Arcadia

[sawyl]

Prompted by the BBC dramatisation, I decided to take the text of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia away with me. The action of the play is split between 1809, 1812 and the present day. The location, which remains constant across the time periods, is the teaching room at Sidley Park, the Derbyshire home of the Earls of Croom.

The play opens in April of 1809. Septimus Hodge is attempting to compose a review of Ezra Chater's poem, The Couch of Eros, having previously written an anonymous and highly unfavourable review of Chater's first literary effort, The Maid of Turkey. Hodge's pupil, the Earl of Croom's uncommonly clever 13 year-old daughter, Thomasina Coverly, is attempting to prove Fermat's Last Theorum. Chater, currently a guest at Sidley Park, barges in, accuses Hodge of seducing his wife and demands satisfaction. Hodge implies that Mrs Chater only seduced him in order to procure a good review of her husband's poem. Chater's anger is allayed and he goes away content.

In the present day, Bernard Nightingale, an academic from Sussex, has come to Sidley Park. Ostensibly in search of information about Chater, he is actually more interested in Byron, whom he believes was a guest of the Coverlys' in April 1809. Unfortunately, he needs the assistance of Hannah Javis, a writer whose book he slammed in a review in The Observer. After finding evidence that Byron was indeed at Sidley Park, Bernard forms the theory that Byron wrote the critical reviews of Chater's poems, that he was subsequently called out by Chater and that he killed Chater in a duel. He bases this a set of letters found in Septimus Hodge's copy of The Couch of Eros, the fact that Chater disappeared from history in 1809 and the haste with which Byron left England for the continent in spring of 1809.

In 1809, Byron has informed Chater that Hodge was the reviewer of The Maid of Turkey. Enraged, Chater again goes to Hodge demanding satisfaction. Hodge agrees to duel with both Chater and Captain Bryce, the brother of Lady Croom. The duel does not happen: Byron, Brice and the Chaters are expelled from Sidley Park after Mrs Chater is discovered emerging from Byron's bedroom in the middle of the night.

Despite protests by Hannah and the present day Coverly family, Valentine and Chloe, Bernard has recklessly ignored the details that contract his Byron theory and gone ahead and published. He is caught out when Hannah discovers a letter that shows that Chater actually died in 1810 whilst on scientific expedition with Captain Bryce.

The events of the present day begin to overlap with the past. Valentine completes an analysis of Thomasina's work on fractals using a laptop. Thomasina demands that Septimus teach her to waltz ready for her seventeen birthday. Bernard flees the house after being caught in carnal embrace with Lady Chloe in the hermitage. Hannah reveals that Thomasina was killed in a fire on the night before her birthday.

The play ends on a bittersweet note, with Hannah dancing with Valentine's mute brother, Gus, while Septimus and Thomasina waltz, celebrating her birthday's eve.

Arcadia is, first and foremost, a play of ideas. In part, he play describes the conflict between the old, rational, classic world of the 18th century, as evinced by the formal gardens, and the burgeoning romantic sensibilities of the 19th century which require the abandonment of the formal in favour of the gothic, the picturesque. As a subtheme, it also examines the impact of romantic ideals on rationalism, contrasting the perfect, deterministic, clockwork universe of Newton and Laplace, with the emergence of a more chaotic world of entropy and thermodynamics — a world conjured up by something a simple as a spoonful of jam stired into a rice pudding.

Stoppard also plays with the idea of fractal geometries, not merely as playthings for Thomasina and Valentine, but as a way of structuring a narrative. Events in 1809 recur in the present and events in the present are mirrored in past. Thus, both Bernard and Septimus have written reviews pouring invective on literary efforts of a guest at Sidley; both have been caught in carnal embrace in the same location, the gazebo for Septimus, the hermitage for Bernard; both are caught out in their misdeeds by the gardener, Mr Noakes in the 19th century and Lady Croom in the present day; and both have affects for Lady Croom. The echoing of language between the two periods — another fractalline pattern — often seems to mock the the historians' imperfect attempts at understanding, thus Bernard's condescending remark to Hannah about her search for evidence of Byron's presence is echoed, two centuries before, one act further on, and in total sincerity.

Despite bulging at the seams with ideas, Arcadia is also very funny. Septimus' dealings with the rather naive Ezra Chater are particularly amusing. Thus, when Chater charges Septimus with the seduction of Mrs Chater and demands a duel, the tutor replies, "Mrs Chater demanded satisfaction and now you demand satisfaction. I cannot spend my time day and night satisfying the demands of the Chater family." Bernard also has a number of fine moments, thanks to his supreme arrogance and equally supreme recklessness.

I think it is impossible to claim Arcadia as anything other than a dazzling masterpiece, one that rewards each rereading with new insights and new ideas. I make no apologies for my enthusiasm. It really is that good.