In the following short essay (which you can read on page 1176 of your text), Linda Durai writes about the repetition and the stage directions in The Real Inspector Hound and argues that these elements make it a play that is better appreciated when read than when seen in a theater. Consider this essay as an example of good student work that needs to be edited in order to correct some common errors and enhance its effect. As you read it, note what works well and what could be improved. Notice, on the positive side, that the thesis is significant—beyond what anyone would simply agree on about the play. The author supports her thesis with specific evidence, quoting accurately from the text. She strengthens her argument by acknowledging other perspectives—as when she notes that some of the humor of the play would work better in a performance than on the page. What other positive qualities can you observe in Durai’s essay? How might you revise it to make it even stronger? For example, could she organize her essay differently? Are there places in the essay that could be clearer and more focused? How might you edit Durai’s choices of words or the structure of her sentences to be more precise or economical? Like many student essays, this one has a few common errors that are easy to catch on rereading. Can you find where the antecedent or reference for a pronoun is unclear? Can you locate where a plural pronoun is used for a singular subject (the number should be consistent)? Are there any incomplete sentences? Linda Duari Professor Ridgeway English 282 Date Reading a “Whodunnit?”: Stage Directions and Repetition in The Real Inspector Hound Comment by jennifer.heinert: Effective two-part title Most plays have stage directions to guide the director and actors as well as readers. Comedies use repetition to make the audience laugh. Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound (1968) uses both stage directions and repetition in unusual and funny ways. In this play, different kinds of stage directions add to the humor, usually with repetitions that don’t seem to make sense. Further, the stage directions go beyond what is necessary for performing the play. Some of the italicized words crack jokes for the reader, and sometimes what would usually be in the printed script is spoken aloud by characters. One of the characters, Mrs. Drudge, is a major source of this ridiculous repetition, as to what she says and the stage directions of what she does. The Real Inspector Hound is a really complicated play that needs to be read again and again to be fully understood. A reader can reread and compare the stage directions that connect the murder mystery at Muldoon Manor with the play about the theater critics Moon and Birdboot. Comment by jennifer.heinert: This is where a thesis statement should be: The writer does not ever focus to a clear thesis that encompasses the entire essay. Some of these sentences are not arguments and could be cut from the essay entirely. Keep th.

1. In the following short essay (which you can read on page 1176
of your text), Linda Durai writes about the repetition and the
stage directions in The Real Inspector Hound and argues that
these elements make it a play that is better appreciated when
read than when seen in a theater. Consider this essay as an
example of good student work that needs to be edited in order to
correct some common errors and enhance its effect. As you read
it, note what works well and what could be improved. Notice,
on the positive side, that the thesis is significant—beyond what
anyone would simply agree on about the play. The author
supports her thesis with specific evidence, quoting accurately
from the text. She strengthens her argument by acknowledging
other perspectives—as when she notes that some of the humor
of the play would work better in a performance than on the
page.
What other positive qualities can you observe in Durai’s essay?
How might you revise it to make it even stronger? For example,
could she organize her essay differently?
Are there places in the essay that could be clearer and more
focused? How might you edit Durai’s choices of words or the
structure of her sentences to be more precise or economical?
Like many student essays, this one has a few common errors
that are easy to catch on rereading. Can you find where the
antecedent or reference for a pronoun is unclear? Can you
locate where a plural pronoun is used for a singular subject (the
number should be consistent)? Are there any incomplete
sentences?
Linda Duari
Professor Ridgeway
English 282
Date
Reading a “Whodunnit?”: Stage Directions and Repetition in
The Real Inspector Hound Comment by jennifer.heinert:

