Tom Stoppard: Jumpers

HANDOUT by Natália Pikli, PhD

Author’s note to 1973 text
•	”In preparing previous plays for publication I have tried with some difficulty to arrive at something called a ‘definitive text’, but I know believe that in the case of plays there is no such animal.”
•	What and who may have an influence on the text?
•	Texts of 1972,1973, 1985 with changes, with different codas
Genres
•	theatre of ideas
•	intellectual farce (isn’t this a paradox?)
•	bedroom farce
•	whodunit/murder mystery
•	family drama
•	dream vision
•	circus/vaudeville (song and dance)
•	philosophy lecture

(Best Play Award and Most Over-Rated Play Award)
The aged catch their breath,
For the nonchalant couple go
Waltzing across the tightrope
As if there were no death
Or hope of falling down;
The wounded cry as the clown
Doubles his meaning, and O
How the dear little children laugh
When the drums roll and the lovely
Lady is sawn in half.”
		(W.H. Auden: “The Sea and the Mirror”)

Scenery and characters: 
start – ‘mélange’ of absurd, disconnected images later with a logical explanation (shock)
•	GEORGE: study/brain
•	George Moore, philosopher (1873-1958)
•	His basic questions: „Man- good, bad or indifferent?”
•	„Is God?”
•	IVORY TOWER - idealism

•	DOTTY: bedroom/gut feelings
•	slang for the mentally unstable
•	songs
•	murder, blood, sexuality, empiricism
•	„Rape, murder”
•	Moon – her monologue (changing the perspectives)

George Moore, 1873-1958
•	one of the founding fathers of the analytic tradition of philosophy (with Wittgenstein, Frege, B. Russell)
•	Principia Ethica, The Refutation of Idealism, A Defence of Common Sense
The indefinability of good: any analysis of value is bound to fail, good is not within the bound of natural science, cannot be tested empirically, only moral intuitions can help

Archie, the ‘villain’
•	his theatrical space? Freely moving between the study and the bedroom
•	Satanic principle? 
•	His attitude to morals – pragmaticism (plastic bag), relativism
•	jumpers-philosophers: ‘mental acrobatics’
•	Behaviorism: society forms our norms, conditioned responses
•	Logical Positivism: philosophy=science, ethics, aesthetics are not verifiable, lingusitic analysis 
•	A. Ayer: „Sentences which simply express moral judgments do not say anything. The are pure expressions of feelings and as such do not come under the category of truth and falsehood.” 

The TV screen
•	time – indeterminate: the English land on the Moon (1969, USA landing)
•	First English South Pole expedition: Captain Oates and Captain Scott, 1912 – British stoicism and heroic self-sacrifice
•	What becomes of self-sacrifice?
•	Moon – ‘new’ place to test morality?
•	moral actions – relative or absolute?
•	Dotty: ”When they first landed, it was as though I’d seen a unicorn on the television news… It was very interesting, of course. But it certainly spoiled unicorns” (cf. RosGuil)

The murder mystery
•	Bones the detective (type?)
•	Who killed Duncan McFee? Dotty or Archie?
–	motives
–	hard feelings against
–	character
(who kills Clegthorpe and why in the Coda?)

Cf. Duncan (lapse, turn of heart) – Macbeth,  Richard III quote
Dramaturgical traps and how to avoid them
•	Long speeches of George
•	Arrow/Zeno/Thumper
•	Zeno: „in every way but experience that an arrow could never reach its target” … ”St. Sebastian died of fright”
•	Poor Thumper…
The killing of the pets
•	George: ”How the hell does one know what to believe?”
•	daily 
•	philosophically
•	in private life vs intellectually
•	George: a hero with a noble endeavor, Dotty the Ophelia-like victim and Archie the self-made villain?

The Coda
•	Three versions, 1986 text – even Captain Scott and Tarzan appear in tuxedo top and loincloth
•	2nd murder – Clegthorpe – The Archbishop of Canterbury (another ‘betraying leader’)
•	Henry II and Thomas Becket: ”Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”
•	Richard III and Buckingham

Shakespeare and Co.: intertextuality
•	George: ”How my hair is growing thin”
•	George: ”Now I might do it, Pat” (Hamlet)
•	Archie – strawberries – R III
•	Dotty – Milton, Keats, Shelley
•	Archie: ”one of the thieves was saved” 
•	”Wham, bam, thank you Sam” (Three Stooges, Wham Bam Slam, 1955 and Samuel Beckett, ‘wham bam thank you ma’am’ - also slang for a quickie)