Tom Stoppard, the British playwright and screenwriter who dazzled with his verbal skills, has died at the age of 88.

British playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard He died on Saturday at the age of 88 surrounded by his family at his home in Dorset in southern England, according to reports. United Agents.

Known in the world of theater for works such as: The real thing and leopoldstadt, received a Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for the film’s screenplay Shakespeare in love In 1998

“What’s wrong?” was the frequent response from previously bewildered onlookers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern died, L.’s first theatrical triumph Tom Stoppard.

I’m tired of asking, that being said Stoppard “This will make me very rich,” he responded to a woman off-Broadway.

He later wondered whether he had said “too much,” as Hermione Lee wrote in her authorized autobiography. Stoppardbut he undoubtedly managed to turn around his hitherto precarious financial situation.

For every bewildered viewer, there were many more delighted fans and critics, dazzled by the young playwright’s wit, brilliant wordplay, and sheer audacity. He turned to Shakespeare It focused, not on Hamlet, but on two minor characters in the same play.

It premiered at the 1966 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the following year. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern died turned into Stoppardat the age of 29, in The youngest playwright to perform at the National Theater in London.

From there, the play moved to Broadway, and had more than 250 productions around the world during its first decade.

Stoppard’s career And flourished for decades more, Coverage of theatre, cinema and radio, Showing his thirst to tackle any subject, from mathematics to Dada art to gardening.

His latest work, leopoldstadt, Released in 2020, it follows the story of a Jewish family in Vienna inspired by their own history.

Many Stoppard successes Includes royal hound inspector, Which mocked theatrical detective novels and mocked theater critics, Jumpersan epic of 1.5 million words that delighted and confounded its audience, and Day and nighta satire of the British media.

His works, dense and complex, are based on extensive research. arcadia, from 1993, which many critics consider his masterpiece, merging chaos theory with Isaac Newton and the emotional life of the poet Lord Byron.

the term Stoppard Ian, who was first recorded in 1978, joined Oxford English Dictionary. It refers to the use of verbal tools when addressing philosophical concepts.

His awards, both at home and abroad, include an Academy Award for co-writing the screenplay for the hit film “Shakespeare in Love” in 1998, and a record five Tony Awards for Best Play. In 1997, he was knighted for his contribution to theatre.

“Incredibly lucky”

Stoppard Born by name Tom Straussler was born on 3 July 1937 in what was then Czechoslovakia, the son of Eugene Straussler, a doctor, and Marta (or Martha), née Bykova, who trained as a nurse.

The Jewish family fled the Nazis and moved to Singapore when he was a child. Singapore, in turn, has become unsafe. He fled with his mother and older brother Peter to India. His father stayed behind and died while fleeing after Singapore fell to the Japanese. In India, Marta Straussler married a British Army major, Kenneth Stoppard The family moved to England.

He then entered boarding school in Pocklington, in Yorkshire, in northern England, where Tom Stoppard He loved cricket more than the theater and learned to be British while growing up Stoppard It is considered nationality par excellence.

he Stoppard The adult, who decades later discovered the Jewish roots he discovered in his later work, would accuse his stepfather of “innate anti-Semitism.”

He eventually learned from his Czech relatives that his four grandfathers were Jewish and that they died in Nazi concentration camps.

“I feel very lucky that I didn’t have to survive or die. It’s a wonderful part of what we might call a charmed life,” he wrote in the US magazine Talk in 1999, reflecting on his return with his brother to their hometown of Zlín, in what is now the Czech Republic.

“Reason and emotion are companions”

Despite showing academic excellence in school, Stoppard He decided not to go to university. Instead, he went straight to work as a reporter at a local newspaper in Bristol, western England.

“I wanted to be a great journalist,” he said. Stoppard. “My first ambition was to lie on the floor of an African airport while machine-gun bullets whizzed past my typewriter. But I was of little use as a reporter. I felt I had no right to ask questions. “I always thought they would throw the kettle on me or call the police.”

Although he found journalism daunting, he devoted himself to a career as a theater and film critic, and his love for drama developed. He began to form influential friendships with other actors and writers who shaped his career. He decided to move to London and start writing plays.

Success only came after perseverance and sleepless nights spent smoking cigarette after cigarette and battling writer’s block.

One of Britain’s leading critics, Michael Billington, reported on every film premiere By Stoppard For half a century, he tried to determine the status of the playwright in an article in the British newspaper The Guardian in 2015.

Billington discovered that Stoppard He was “a writer capable of arousing admiration, awe, and wonder, as well as bewilderment and bewilderment, sometimes all in the same night.”

In response to repeated criticism that Stoppard He could be overly cerebral, and, at his best, Billington wrote, he demonstrated that “reason and emotion are partners, not opposites.” He showed the world that a scientific or philosophical concept could be a dramatic subject.

Hopes for future generations

The self-deprecating playwright rejected classification and resisted requests for clarification.

“When I talk to smart students about my work, I feel nervous, as if I am going through a difficult phase Customized processhe told the magazine The New Yorker In 1977.

Despite his rejection of the academic interpretation. Stoppard He hoped his name would live on.

“Honestly, the idea of ​​writing for the future has always meant a lot to me, too,” he said when receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017. “I’m never convinced it works that way.”

to Stoppard Theater was, above all, entertainment.

“Theater is entertainment, and it should entertain,” he said in a 1995 interview. “But does the audience have to understand everything they see? If you or I go to an art gallery, we don’t understand what the artist is trying to tell us, even if we enjoy the painting.”

Stoppard raids In cinema it led him to win first prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1990 for his film adaptation of “The Film”. Rosenkratz and Guildenstern died.

He wrote the script for Sun Empire by Steven Spielberg and received an Academy Award nomination for his work in Terry Gilliam’s 1985 hit film, brazil, Before winning with Shakespeare in love.

Stoppard He had four children, two from each of his first two marriages. He married his third wife, television producer Sabrina Guinness, in 2014.

His son Ed Stoppard He is an actor and an actor Leopoldstadt.

Critics praised To Stoppard To confront his family history in the business. This marked the end of a theatrical career ready to tackle almost any subject.

“I’d like, eventually, before I’m taken from head to toe, to do a little bit of everything at all,” he said at 30.