It would be churlish to finish a series of lectures on the mysteries of reading, and writing without mention of one of literature's central concerns - to understand love. Stoppard's The Real Thing was first performed in 1982. It is a play within a play and explores, among other things, the relationship between semblance and reality, artifice and truth, hence the title. But it is also about language and the writer's difficulty articulating love. The hero is a playwright who writes television scripts effortlessly and is decently remunerated. But he struggles to write a play about his love for Annie, the woman he falls for, and which leads to his divorce from his wife to whom he has to pay substantial alimony. How does the idea of the impossibility of expressing love relate to the play as a whole?

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/theatre-and-love-tom-stoppard-the-real-thing

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