W. B. Yeats once called Ibsen the chosen author of very clever journalists. How much more appropriate this is as a description of Tom Stoppard. He has insinuated himself into the affections of smart people like a heartworm, usurping whatever place might once have been reserved there for genuine artists. Can anyone really take Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead seriously after seeing the plays on which it was based, Six Characters in Search of an Author and Waiting for Godot? I'm not complaining that Stoppard is lightweight; there's a place in my heart, too, for good-natured entertainments. I'm grumbling rather over how he has used his considerable gifts in the service of a shell game, conning the intelligentsia into finding him significant with a few philosophical reflections on a few intellectual themes. As a dramatist, Stoppard is a dandy. His plays frequently toy with difficult subjects, but they...