The Invention Of Love

Synopsis

It is 1936 and A. E. Housman is being ferried across the river Styx, glad to be dead at last. His memories are dramatically alive. The river that flows through Tom Stoppard's new play connects Hades with the Oxford of Housman's youth: High Victorian morality is under siege from the Aesthetic movement, and an Irish student called Wilde is: preparing to burst onto the London scene.On his journey the elder Housman confronts: his younger self, the flamboyant Wilde, and the memories of the man he loved his entire life, Moses Jackson -- the handsome, athletic, and wholly heterosexual classmate who could not return his affection. Housman reflects on a life spent alone, first as a patent office clerk, and then as a renowned classics scholar, burying his passion in his poetry. As if a dream, The Invention of Love travels through Housman's life -- a struggle with unrequited love and his passion for dead texts -- and asks, Which is more fatal: intellect or emotion?