»In which we know that malt does more than Milton can

My word! Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love blew me away. The dialogue is crisp, witty, full of verve: the characters leap off the page. I am very sorry that I skipped this play when it had its North American premier at San Francisco's ACT. The play tells the story of the class-bound classicist A E Housman, whose poetry, especially "A Shropshire Lad", shaped much of my understanding of metre and form. Housman travels down the Styx as he shakes off this mortal coil, and meets characters from his past. Sad, wistful, and terrifically funny.