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The Real Inspector Hound Essay

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Argument of a play: A-play-within-a-play in “The Real Inspector Hound."
"The Real Inspector Hound" is a play by Tom Stoppard whose plot follows two theater critics called BirdBoot and Moon as they attended a play in London. The play also traces the narrative arc of the two theater critics as well as the narrative arc of the murder mystery play that they are assigned to review. In the play, Tom Stoppard provides a story and a one-act parody play about the nature of role playing in a detective fiction. This paper explores the play-within-a-play as explored by Stoppard where by the end of the play, both the internal and external play becomes entangled and becomes almost impossible to separate. A play-within-a-play is where a play is presented …show more content…

In the play, the main characters operate within two structural units. For example, they acquire a single identity in the play as their actual identities and another in the inner play as their fictive identities. The internal, which is the play-within-a-play and the external which is the Stoppard's play are intimately connected with the play only functioning when it includes the play-within-a-play and the play-within-a-play highly necessitates the external play's context. However, the distinction that exists between their identities between the plays is not that absolute. The line that separates the characters becomes weaker as they move across the boundary that separates the inner from the outer play. This is replicated in the line separating the reality of the world from the fiction of the Muldoon Manor’s world. Stoppard was able to provide a suggestion of the nature of role playing as well as the power of illusion over reality through his creation of a rigid structural demarcation line after which he violates the line through the entrance into the play by his

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