Historical Homonyms: A New Way of Naming in Tom Stoppard's Jumpers

Historical Homonyms: A New Way of Naming in Tom Stoppard's Jumpers MARY R. DAVIDSON MOST OF US HAVE MIXED FEELINGS about acrobats. We are impressed by their skill but dismayed by their movements, whether these are splits, cartwheels, backbends, or pyramids. In contrast to the more expressive movements of dancers, theirs seem mechanical and inhuman . As we watch acrobats, questions arise. Are these artists mocking us? Is it some monstrous pun which makes the head appear between the legs? Is the performance related to any human experience? Do we feel astonishment, or boredom, or a rapid osciUation between the two? And finally, is what the acrobats are doing worth the trouble that they take? Philosophers produce the same efTects. And astronauts. And politicians. Because they do, Tom Stoppard has named them all "jumpers." Jumpers opens in a mirrored space enlivened by a troupe of philosopher -acrobats who celebrate their political coup by making quantum jumps over giant letters that spell their name: JUMPERS. They play games with words. Gorgeous Dorothy Moore, "much-loved star of the musical stage," comes on but cannot sing any of her moon songs.' Another young woman strips as she swings in and out on the chandelier . She is eclipsed when a porter with a tray of glasses walks into her orbit. At the edge of darkness, we see George Moore calling the police.' When George Moore calls the police to complain about his own wife's party, he uses the name of Spinoza. That name is appropriate, for the moment, because George is behaving as an ethical egoist by putting his own good- his need to finish a lecture- ahead of the noisy 305 306 MARY R. DAVIDSON pleasures of forty or fifty other people. His topic- Man, good, bad, or indifferent?- may be considered a loosely stated version of one that the historical G. E. Moore explored in Principia Elhica: the logical basis for ethical altruism, ethical egoism, or ethical neutralism. Spinoza had chosen ethical egoism, although he was not a selfish man. He believed that it was impossible to place any good before that of selfpreservation . One of the questions the play raises is whether altruism is possible. In fact, the entire play may be considered a lecture demonstration on the topic of the final symposium: "Man-good, bad, or indifferent?" George plans to enliven his lecture with a rabbit, a tortoise, a bow and arrow, and a tape recording, because "to attempt to sustain the attention of rival schools of academics by argument alone is tantamount to constructing a Gothic arch out of junket" (p. 27). For similar reasons, Stoppard, who told Kenneth Tynan in 1970 that he had been "toying with the idea of a play whose entire first act would be a lecture in support of moral philosophy," decided to make metaphysical musical comedy ofhis protest against pragmatism.' When the lighls come up again, Dorothy is still making chaos of harvest moons, blue moons, and moonglow. The jumpers, however, produce an image of order- a human pyramid- whiCh may be a political symbol. But a gunshot blows one jumper out at the bottom, and the fragile structure collapses into the dark. Dotty is left alone on stage, half supporting the body of the fallen jumper. Like Death and the Maiden, or a very mod Pietil, the two stand in a circle of white light which slowly becomes a huge television picture of the moon. There, Captain Scott and Astronaut Oates struggle while an announcer explains that damage on impact has crippled the spacecraft so that only one man may return. Captain Scott knocks down his subordinate and takes off, saying, "I am going up now. I may be gone for some time" (p. 23). The problem of the play is to relieve Dotty of the body and to cure her of the shock produced by murder on the moon. She is more than a little dotty. Having noted the relation of Dorothy to the moon throughout the play, John Weighttnan observes that "although the actress playing the part happens providentially to be called Diana, Mr. Stoppard gives the character the apparently non-significant name of Dorothy.'" But Dorothy is...