The period between Jumpers (1972) and Travesties (1974) established Stoppard in the minds of West End audiences as a name that ensured an evening's laughter mixed with a satisfying sense of intellectual challenge, whether or not his plays proved fully comprehensible. At the same time, an increasing number of professional critics were beginning to see him as a showman whose theatrical precocity did not quite mask the fact that his ideas, though clever, were not, in their opinion, sufficiently thought through. Others who were prepared to take Stoppard's thoughts seriously, felt nonetheless that weighty subjects should, somewhere along the way, arrive at sober statement. Still others clicked their tongues over Stoppard's refusal to commit himself to one point of view, contenting himself with airy structures of ingenious and amusing complexity instead of disturbing his audience's view of themselves.

From his beginnings as a writer, Stoppard always seems to have been looking over his own shoulder, conscious of his weaknesses (as regards plot or characterization) or of the temperamental bent which attracted him to particular ideas and authors. His reaction to these public criticisms was equally self-conscious and was apt to lead him into statements which defensively stressed the artifice of his work: “I'm not impressed by art because it's political, I believe in art being good or bad art, not relevant art or irrelevant art.’ The polish and quotability of such statements had the effect of blinding his detractors to the impulse behind this artifice.