Every Good Boy Deserves Favor and Professional Foul

Download or read book Every Good Boy Deserves Favor and Professional Foul written by Tom Stoppard and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-05-16 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is Tom Stoppard's very special skill as the master comedian of ideas in the modern theater to create brilliant, biting humor out of serious concerns. Virtually assaulting the audience with a cascade of words and a conspicuous display of intellect, Stoppard, in "Every Good Boy Deserves Favor," contrasts the circumstances of a political prisoner and a mental patient in a Soviet insane asylum, to question the difference, if any, between free will and the freedom to conform. The situation, in which the mental patient "hears" an orchestra, is both chilling and funny as we are introduced to two men who happen to share the same name, are in carcerated in the same cell, and are attended by the same doctor.