The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays

Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard’s 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 You’re Glad I’ll Be Frank, Albert’s 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
DOGG’S HAMLET, CAHOOT’S MACBETH
ROUGH CROSSING and ON THE RAZZLE
(adapted from Ferenc Molnár’s
Play at the Castle
and Johann Nestroy’s
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 Schintzler’s
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 1964–1983
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
Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s 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 Hound—After Magritte—Dirty
linen—New-found-land—Dirty linen—Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s
Macbeth.
eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9533-3
I. Title.
PR6069.T6R4   1998
822V914—dc21      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

Preface

The Real Inspector Hound

After Magritte

Dirty Linen

New-Found-Land

Dirty Linen (concluded)

Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth

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, Moon’s 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 playwright’s line about characters taking over a story. I never quite believe it myself. Looking back at
Hound
, I can’t see the point of starting to write it if one didn’t 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! – ‘It’s Higgs!’

After Magritte, Dirty Linen
(incorporating
New-Found-Land
) and
Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth
were all written for Ed Berman’s 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 couldn’t 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:

Directed by Robert Chetwyn

Designed by Hutchinson Scott

The first thing is that the audience appear to be confronted by their own reflection in a huge mirror. Impossible. However, back there in the gloom—not at the footlights—a bank of plush seats and pale smudges of faces. (The total effect having been established, it can be progressively faded out as the play goes on, until the front row remains to remind us of the rest and then, finally, merely two seats in that row—one of which is now occupied by
MOON.
Between
MOON
and the auditorium is an acting area which represents, in as realistic an idiom as possible, the drawing-room of Muldoon Manor. French windows at one side. A telephone fairly well upstage (i.e. towards
MOON).
The
BODY
of a man lies sprawled face down on the floor in front of a large settee. This settee must be of a size and design to allow it to be wheeled over the body, hiding it completely. Silence. The room. The
BODY. MOON.

MOON
stares blankly ahead. He turns his head to one side then the other, then up, then down
—
waiting. He picks up his programme and reads the front cover. He turns over the page and reads
.

He turns over the page and reads
.

He turns over the page and reads
.

He turns over the page and reads
.

He looks at the back cover and reads
.

He puts it down and crosses his legs and looks about. He stares front. Behind him and to one side, barely visible, a man enters and sits down:
BIRDBOOT.

Pause, moos picks up his programme, glances at the front cover and puts it down impatiently. Pause. … Behind him there is the crackle of a chocolate-box, absurdly loud
,
MOON
looks round. He and
BIRDBOOT
see each other. They are clearly known to each other. They acknowledge each other with constrained waves
,
MOON
looks straight ahead
,
BIRDBOOT
comes down to join him
.

Note:
Almost always
,
MOON
and
BIRDBOOT
converse in tones suitable for an auditorium, sometimes a whisper. However good the acoustics might be, they will have to have microphones where they are sitting. The effect must be
not
of sound picked up, amplified and flung out at the audience, but of sound picked up, carried and gently dispersed around the auditorium
.