Twenty years after the publication of Tom Stoppard: Plays (2002), which contained the best-known titles of this world-famous playwright of Czech origin (*1937, Zlín), the second volume of his plays is published by the Arts and Theatre Institute. This, together with the forthcoming third volume, which will introduce the rich world of the playwright's later works, will complete the Czech edition of Stoppard's original works written for the theatre. Plays II includes texts written and performed before 1989. From Stoppard's early work, Free as a Bird, through the intellectually playful to madcap comedies After Magritte, Dirty Laundry and Undiscovered Country, we move on to plays that reflect the playwright's interest in the existential dimension of the divided world of the Cold War - Jumpers, EGHDF, Night and Day and Double Agent. Even in these, however, we don't miss Stoppard's sense of the absurd (in his early days he was - rather erroneously - assigned to absurdist playwrights) and verbal gags, the admirable ease with which he is able, in the dimension of a theatrical performance, to introduce the audience to the most complex problems of the contemporary world and (as in The Artist Descending the Stairs) to make fun of 20th century art. In Night and Day and Double Agent, moreover, strong female characters, and with them an emotionality that Stoppard's early plays seemingly denied, begin to assert themselves in his drama.
