To maintain a healthy balanced loyalty, whether to art or society, posits a debatable issue. The artist is always on the look out for the potential tension between those two realms. Therefore, one of the most painful dilemmas the artist finds is how to function in a society without sacrificing the aesthetic values of his/her work. In other words, the life-long awareness of failure which derives from the concept of the artist as caught between unflattering social realities and the need to invent genuine art forms becomes a fertilizing soil for the artists to be tackled. Thus, within the framework of this dilemma, the question of the responsibility of the artist and the relationship of the art to politics will be illuminating. To a larger extent, however, in drama, this dilemma is represented by the fictional characters of the play. The present paper tackles the idea of the amorality of the artist in selected plays by Tom Stoppard. However, Stoppard’s awareness of his situation as a refugee has led him to keep at a distance from politics. He tried hard to avoid any intervention into the realms of political debate, especially in his earliest work. On the one hand, it is not meant that he did not interest in politics as such, but rather he preferred to question it than to create a fixed ideological position. On the other hand, Stoppard’s refusal to intervene in politics is ascribed to his feeling of gratitude to Britain where he settled. As a result, Stoppard has frequently been criticized for a lack of political engagement and also for not leaning too much for the left when he does engage. His reaction to these public criticisms finds expression in his self-conscious statements which defensively stressed the artifice of his work. He, like Oscar Wilde thinks that the responsibility of the artist is devoted to the realm of his/her art. Consequently, his consciousness for the role of the artist is truly reflected in his two plays, Artist Descending a Staircase (1972) and Travesties (1974)., {"references":["Csilla Bertha, \"Visual Art and Artist in Contemporary Irish Drama,\"\nHungarian Journal of English and American Studies (HJEAS), v. 15,\nno. 2 (Fall, 2009): 347.","Horst Höhne, \"Liberal Intellectualism in The Theatre: Tom Stoppard's\nControversial Career as Dramatist,\" Angol Filológiai Tanulmányok/\nHungarian Studies in English, v.14 (1981): 6.","Tim Brassell, Stoppard: An Assessment (London: The Macmillan Press\nLtd., 1985), p.1.","Newsweek 15 August 1977, p. 35.","William W. Demastes, \"Portrait of an Artist as Proto-Chaotician: Tom\nStoppard Working His way to Arcadia.\" Narrative v. 19, no. 2 (May\n2011). (11 February 2015)","Michael Billington, Stoppard: The Playwright (London: Methuen Inc.,\n1987), p. 10.","John Barth, \"The Literature of Replenishment,\" Atlantic Monthly, June\n1980, p. 66.\n[10] Ira B. Nadel, \"Writing the Life of Tom Stoppard,\" Journal of Modern\nLiterature, v. 27, no. 3 (Winter, 2004): p. 26.\n[11] Peter Childs and Roger Fowler, The Routledge Dictionary of Literary\nTerms (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 168.\n[12] Ingeborg Hoesterey, \"Postmodern Pastiche: A Critical Aesthetic,\" The\nCentennial Review, v. 39, n. 3 (Fall 1995): 496.\n[13] Richard Dyer, \"Pastiche,\" Reviewed by Martha P. Nochimson, Cinéaste,\nv. 33, n. 1 (Winter 2007): 85.\n[14] Quoted in Evelyn Cobley and Tom Stoppard, \"Catastrophe Theory in\nTom Stoppard's 'Professional Foul,'\" Contemporary Literature, v. 25. n.\n1 (Spring, 1984): 53.\n[15] Cited in Paul Delaney and Elissa S. Guralnick, \"Structure and Anarchy\nin Tom Stoppard,\" PMLA, v. 106, n. 5 (Oct., 1991): 1171. [16] David Kornhaber, \"Nietzsche, Shaw, Stoppard: Theatre and Philosophy\nin the British Tradition,\" Philosophy and Literature, v.36, n. 1 (April\n2012): 91.\n[17] Mel Gussow, Conversations with Stoppard (New York: Grove Press,\n1996), p. 20.\n[18] Cited by William W. Demastes, The Cambridge Introduction to Tom\nStoppard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p.35.\n[19] Roger Hudson, Catherine Itzin, and Simon Trussler, \"Ambushes for the\nAudience: Towards a High Comedy of Ideas,\" Theatre Quarterly, v.4, n.\n14 (May 1974): 68.\n[20] Terry Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism (London: Methuen and\nCo. Ltd, 1976), p. 8.\n[21] Thomas R. Whitaker, Tom Stoppard: Modern Dramatists (London:\nMacmillan, 1983), p.10.\n[22] Quited in Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford:\nBlackwell Publishers Ltd, 1990), p. 210.\n[23] Peter Burger, Theory of the Avant-Garde (Manchester: Manchester\nUniversity Press, 1984), p. 86.\n[24] Ladislav Matejka and Krystyana Pomorska (eds) Reading in Russian\nPoetics (Cambridge-Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1971), p. 17.\n[25] Leo Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (Ann Arbor: The University of\nMichigan, 1968), p. 175.