Stoppard, Tom
£1,188
Rare Books, Maps & Manuscripts
Auction: Rare Books, Maps & Manuscripts
Description
The real thing. Typescript dated February 1982. Prepared by Fraser & Dunlop Scripts Ltd, 91 Regent Street, London. 4to., pale blue paper, with 2 punch holes for binding, bound in quarter green morocco, marbled boards, by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, inscribed "To Bruce Ritchie defender of Eng sodding Lit (vivat!) Tom vi. 8" (3)
Footnote
Note: "Staged in the West End and then on Broadway, The Real thing became one of Stoppard's most popular and longest-running plays, opening on 16 Novemebr 1982 at the Strand with Felicity Kendal ... and Roger Rees ... in the lead roles.... The Real thing is by Stoppard's own admission a self-referencing work, a term Stoppard used to draw on his own experience in the theatre and, presumably, in love. The play also takes on a strange prescient quality, given his later relationship with Kendal. He completed the work in march 1982, changing the original protagonist from a novelist to a playwright ..." (Ira Nadel Double act: a life of Tom Stoppard, London, 2002, pp. 321 and 323). The typescript is accompanied by a programme for the Strand Theatre 1983 production signed by Felicity Kendall, Roger Rees, and other members of the cast. Also included is a bound photocopy of the original MS of Stoppard's libreto for Prokofiev's The Love for three oranges now at the Bancroft Library, University of California and of the typescript of The Frog prince. This has been bound in quarter red morocco by Allison & Downie to match the typescript of The Real thing. Bound in at the front is the broadside containing an extract from the first British edition of The Real thing, the speech by Henry, holding his cricket bat, signed in red ink by Stoppard. 500 copies of the broadsheet were produced of which this is no 372 (Baker & Wachs A18a note five.)