Key Quotes about Knowledge in Arcadia

Knowledge:

Key Quotes:

Septimus: 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 left 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. (page 53)

Themes: Newtonian Physics, time

Valentine: It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing.... A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best possible time of being alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong. (page 64)

Themes: Science/Maths, chaos theory, academic research

Bernard: If knowledge isn't self-knowledge it isn't doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing 'When Father Painted the Parlour'? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you.  (page 84)

Themes: Conflict between maths and literature, thinking vs feeling

Hannah: It’s all trivial –your grouse, my hermit, Bernard’s Byron. Comparing what we’re looking for misses the point. It’s wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we’re going out the way we came in. That’s why you can’t believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the big celestial get together for an exchange of views. I f the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing failure is final. (page 102-103)

Themes: Conflict between literature/maths, religion, meaning of life, academic research

Septimus: When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore.

Thomasina: Then we will dance. (Page 128)

Themes: Love/romance, meaning of life, relationships between men and women

Arcadia: Bernard as a Romantic hero?

Protagonist -  No i'ts an ensemble cast

Sense of Power/leadership - No but speaks and lectures a lot

Rejected by society - no one likes him apart from Chloe, an absent Lady Croom and to some extent Hannah

Wanderlust - into the past, yes

Melancholy, introspection - No, more flamboyant and attention seeking, trying to impress others

Misanthropy - Mainly distrusts the arguements that others suggest against his theory

Regrets for actions, self criticism - To some extent when he discovers his theories are wrong But don't lead to philanthropy he just runs away

Rejects norms and conventions - of dress

Romanticism

Facts:

When: 1800 - 1850
Where: Britain and France
Who: Salvator Rosa, John Constable, Lord Byron, Ludwig van Beethoven, William Blake

Definition: It was a reaction away from the Enlightenment values of reason, order and intellect that was integral to its predecessor, Enlightenment, placing more emphasis on the importance of feeling and imagination.

Charles Baudelaire wrote in 1846, "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor in exact truth, but in a way of feeling."

• Nature: uncontrollable power, unpredictability, and potential for cataclysmic extremes - an alternative to the ordered world of Enlightenment thought. 
• Emotional and behavioral extremes 
• Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental.
• Romantic artists expanded the repertoire of subject matter, rejecting the didacticism of Neoclassical history painting in favor of imaginary and exotic subjects. Orientalism and the worlds of literature stimulated new dialogues with the past as well as the present.
• Literature offered an alternative form of escapism. The novels of Sir Walter Scott, the poetry of Lord Byron, and the drama of Shakespeare transported art to other worlds and eras.
• To William Wordsworth poetry should be "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings"
•  importance of the individual, the unique, even the eccentric
• First gothic novel was Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto (1765)
• Hysterical, mystical, passionate adventures of terrified heroes and heroines in the clutches of frightening, mysterious forces

Further Research:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/508675/Romanticism
http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/romanticism.html
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html

Arcadia Scene 4 Summary

Back to the 1990s, Hannah is reading out loud from Septimus' primer to Valentine about Thomasina's 'proof' she eluded to into the margin. Valentine tries to explain what an iterated algorithm is to Hannah. She explains how they've found Septimus' old primer.

They've found a diagram inside but don't know what it is.

Valentine complains that Thomasina was doing classical maths, and tries to explain iteration in more detail. He complains about all the 'noise' in his grouse data, and says that there is no way that Thomasina could have made any real discoveries.

Valentine: The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is... The ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about—clouds—daffodils—waterfalls—what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in—these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks... We're better at predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than whether it'll rain on auntie's garden party three Sundays from now... It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing.... A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best possible time of being alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.

They discuss whether Gus is a 'genius' or not. Bernard enters 'in high excitement and triumph'. He has found a passage mocking Chater in a copy of 'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers' thats isn't in Byron's handwriting. Hannah has found a letter from Lady Croom talking about how Mrs Chater and Brice got married in 1810.

Bernard: I'll tell you your problem. No guts.

Valentine: Are you talking about Lord Byron, the poet?
Bernard: No, you fucking idiot, we're talking about Lord Byron, the chartered accountant.” 
Valentine: (Unoffended) Oh, well he was here alright, the poet.

