In the following essay, Billman asserts that Travesties "extends the discussion of art and the artist's social responsibilities to include history "

In his profile of Tom Stoppard for the New Yorker, Kenneth Tynan, pursuing a biblical distraction, divides contemporary British dramatists into two camps:

On one side were the hairy men heated, embattled, socially committed playwrights, like John Osborne, John Arden, and Arnold Wesker, who had come out fighting in the late fifties On the other side were the smooth men cool, apolitical stylists, like Harold Pinter, the late Joe Orton, Christopher Hampton , Alan Ayckbourn . ., Simon Gray , and Stoppard

Stoppard himself said in 1974, "I think that in future I must stop compromising my plays with this whiff of social application (found in Jumpers). They must be entirely untouched by any suspicion of usefulness. I should have the courage of my lack of convictions." This is not to...