passage from Tom Stoppard's "The Real Thing"

Hi, I read this play a couple of years ago and I really liked it. I wanted to get some input about what you think of this monologue that appears during a conversation that the character Henry has with his daughter Debbie about the relationship between sex and love. Do you find his words to be true and appropriate? What about it do you disagree with? For those of you who have read the play, what lines/monologues did you like/dislike?

Okay, here goes:

"Henry: Yes. Well I remember, the first time I succumbed to the sensation that the universe was dispensable minus one lady--

Debbie: Don't write it, Fa. Just say it. The first time you fell in love. What?

Henry: It's to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek knowing was used for making love. Whosit knew so-and-so. Carnal knoledge. It's what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy...we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to firends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. but in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What's left? What else is there that hasn't been dealt out like a deck of cards? Carnal knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what's shared--she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks of her shoes and dances on the tables, she's everybody's and it don't mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowlege is something else, the undealt card, and while it's held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it's gone everything is pain. Every single thing. Every object that meets the eye, a pencil, a tangerine, a travel poster. As if the physical world hs been wired up to pass a current back to the part of your brain where imagination glows like a filament in a lobe no bigger than a torch bulb. Pain."


I look foward to hearing what you think of this and/or other reactions to the play in general.