time and space in the real inspector hound...by kavitha

IN THEORY: TIME AND SPACE
IN STOPPARD’S ‘THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND’
The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard, directed by Charlie Todd. Dec. 1 - 5, 2000. Kenan Theatre. back to 2000 - 2001
BIRDBOOT AND MOON

A Critique says about the play:

"(H)is plays have a brilliant theatricality. He is, in fact, an exemplary autodidact, and a very quick study. In the plays, things are never quite what they seem to be. (...) Time plays tricks, as past and present coexist and sometimes brush against each other on the same stage. In many of his plays, there are echoes of his previous writings. The subject matter may shift from moral philosophy to quantum physics, but the voice is that of the author caught in the act of badinage, arguing himself in and out of a quandary." - Mel Gussow, American Theatre (December, 1995)
"...a comedy satire of high and delightfull quality, and great fun. Even though you may admire murder mysteries or, what is more unlikely, drama critics, you can appreciate its wisdom and revel in the hilarity with which Mr. Stoppard takes them apart. The action is fast, continuous, and extremely funny." Richard Watts, New York Post

"The dramatist of champagne ideas and intellectual curiosity can become dense and difficult in his joy of the mind. But the "Shakespeare Defense" will not do. It is said that we don’t always understand Shakespeare’s plays, either. But Shakespeare is a breeze compared to Mr. Stoppard. And Mr. Stoppard doesn’t borrow other dramatists’ plots. He has no need. He has no plots." - John Heilpern, The New York Observer (9/4/2001)



Cynthia and Simon

Moon’s famous words:
“I keep space warm for Higgs. My presence defines his absence, his absence confirms my presence, his presence precludes mine…When Higgs and I walk down this aisle together to claim our common seat, the oceans will fall into sky and the trees will hang with fishes ”

Use of the concept time and space in the play. It is clear to us the readers that the play is a manifestation of play within play. Where the plot remains together with the script, but only certain characters change each time, suggesting time within time. It is indeed an scandalous affair, that most prominently, we see that the male characters change and the female characters remain as who they are. It is an interesting use of the use of time and space. In fact one that swerves from the norm and present itself to us as a play that is different from the others. Artistic and brilliant.

Yet we only realize the twist in the play after the second half of the play, when the new characters take over, though in the beginning we do realize the character of Moon and Birdroot are two character totally detached from the play acted on the stage. Space within space. The characters are people part of the play outside the play with their own track. This suggests space within space.

Nevertheless, Stoppard seemed to have given us a clue right at the beginning of the play, when Moon says:

“MOON: I keep space warm for Higgs. My presence defines his absence, his absence confirms my presence, his presence precludes mine…When Higgs and I walk down this aisle together to claim our common seat, the oceans will fall into sky and the trees will hang with fishes.” (pg 10)

The connection is made between “presence” and “absence” , when one exists the other is not. Yet, it is hard not to notice that Moon and Higgs do exist at the same time, but in different place. Moon as the critique criticizing the play, drowned in self pity, and there lies Higgs on the stage, dead, as an un-living corpse. Two characters existing together, in a poor state, coincidently, one living the other dead.

Last night…Cynthia, Simon, Felicity and Magnus

What had Stoppard done? We do know that the play is labeled as a ‘Theatre of the Absurd’. The play itself is absurd as we see it. Outside the norm. it has no logic to it or any sort of comfortable reminders of the logical structure in the sense of time, space, or memory, which makes the play to have not any reliable meaning. The play eventually becomes featureless. Thus we could conclude that the Absurdist Theatre is one that the ineffectual tries to cope with the incomprehensible.
Eventually, we could study the concept of time and space in the play using the theory, ‘Formalism’. The play thoroughly uses the technique of defamiliarization and parallelism. These two techniques makes the play obscure.
Defamiliarization is a concept introduced by Viktor Shklovsky. According to Shklovsky, defamiliarization is,
“ And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The art of is to make the objects ‘unfamiliar’, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and the length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important.”
In short “ defamiliarization” could be rephrased as the “deviation of the norm”. As Shklovsky further argued, “that art needs to shock, to defamiliarize and subvert our sense of the normal…” ‘ The Real Inspector Hound’, is an attempt clearly deviating from the norm of sequenced narration of a play, in terms of time and space.
Deformalization in the play is combined with the concept of intertextuality to make the play more intricate. The play to a certain extend repeats itself, (play within play), where the second half of the play recurred itself in a modified form. For instance, Birdroot takes over the part of Simon Gascoyne, in the second half of the play, after the interval, and repeat the same dialogue as did the other artiste. It is somewhat a history repeating itself, revived by different characters, but the underlying plot is the same.
This further suggests the theory of Parallelism whish is connected to the use of time as an element to deformalize the play as a whole. Shklovsky states, “the perception of disharmony in a harmonious context is important in parallelism. The purpose of parallelism….is to transfer the usual perception of an object into the sphere of new perception” in his essay, “Art as Technique”. Parallelism in the play occurs when, another plot occurs along side plot as a play within a play. The parallel plots meet at a point, coincide and repeats itself again. The collision of parallel plays, in a way, “transfers” the “usual perception” and brought it to a new “sphere” of understanding. Thus Stoppard creates “ the vision which results from that deautomized perception” where the play is “perceived not in its extension in space, but, so to speak, in its continuity”(Shklovsky, “Art as Technique”).

Created by Kavitha Ke’ly S040006




Reference works
Roger Webster, Studying Literary Theory (London, 1996).
Julie Rifkin, Michel Ryan, eds., Literary Theory: An Anthology (Oxford, Blackwells Publishers Ltd.,1998).
Tom Stoppard, The Real Inspector Hound (London, Faber & Faber ).