The Dog it was that Died

The Dog It Was That Died is a play by Tom Stoppard.

Themes

The Dog It Was That Died has been described as Stoppard's 'Le Carrecture', and it takes much of its mannered approach from John Le Carre's work.

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The play takes place against a background of Cold War paranoia, and at the time of its first production it was quite believable that such complex shenanigans could take place. It is full of Stoppard's usual verbal pyrotechnics, particularly in those scenes where the full details of Purvis's career are being explored.

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The characters of Blair and Purvis are contrasted skilfully - one the benignly complacent bureaucrat, the other a deeply principled fighter for his beliefs. There is also a class contrast between Blair and Hogbin; whilst the agencies involved are never specifically stated, their respective characters conform exactly to the period's stereotypes of MI6 and MI5 officers, as Blair is very much the upper-class and somewhat louche eccentric and Hogbin the conscientious if unimaginative middle-class moralist. However, in the end Blair proves to be more in control of the situation than Hogbin.

Related Topics:
MI6 - MI5 - Eccentric - Moralist

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The play also explores eccentricity in general in a fond way. Virtually all the characters in it have a pronouced eccentricity of some kind; Blair's clocks and his folly; his wife's donkey sanctuary and casual affair with her husband's superior; the chief's regular smoking of opium, the obsession with rare cheese of the vicar who carries out Purvis's memorial, and Seddon's fascination with guano. Additionally, Blair and Purvis's former boss 'Jell' apparently used to wear hunting pink to the office. Purvis's second suicide note makes this delight in the gentle eccenticities of his countrymen explicit, describing English eccentricity as 'a curious bloom, which here at Clifftops only appears in its overblown variety.'

Related Topics:
Eccentricity - Opium - Hunting pink

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The title of the play comes from Oliver Goldsmith's poem An Elegy on the death of a mad dog which ends:

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:But soon a wonder came to light,

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:That showed the rogues they lied:

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:The man recovered of the bite,

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:The dog it was that died.

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In some ways Purvis may be seen as the mad dog of the poem.

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