Oxford in the 1880s and 90s but knew little about AE Houseman (the main subject of the play). And I don't read Latin or Greek and although I'm familiar with major Greek and Latin works in translation, I didn't catch nearly half of the references here.

This is a poignant play about an old man who got to live part of the life he wanted (as a scholar and a poet) but didn't get to fulfill his desire for reciprocal love. There's a sweetness to the play as that story emerged. But to get there one has to wade through all the arch Stoppard cleverness.

I'd like to reread this play and will probably catch more and more on rereading. But on a first read, it was a slog. Fans of Stoppard will enjoy puzzling through this. If this is the first Stoppard play you've encountered, prepare to be a bit baffled.

I get why this play was hard to read, given the context of the story and the characters, but there were just too many references to ancient Greek/Roman poets for me to give this 5 stars, mostly because those references were incomprehensible to me.

However, I think I was still able to get the gist of what was going on. The play's structure is very, very interesting, perhaps one of the cooler plays I've read (formally speaking). It's always a bit chaotic in a cool way. I also was quite emotional by the end. Something about seeing a life in this panoramic way is just so moving. Stoppard is a great writer, too.

Definitely something to revisit, as there are so many parallels between different elements.

A beautifully crafted play I’m just not one for reading a play format.

Delightful and sharp with Stoppard’s characteristic wit and precision of language. A welcome and lovely reminder of why I do and love what I do.

“You want to be brothers-in-arms, to have him to yourself… to be shipwrecked together, (to) perform valiant deeds to earn his admiration, to save him from certain death, to die for him - to die in his arms, like a Spartan, kissed once on the lips… or just run his errands in the meanwhile. You want him to know what cannot be spoken, and to make the perfect reply, in the same language.”
TOM YOU CANT KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS

Absolutely delightful Stoppard play focusing on aesthetics, love, and scholarship at Oxford in the time of A.E. Housman. Magnificent to read. It must be spectacular to watch. I'm envious of anyone playing Wilde in this. Stoppard has written a gift to the dead aesthete and an absolute prize for any actor charged with the role.

Housman was a middle-tier poet, mostly known for his book of verse called A Shropshire Lad. Apparently he was also a skilled scholar of the classics. A few readers have objected to the inclusion of Latin minutiae throughout this play. I can't see how this could be helped, though, given the points Stoppard is trying to make. This contrast between poetry as love and the scholarly "science" is basically what the play is about as Stoppard explores the differences or rather contrasts between the two "vocations". Housman honestly acknowledges he is two very different people from the beginning of the play; though perhaps, he alludes, more than a bit of an unfortunate admixture. In the midst of this, Stoppard also addresses Housman's loving devotion to a fellow classmate, who does not return his love. Housman eventually confronts his "love", but just as quickly backs away from it. On the cusp of passionate tumult, he backs away into a quiet, studious retreat. A few have commented that the focus of his affection isn't worth the squint, yet to me the muse comes off as drearily average and simply un-homosexual. Just to empathize the dichotomy running through the play, Housman's inamorato is studying the hard sciences. There's a delightful portion of the play when Wilde(or Stoppard, technically) would have us rethink any of our suspicions, at least aesthetically, as he tells the subject of Housman's affections that his "thigh is a poem". Pater, Ruskin, and Jovett make appearances. If a reader is somewhat familiar with Pater's license, Ruskin's peculiar morality and Jovett's dishonesty of convention then this play will read more smoothly. Also, the news media of that day is humorously poked at a bit. At one point, Wilde runs through his list of important friends to Housman, though it is his mentioned journalist friends that will ultimately seal his(Wilde's) penal fate. The basic theme seems to be the road/vocation relinquished.... We're left to believe that Housman sacrificed his poetry for scholarly science and lost out in that bargain. Behind this is Housman's squandered desire for sensual love. This holds the key to all the play's tragic contradictions. Unchampioned, it perished on the same vine as Housman's poetry. How complete this sacrifice made is evident when Chamberlain tells the elder Housman that a new word has been created, homosexual, to describe "the love that dare not speak its name". Housman weakly replies that mixing Greek with Roman is barbarous. The classicist has indeed swallowed him whole. Stoppard helps our judgement of affairs by portraying Housman's method of scholarship as being little more than mean-spiritedness and waiting about for that great philological discovery, whether in word or, dare to dream, "undiscovered" manuscript. Wilde is trotted out in the end for an amazing interaction with the old Housman. Wilde comes off as the whole player who has enjoyed the game of life, prison not withstanding. More than having enjoyed the game, as Wilde tells us, he turned life into poetry itself. Wilde confidently knows who he is and has no regrets. Housman really cannot claim either as an achievement. Some would say this makes Wilde the hero of the play. Clearly, this isn't the case. Housman's life, love, and equivocating choices have created the remembered events which constitute this play; he is actually clearly the "hero" for Wilde as he is his creator and re-creator. As well as his own. Ultimately, the moral to the story seems to be if you can't live life as poetry in your own time, the next best thing is to leave something true of yourself to endure, even as bloodless poetry on a page. Yet the latter undoubtedly requires the former.... Both grow typically in tandem or else perish, often through murder-suicide. Removed from that by a step or two, or more, is the "science" and those practitioners clinging to it. Through both Housmans, Stoppard is making a very clear statement with this play as to where we should be looking for humanity's real light and where all love is invented and sung.

Every single star, for those who go with half their life about their ways.

my senior year high school english teacher recommended this to me, because of The Classics (and indeed the moment a line of vergil about the styx was spoken aloud i knew i was Home), but little did she know that this play is in fact an assemblage of all i've ever loved: classics! aesthetics! homosexuality! pretentiousness! pretentious homosexuality in oxford! delicate meditations/vignettes on youth, death, and scholarship! oh god this play is my happy place. and i should maybe be ashamed that what my taste in literature comes down to is gay english snobbery, but...well, yes, in many ways my taste in literature is gay english snobbery.

я я я я я я я di immortales какой потрясающий текст еще прекраснее чем я ожидала и могла ожидать теперь хочется заполучить его на бумаге и впервые в жизни подчеркнуть подписать отметить на полях вообще все. ну просто до одури хорошо. филологически = влюбленно все как завещал катулл.