The Invention of Love (Paperback)

The actual subject of the play is the invention of love poetry by Propertius (or some other Roman poet) twenty centuries ago. This proceeds as a philological examination backwards, naturally, against an imaginary representation of Housman's life in his mind. The entire point is to create a simulacrum of emotions reflecting the condition of Propertius, by generating an elaborate masterpiece of artificial construction toying rather dangerously with the real.

It's all a game, but it grows more and more unstoppered until you have the real sense that Stoppard has let the play loose entirely: shame and confusion reign as Wilde is mocked (this is prepared with dazzling and daring care by introducing Bunthorne from Patience with the famous satire), until, in the best piece of writing Stoppard has produced, Housman unweaves the mess in the end.

The famous opening of Jumpers, involving a lady on a swing and a waiter with a tray, either has nothing on this, or amounts to what it all adds up to.

The Grove Press edition, which features on its back cover the pointed assertion that I am wrong and the wind had it right all along, rather humorously contains small alternate insertions (in parentheses) from the Royal National Theatre production, which give the text the incidental look of a variorum.

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The point of classical scholarship is to study Greek and Latin works-that is the vocation of the scholars in this play. According to Oscar Wilde, to be an "aesthete" means to believe that all beauty emanates from Greek writing and sculpture particularly sculpture of the nude male form. In the play A.E. Houseman and his scholarly contemporaries-Ruskin and Pater--point out that much Latin and Greek poetry was written by one man who was in love with another. What makes the play ironic is how this aspect of these ancient cultures flies in the face of contemporary Victorian mores. To wit: the characters in the play are homosexual and that was a crime in 19th century England.

Every work of art must have a point or it's pointless. The point in this play is how the definition of love has come full circle since ancient Greece: what was once socially acceptable, boy love (i.e. pedophilia), is now anathema. And what is at best today grudgingly tolerated, homosexual love, was common practice in ancient Greece at least among the dramatists, poets, and philosophers. Stoppard writes: "Before Plato could describe love, the loved one had to be invented." Hence the title: "Invention of Love".

When Houseman died he had been successful in his career but not in his desire for eros: He says "the grave's a fine and private place but none I think there do embrace".

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