체코를 바라보는 스토파드의 시선

Abstract

Tom Stoppard was considered an ‘apolitical playwright’ owing to his early plays in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But after he released a series of political plays concerning political matters of Czechoslovakia and Eastern European countries in the late 1970s, not a few critics pointed out that he shifted his theatrical ground from ‘apolitical’ to ‘political.’ In relation to this issue, he claimed that he was not always concerned with political matters but deeply concerned with moral issues. He has not been indifferent to political matters but interested in freedom of speech and human rights issues. He argues that the world has taught us all that conservatism in the end simply is not fair enough. Thus, the question is not which is right, conservatism or progressivism but how to balance the free autonomous individual against some form of regulation needed for the common good. He has written a series of political plays concerning political situations of Eastern Europe. In these plays, he conflated a series of events which took place in dissolved Soviet with a set of values of the English middle class. In conclusion, the claim that Stoppard is an apolitical playwright is not in accordance with his career as a playwright. His writing political plays is not a sudden change of mind but a long-standing result of grappling with the problems of Eastern Europe.