Arcadia Scene 3 Summary

Back in 1809 Septimus and Thomasina are having a Latin Lesson which she finds hard.

Jellaby enters with another letter, and Septimus again tucks it into the pages of 'The Couch of Eros'. Septimus and Thomasina argue over the latin translation. Thomasina says that Lady Croom is in love with Lord Byron, and that they were together in the gazebo where Septimus was wooing her. She also tells him that Lord Bryon accidentally informed Mr Chater that it was Septimus who wrote the 2 Picadilly Recreation poems. Septimus gives Thomasina a -A for her maths.

Thomasina: God's truth, Septimus, if there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be one like a bluebell, and is a bluebell, why not a rose? Do we believe that nature is written in numbers?

Thomasina: You will be famous for being my tutor when Lord Byron is dead and forgotten.

Thomasina: ....the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue. Oh, Septimus! -- can you bear it? All the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides -- thousands of poems -- Aristotle's own library!....How can we sleep for grief?

Septimus: By counting our stock. Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sophocles, nineteen from Euripides, my lady! You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?

Thomasina realizes that she was just translating 'Anthony and Cleopatra' and storms out in tears.

Brice and Chater come in to challenge Septimus who replies very wittily by 'addressing himself' to Brice when talking to Chater. They are interrupted by Lady Croom, who comes to borrow Septimus' copy of 'The Couch of Eros' on behalf of Lord Croom despite Septimus' slight protests.

Septimus says that he will fight and kill both Chater than Brice.