The Invention of Love

Tom Stoppard

A genuine love of learning is one of the two delinquencies which cause blindness and lead a young man to ruin.

If you cannot write Latin and Greek verse how can you hope to be of any use in the world?

Virtue is what women have to lose, the rest is vice.

Stoppard is a brilliant constructor of dialog. In my first encounter with Stoppard--his wild Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead--I was overawed. I read The Invention of Love because the title sounded intriguing. While it was everything I did not expect when it comes to plot and content, it was more than I could have hoped for in dialog. If I could write conversations like this...
It takes a very alert mind to follow Stoppard as his characters weave together multiple conversations and sometimes even use the same words to continue two separate conversations. Stoppard is more willing than other modern writers to indulge heavily in allusion and I have this feeling that I caught about ten percent of the actual content in his play. makes allusions to everything from the first Roman love poet to the various Greek and Latin scholars of note (or lack) to his own plays (Even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern make a comeback).
The Invention of Love is about the aesthetic movements in early twentieth century England--think Oscar Wilde. It is about Greek poets and Latin scholars, students and the legacy words are to the dead. It is about homosexuality. As a subplot to the play, Stoppard follows Wilde's trail for indecency and the subsequent shattering of his career.
Finally it is the simultaneous enactment of the life of A. E. Housman, a famous English poet and Latin scholar. Stoppard gives us Housman at various times of life, usually conversing with himself at other times of life (or simply being on stage with earlier and later-self).
I don't think I'd ever bother going to see this play, but it made for an interesting and engaging read. I still love Stoppard's dexterity with conversation--incredible.