Tom Stoppard - The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays

Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppards 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 Youre Glad Ill Be Frank, Alberts 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
DOGGS HAMLET, CAHOOTS MACBETH
ROUGH CROSSING and ON THE RAZZLE
(adapted from Ferenc Molnrs Play at the Castle
and Johann Nestroys 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 Schintzlers 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 19641983
IN THE NATIVE STATE

Fiction
LORD MALQUIST AND MR MOON

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
Doggs Hamlet, Cahoots Macbeth copyright 1980 by Tom Stoppard

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
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 HoundAfter MagritteDirty
linenNew-found-landDirty linenDoggs Hamlet, Cahoots
Macbeth.
eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9533-3
I. Title.
PR6069.T6R4 1998
822V914dc21 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

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, Moons 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 playwrights line about characters taking over a story. I never quite believe it myself. Looking back at Hound, I cant see the point of starting to write it if one didnt 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! Its Higgs!

After Magritte, Dirty Linen (incorporating New-Found-Land) and Doggs Hamlet, Cahoots Macbeth were all written for Ed Bermans 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 couldnt 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

CHARACTERS

MOON

BIRDBOOT

MRS. DRUDGE

SIMON

FELICITY

CYNTHIA

MAGNUS

INSPECTOR HOUND

The first performance of The Real Inspector Hound was given on 17th June 1968, at the Criterion Theatre, London, when the cast was as follows: