The Invention of Love

In 1936, the scholar and poet A.E. Housman died at 77 years old. Now he is on the banks of the River Styx, waiting to be ferried into the afterlife. But before his journey is complete, AEH reflects on the people and events that shaped him as a poet and person. He relives his early days at Oxford, his unrequited love for a classmate, and his admiration for Oscar Wilde, the figurehead of the Aesthetic Movement. Throughout his reminisces, AEH examines the nature of love as it appears in poetry from the early Roman elegists to his own publication of A Shropshire Lad. Most importantly, AEH considers love as it exists between men: platonic, romantic, brotherhood, forbidden. Full of esoteric references and witty inside jokes for Victorian era scholars, The Invention of Love is Tom Stoppard’s philosophical masterpiece for the ages.