Renowned Playwright Tom Stoppard Passes Away at 88
British playwright Tom Stoppard, who won an Academy Award for the screenplay for 1998’s “Shakespeare In Love,” has died. He was 88. United Agents said in a statement Saturday that Stoppard died “peacefully” at his home in Dorset in southern England, surrounded by his family.
“He will be remembered for his works, for their brilliance and humanity, and for his wit, his irreverence, his generosity of spirit and his profound love of the English language. It was an honour to work with Tom and to know him,” the statement said.
A Life of Literary Excellence
“My wife and I are deeply saddened to learn of the death of one of our greatest writers, Sir Tom Stoppard,” King Charles said in a statement. “A dear friend who wore his genius lightly, he could, and did, turn his pen to any subject, challenging, moving and inspiring his audiences, borne from his own personal history. We send our most heartfelt sympathy to his beloved family. Let us all take comfort in his immortal line: “Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.”
Stoppard was born in the Czech Republic in 1937. His family fled to Singapore after Nazi Germany’s invasion in 1939. He, his brother and their mother fled again when Japanese forces closed in on the city in 1941. His father died trying to leave the city. His mother married an English officer in 1946, and the family moved to postwar Britain. The 8-year-old Tom “put on Englishness like a coat,” he later said, growing up to be a quintessential Englishman who loved cricket and Shakespeare.
A Legacy of Theatrical Works
Stoppard first worked as a journalist before turning to theater in the 1960s. Stoppard was often hailed as the greatest British playwright of his generation and was garlanded with honors, including a shelf full of theater awards. His brain-teasing plays ranged across Shakespeare, science, philosophy and the historic tragedies of the 20th century. Five of them won Tony Awards for best play: “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” in 1968; “Travesties” in 1976; “The Real Thing” in 1984; “The Coast of Utopia” in 2007; and “Leopoldstadt” in 2023.
He wrote plays for radio and television including “A Walk on the Water,” televised in 1963, and made his stage breakthrough with “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” which reimagined Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” from the viewpoint of two hapless minor characters. Stoppard was a strong champion of free speech who worked with organizations including PEN and Index on Censorship.
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