The Invention of Love

It is 1936 and A. E. Housman is being ferried across the Styx, glad to be dead at last. His memories, however, are dramatically if confusedly alive. The river which flows through Tom Stoppard''s play connects Hades with the Oxford of Housman''s early manhood where High Victorianism in art, literature and morality is being challenged by the Aesthetic movement and an Irish student called Wilde is preparing to burst on to the London scene. The Invention of Love. premiered at the National Theatre, London, in September 1997.