Every Good Boy Deserves Favor and Professional Foul

by Tom Stoppard

It is Tom Stoppard's very special skill as the master comedian of ideas in the modern theater to create brilliant, biting humor out of serious concerns. Virtually assaulting the audience with a cascade of words and a conspicuous display of intellect, Stoppard, in "Every Good Boy Deserves Favor," contrasts the circumstances of a political prisoner and a mental patient in a Soviet insane asylum, to question the difference, if any, between free will and the freedom to conform. The situation, in which the mental patient "hears" an orchestra, is both chilling and funny as we are introduced to two men who happen to share the same name, are in carcerated in the same cell, and are attended by the same doctor.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Fiction, Theatre, 20th Century, Humor, British Literature

188 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Sir Tom Stoppard was a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. He was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.

Born in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard left as a child refugee, fleeing imminent Nazi occupation. He settled with his family in Britain after the war, in 1946, having spent the previous three years (1943–1946) in a boarding school in Darjeeling in the Indian Himalayas. After being educated at schools in Nottingham and Yorkshire, Stoppard became a journalist, a drama critic and then, in 1960, a playwright.

Stoppard's most prominent plays include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), Jumpers (1972), Travesties (1974), Night and Day (1978), The Real Thing (1982), Arcadia (1993), The Invention of Love (1997), The Coast of Utopia (2002), Rock 'n' Roll (2006) and Leopoldstadt (2020). He wrote the screenplays for Brazil (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), The Russia House (1990), Billy Bathgate (1991), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Enigma (2001), and Anna Karenina (2012), as well as the HBO limited series Parade's End (2013). He directed the film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), an adaptation of his own 1966 play, with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the leads.

He has received numerous awards and honours including an Academy Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, and five Tony Awards. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 11 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture". It was announced in June 2019 that Stoppard had written a new play, Leopoldstadt, set in the Jewish community of early 20th-century Vienna. The play premiered in January 2020 at Wyndham's Theatre. The play went on to win the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and later the 2022 Tony Award for Best Play.

Reviews

[Nat · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Professional Foul" is a TV play from the late 70s. The main characters are professional philosophers, attending a conference on ethics in Prague. The central tension of the play concerns a humorless British moral philosopher who believes in unbreakable moral principles and a former (Czech) student of his who is in trouble with the authorities and asks the prof to smuggle his doctoral dissertation out of the country. The humorless prof thinks that he shouldn't do this because he's a guest of the Czech government. This problem strikes me as something not even approaching a real moral dilemma--obviously the prof should help his student out. Eventually he realizes this and decides to smuggle the dissertation out, but he knows he'll be searched on the way out of the country. So he hides it in another prof's luggage without his knowledge. This move seems like a moral mistake. Why couldn't he ask the other prof if he'd be willing to do it?

The philosophical significance of the play is therefore pretty light. But there is a funny scene that involves a linguistic philosopher lecturing about how formal theories of meaning won't be able to explain meaning in English because in literature, the author can create deliberate ambiguities that aren't meant to be disambiguated. Insofar as a formal theory of meaning for a language requires disambiguating all expressions of the language, and insofar as such a theory is required to explain fictional uses of language, this seems to present a problem. But it's merely an apparent problem, I think, because the theory could presumably allow that certain uses of expressions can carry more than one meaning (explaining double entendre would raise the same kind of issue).

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book of two plays so I will give them seperate reviews but the 4 star at the top is for the book overall :)

Every Good Boy Deserves Favor: A great play which starred Ian Mckellen as Alexander and Patrick Stewart as Doctor in it's original production. Great story involving the mentally ill and their captors and an interest debate about what is mental illness and censorship :)

Professional Foul: Not as a good as the last but still a good, interesting read :)

[Nicky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't remember reading Every Good Boy Deserves a Favour but a can't find Professional Foul on it;s own When I read Professional Foul I remember being really taken with the way the story seems to be about football and then becomes about so much more.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

EGBDF- another incredibly clever play. Would have been easier to appreciate all the subtleties if I'd known more about Czech dictators and revolutionary movements when I read it.

[Molly]

Loved egbdf. So stoppardy. Ugh nail polish remover smells like starvation!?

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

enthralling as ever and this time with something to say

[Маx Nestelieiev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every Good Boy Deserves Favor - своєрідна варіація "Палати № 6", але з музикою, власне, і назва - це мнемонічна фраза, щоб запам'ятати те, як ноти розташовані на кожній лінії нотного стану - Мі, Соль, Сі, Ре, Фа. загалом же тема - пригноблення людини і репресії тоталітаризму + вялотєкущая шизофренія;

Professional Foul - п'єса про повернення в тоталітарну Прагу для виступу на колоквіумі про етику і про те, як репресують науковців-пражан (спочатку позбавляють роботи, а потім підкидають долари). втім, дисертацію таки вдалося вберегти.

[Alaina Sloo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every Good Boy Deserves Favor was a particularly interesting play to read: the interplay between orchestra and actors is ingenious. I’d love to see this performed one day.

[Ingybobingy · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars for professional foul
3 for every good boy

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/4 stars

[Nina Bosnjak · Rating 4 out of 5]

EGBDF: 4.5
Professional Foul: 4

4.25 rounds to 4

[Will · Rating 1 out of 5]

Why do so many reviewers draw no distinction between being conversational with other people's ideas and having your own? Professional Foul is yet another Stoppard play that reads like small talk on Aristotle.

[Gabi Coatsworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chicago