2. Effective two-part title
Most plays have stage directions to guide the director and actors
as well as readers. Comedies use repetition to make the
audience laugh. Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound
(1968) uses both stage directions and repetition in unusual and
funny ways. In this play, different kinds of stage directions add
to the humor, usually with repetitions that don’t seem to make
sense. Further, the stage directions go beyond what is necessary
for performing the play. Some of the italicized words crack
jokes for the reader, and sometimes what would usually be in
the printed script is spoken aloud by characters. One of the
characters, Mrs. Drudge, is a major source of this ridiculous
repetition, as to what she says and the stage directions of what
she does. The Real Inspector Hound is a really complicated play
that needs to be read again and again to be fully understood. A
reader can reread and compare the stage directions that connect
the murder mystery at Muldoon Manor with the play about the
theater critics Moon and Birdboot. Comment by
jennifer.heinert: This is where a thesis statement should be: The
writer does not ever focus to a clear thesis that encompasses the
entire essay. Some of these sentences are not arguments and
could be cut from the essay entirely.
Keep this in mind as you read the rest of the essay: what should
the thesis be? Is there another sentence that the author might
move here?
The Real Inspector Hound is a parody of Agatha Christie’s The
Mousetrap, and it also makes fun of theater critics and plays
that have a “play-within-the-play” (Ridgeway, Hodgson,
Stoppard, “Conversation”). This is a device that Shakespeare
used in Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Ridgeway).
A frame and an inner play usually mirror each other, with comic
results. The printed play of The Real Inspector Hound makes it
more obvious that there is a frame or a mirroring of an inside
and an outside play. This is something that you wouldn’t notice
in a theater. It begins with several paragraphs in italics that no

3. one in the theater would read. What a live audience would see is
something like “their own reflection.” Stoppard’s note declares:
“Impossible” (1395); no mirror could really reflect everyone
sitting in the actual seats. The reader knows that Stoppard
describes the set of the play-within-the-play as a realistic
drawing room, and knows that Stoppard instructs directors to
cast two different types, “plumpish middle-aged Birdboot and
younger taller, less-relaxed Moon” (1395). Theatergoers would
probably be slower to realize that this play is not going to
proceed like other plays do, though they would know the play
has started, whereas the reader sees continuing stage directions.
Comment by jennifer.heinert: This might work as a
potential thesis… Comment by jennifer.heinert: While the
author is making good points, the execution is not academic: it
is probably too informal for the purpose of the essay and reads
more like a rough draft. It sounds more like something someone
would say and not write. Comment by jennifer.heinert:
The author has a habit of using unclear antecedents—what are
“this,” “they,” “you,” and “it” throughout the essay? These
vague word usages need revision.
Alone on stage, Moon follows directions that Stoppard drags out
to entertain the reader; it could be summarized “Moon stares
around the stage for several minutes and then reads the program
cover to cover.” Instead the prose is dramatic: “Silence. The
room. The body. MOON... He turns over the page and reads...
Pause. MOON picks up his programme... Pause ...” I count
seven sentences that tell us how Moon reads the program. When
performed, this would make the audience impatient like Moon,
and laugh at seeing him act the way they might feel. But it is
also a funny imitation of a reader reading the play and waiting
to find out the plot. We feel like Birdboot objecting when Moon
says the play has started with a pause, “You can’t start with a
pause!” (1396). That’s already a joke about the kind of
experimental theater that Stoppard writes.
There are many “straight” stage directions not meant for laughs.
These help the reader put themselves in the place of actors,

4. directors, and crew. I can’t note all of the fun effects here. But
Moon and Birdboot are always talking over and over about the
same themes, Moon about his jealousy of the lead reviewer and
wanting to murder him, Birdboot about his affairs and his
lusting after actresses. There are lots of jokes about the way the
two reviewers see the same thing differently, one very
intellectual and fancy and the other crude or vulgar. It’s
interesting that most of the dialogue directions are about
Birdboot, who is always shifting his tone to keep up
appearances: “conspiratorially,” “suspiciously,” “instantly
outraged,” “urbanely.” His repeated loud chewing on chocolates
would be funnier onstage. But the reader can enjoy the stage-
direction descriptions, and only a reader knows that Stoppard
thinks Birdboot “grasps reality in the form of his box of
chocolates” (1397). The audience would just see him as a lover
of candy, a kind of big baby, and he even uses baby talk to his
wife.
Besides the beginning with a “pause,” the play has a bunch of
jokes, out loud and in the written play, about stage directions,
programs, and exposition—information that you might find in a
program or printed stage directions. Many of these jokes are
around Mrs. Drudge, who is always repeating things in a crazy
overdone way. We read that “the char” comes in to dust the
room “on the trot,” giving a very English picture of a servant
(familiar from lots of comedies and farces). And then Moon
reads out loud from the program: “Mrs. Drudge the Help”—a
little like labeling her Mrs. Clean the Maid, to be really sure
everyone gets it. Her job is obviously to “help” the play, doing
the chores of getting information across and making the
audience laugh because she doesn’t see what the audience sees.
It’s like a game where she’s blind-folded and can’t see the
corpse and the suspicious intruder. She is the one who turns on
the radio announcement that sounds like a warning in an old
scary movie. And she is the one who answers the phone by
saying aloud the information about the scene, what ought to be
in the program. It’s especially funny to read what is happening

