Plot Parody in Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Real Inspector Hound, and Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth

Journal of English Language Studies

مقاله 8، دوره 1، شماره 3، خرداد 2010، صفحه 129-156   

نویسنده

Mohammad Reza Sadrian

Assistant Professor of Literature, Islamic Azad University Islamshahr Branch, Iran

چکیده

Parody as a salient device in postmodern literature is extensively applied by Tom Stoppard in his plays. Having different layers of parody, Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, “The Real Inspector Hound”, and “Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth” exhibit his parodic application of other writers’ plots. The analytical-qualitative scrutiny of the plot lines of these plays not only corroborates their parodic nature but also demonstrates the techniques Stoppard employs in each play to parody the plot of its hypotext. “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” dramatizes a specific parody of the plot of “Hamlet” both it overlaps the plot of the tragedy and more intensely it touches Shakespeare’s plot tangentially. Stoppard’s genre parody of the stock plot of the crime genre is portrayed in “The Real Inspector Hound”. It simultaneously enjoys a parody of the plot of Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap”. The three-part performance in the first part of “Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth” displays a specific parody of the plot of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”.

کلیدواژه‌ها

Stoppard؛ Parody؛ Plot؛ parodic techniques