\n[26] Anthony Jenkins, The Theatre of Tom Stoppard (Cambridge: Cambridge\nUniversity Press, 1990), p. 114.\n[27] Katherine E. Kelly, The Cambridge Companion To Tom Stoppard\n(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 86.\n[28] William W. Demastes, The Cambridge Introduction to Tom Stoppard\n(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p.61.\n[29] Paul Delaney, Tom Stoppard: The Moral Vision of the Major Plays\n(London: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1990), p. 6-7.\n[30] Ira Nadel, Double Act: A Life of Tom Stoppard,(London: Methuen,\n2002), p. 422.\n[31] Michael Hinden, \"After Beckett: The Plays of Pinter, Stoppard, and\nShepard,\" Contemporary Literature, v. 27, n. 3 (Autumn, 1986): 405-\n406.\n[32] Carol Becker, Social Responsibility and the Place of the Artist in Society\n(Chicago: Lake View Press, 1990), p. 17.\n[33] John Fleming, Stoppard's Theatre: Finding Order amid Chaos (USA:\nUniversity of Texas Press, 2001), p. 2.\n[34] Ronald Hayman, Contemporary Playwrights: Tom Stoppard\n(Heinemann: London, 1979), p. 110.\n[35] Tom Stoppard, Artist Descending a Staircase and Where Are They\nNow?: Two Plays For Radio (London: Faber and Faber, 1973), p. 20.\nAll further quotations from the play will be cited in the text, with\nreference to this edition.\n[36] Richard Kostelanetz \"Avant-Garde (1984),\" New England Review and\nBread loaf Quarterly, v. 7, n. 1 (Autumn, 1984): 25.\n[37] \"The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication\" in Brecht On Theatre\ntranslated by John Willett (London: Methuen, 1977), p. 52.\n[38] Katherine E. Kelly, \"Tom Stoppard's 'Artist Descending a Staircase':\nOutdoing the 'Dada' Duchamp,\" Comparative Drama, v. 20, n. 3 (Fall\n1986): 199.\n[39] Joan Fitzpatrick Dean, Tom Stoppard: Comedy as a Moral Matrix\n(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981), p. 71.\n[40] BBC Radio Three 10 November 1972.\n[41] Paul Delaney, ed., Tom Stoppard in Conversation (Ann Arbor:\nUniversity of Michigan Press, 1997), p. 37.\n[42] Jean-Paul Sartre, What is Literature?, trans. by Bernard Frechtman(\nLondon: Routledge, 1978), p.18.\n[43] Cited in Elmer H. Duncan, \"The Artist in Contemporary Society: Report\nof an International Symposium\", Leonardo, v.10, no. 1 (Winter, 1977):\n73.\n[44] Jindřich Chalupecký and Paul Wilson, \"Marcel Duchamp: A Re-\nEvaluation,\" Artibus et Historiae, v. 6, n. 11(1985): 128.\n[45] Oscar Mandel and Elissa S. Guralnick, \"Tom Stoppard's Artist\nDescending a Staircase,\" PMLA, v. 106, n.1 (Jan., 1991): 125.\n[46] Quited in Elissa S. Guralnick, \"Artist Descending a Staircase: Stoppard\nCaptures the Radio Station-And Duchamp,\" PMLA, v. 105, n. 2 (Mar.,\n1990): 293.\n[47] David K. Rod, \"Carr's Views on Art and Politics in Tom Stoppard's\nTravesties,\" Modern Drama, v. 26, n. 4 (Winter 1983): 536.\n[48] Gabriele Scott Robinson, \"Plays without Plot: The Theatre of Tom\nStoppard,\" Educational Theatre Journal, v. 29, n. 1 (Mar., 1977): 42.\n[49] Tom Stoppard, Travesties (London: Faber and Faber, 1975), p. 51. All\nsubsequent references in the text are to this edition.\n[50] Howard D. Pearce, \"Stage as Mirror: Tom Stoppard's Travesties,\" MLN,\nv. 94, n. 5, Comparative Literature (Dec., 1979): 1154.\n[51] Tom Stoppard, \"Ambushes for the Audience: Towards a High Comedy\nof Ideas,\" Theatre Quarterly, v.4 (May-July 1974): 16.\n[52] Katherine E. Kelly, Elissa S. Guralnick, and Paul Delaney, \"Tom\nStoppard: Craft and Craftiness,\" PMLA, vol. 107, n. 2 (1992): 354.\n[53] Kinereth Meyer, \"It Is Written: Tom Stoppard and the Drama of the\nInterext,\" Comparative Drama, vol. 23, n. 2 (Summer 1989): 107.\n[54] Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art (New York: McGraw-Hill Book\nCompany, Inc., 1965), p. 25.\n[55] Mel Gussow, \"Stoppard Refutes Himself, Endlessly,\" New York Times\n(23 April 1972): 54.\n[56] Mel Gussow, Conversations with Stoppard (London: Nick Hern Books,\n1995), p. 20-21.\n[57] Nevin Yildirim Koyuncu, Re-writing and Mystifying Wilde's 'Art for\nArt's Sake:' Tom Stoppard's Travesties Accessed on 05/02/2015.\n[58] Jacques Maritain, The Responsibility of the Artist (Princeton: University\nof Princeton, N.J., 1960), http://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/etext/resart1.htm\n(accessed December 09, 2013).\n[59] Tom Stoppard, \"Ambushes for the Audience: Towards a High Comedy\nof Ideas,\" Theatre Quarterly, vol. 4, n. 14 (May 1974):13.\n[60] Lee Baxandall and Stefan Morawski (eds), Marx and Engels on\nLiterature and Art (St Louis: Ielos Press, 1973), p. 114-116.\n[61] Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht, trans. by Anna Bostock\n(London: NLB), p. 86.\n[62] Thomas Mann, Letters of Thomas Mann, trans. by R and C Winston\n(London: 1971), p. 165.\n[63] Nancy Shield Hardin and Tom Stoppard \"An Interview with Tom\nStoppard,\" Contemporary Literature, v. 22, n. 2 (Spring 1981): 156."]}