5. while Mrs. Drudge keeps waiting for the sound technician to
make the phone ring. Her answer makes no sense only as a
parody of stage directions: “Hello, the drawing-room of Lady
Muldoon’s country residence one morning in early spring?”
Most of Mrs. Drudge’s speeches rattle off the background about
all the people and the time and place of the play that is
happening on the stage. Sometimes they sound like a silly idea
of the country life: “now that the cuckoobeard is in bud”
(1400). Comment by jennifer.heinert: Another example of
tone issues—what other ones do you identify? How might these
be revised and made more formal?
The play gets incredibly ridiculous as things repeat more and
more. Especially with the repeating of Mrs. Drudge’s stage
business and speeches. She is the center of several scenes that
seem to go nowhere, especially in the episode where she serves
coffee (beginning of “act two”). Again she seems to ask the
person on the telephone what would actually be the information
about the next scene: “the same, half an hour later?” (1409).
Then she sets up a silly round of asking characters how they
take their coffee. Stoppard winks at the reader by first spelling
it all out and then getting impatient: “[Mrs. Drudge pours.]”
becomes “[Ditto.]” and so on through cream, sugar, and starting
to offer biscuits. Birdboot writes a note out loud about how dull
the beginning of the second act is, and Felicity jumps up and
says, “If you ask me, there’s something funny going on.” This is
a double irony that is easier to catch on paper because you can
stop and read it again. That is, if Mrs. Drudge asks her about a
biscuit, it’s ridiculous, and Felicity thinks there’s something
suspicious like a crime going on. This meaning comes out when
Felicity turns on the radio so the warning is broadcast again.
Felicity is another character type, the romantic leading lady, as
much as Mrs. Drudge is the type of a wise servant, and she also
mostly repeats what ever she says or does, including her threats
to kill Simon Gascoyne. A lot of times Mrs. Drudge happens to
come onstage “in time to overhear” such remarks.
There are scenes that repeat as if the actors have gotten stuck in

6. the first act, and the stage directions seem to be aware of this.
When “[a tennis ball bounces in through the french windows,
followed by FELICITY ... ],” for the second time, things are a
little different because Birdboot is onstage. The stage directions
make a big deal of the idea that the scene is being acted over
again: “as before. ... The lighting is as it was. Everything is as
it was. It is, let us say, the same moment in time.”] (1416). The
last two sentences just can’t be staged. Stoppard seems to be
talking to us as readers. We can turn back the pages to check
that the words are almost identical, and that the actress who
plays Felicity says her lines the same no matter which man is
playing “Simon.”
The inner play is obviously a “whodunnit” or murder mystery. It
is also a farce, a kind of play with lots of coincidences, running
in and out of entrances, disguises, and funny repetitions and
discoveries that get people in trouble. The whole play depends
on physical situation, the kind of thing viewers see, even though
a character like Mrs. Drudge ignores it. But at the same time it
involves puns and wordplay, also noticed by the audience while
the characters may not be aware. The audience and readers are
going to enjoy the way the Moon’s long speeches about theater
are also comments by the playwright about his own work.
Although some actions, for instance the two times that Magnus
runs over characters in a wheelchair, are probably funnier live
than reading about it, other repetitions are going to be more
obvious to a reader than if we were watching in a real theater. I
think the stage directions make all the repetitions in The Real
Inspector Hound funnier than they would be in performance. As
a parody of all sorts of theater conventions, it is a play that
should be read and reread. Comment by jennifer.heinert:
Did you discover a thesis statement in the essay? If so, did the
author support and prove it? How does the conclusion align
with the introduction and body paragraphs?