Bernard goes into shock and Hannah wakes him up with a kiss on the cheek, and he goes to look for the game book.

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.

1990s Theatre

Kitchen Sink Drama:
'Kitchen Sink' is the term given to a particular type of drama, which focuses primarily on the trials and experiences of the urban working class, itself stemming from the wider 'Kitchen Sink' movement of social realism in art. It became popular in the post-war years, but became increasingly used in drama throughout the 20th Century. The leading characters are often 'anti-heroes' and are usually dissatisfied with their lives and the world. Socialist authors are often linked to this style as they try and reveal the truth of lower class life.

e.g.) Look Back in Anger; Coronation Street, many of Shane Meadows' movies, such as This Is England; and (although more humorous) Paul Abbott's Shameless Partly, social realism developed as a reaction against Romanticism, which promoted concepts such as the beauty and truth of art and music, and even turned them into spiritual ideals. Social realism focused on the "ugly realities of contemporary life and sympathized with working-class people, particularly the poor."

In Yer Face Drama:

It is defined by the New Oxford English Dictionary (1998) as something 'blatantly aggressive or provocative, impossible to ignore or avoid' implies being forced to see something close up, having your personal space invaded and the crossing of normal boundaries.

It emerged in the 1990s predominately in London theatres but also around the rest of the UK, with its most important playwrights including Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill and Anthony Nielson. It tries to shock, unsettle and disturb audiences by the extremism of its language and images, emotional frankness and its acute questioning of moral norms. They want audiences to feel the emotions that are being played out on stage, and are often highly experimental.

Often contain bad language, nudity, explicit sex scenes, violence, controversial subject matter, focusing more on personal politics than ideology.

Links To Arcadia:

1. Septimus is somewhat of an anti-hero as he is very promiscious
2. There is lots of sex in the play
3. Opposite of 'gritty realism, so is perhaps a reaction against it?

Research on 'Arcadia'

• Arcadia involves a lot of clever people who wittily discuss ideas and then hurry off to have sex with each other
• iterated algorithms, landscape gardening, Euclidian geometry, rice pudding and Newton's third law of thermodynamics
• Simply everybody loved this comedy of ideas when it opened at the National in 1993
• wise and yearning play spans the Georgian sublime and the disillusioned days of the last Tory government, spinning ideas about the shape of the universe and the needs of the heart
• Arcadia is a supreme play of ideas, sealing its classic status. Chaos theory, poetry, ethics, the end of history: they're all in there
• The play also has an aching emotional pull
• the way in which word and image work together, culminating in a wrenchingly beautiful final scene in which past and present-day couples waltz around each other, phantoms just a breath away from touch
• Arcadia tries to imagine what a careless paradise might look like, and which imagines the universe only to flirt with its disintegration
• set in a country house, and switching between its aristocratic inhabitants in the 19th century and nearly 200 years later 
• is a literary puzzle interweaving so many themes (not to mention love affairs)
• there is poetry and passion behind the mathematics and metaphysics
• Stoppard opens up supposed collisions between science and literature, classicism and romanticism, deterministic and unpredictable theories of the universe
• one group of characters seeks to plot the future while the other tries to reconstruct the past
• past and present slowly converge
• science is instrinsic to the story, and itself a vehicle for emotion - Valentine trying to woo Hannah
• Thomasina and Septimus' relationship is both intellectual and erotic
• Lady Croom is a 19th aristocrat filled with hauteur and desire
• Thomasina spots the incompleteness of Isaac Newton’s laws of physics, Bernard unearths what he believes to be a dirty secret in the life of Byron

Articles:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2009/jun/03/tom-stoppard-arcadia

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/jun/08/arcadia-tom-stoppard

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/jun/05/review-theatre-arcadia-duke-of-yorks-london

http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/theatre/arcadia-provides-feast-of-ideas-from-tom-stoppard-7414750.html

Mathematics and Science in Arcadia

Chaos Theory:

• Energy has dissipated so you can't rewind time
• Difficult to put everything back together
• Patterns and links - just like in the play where there are links between the present and past, eg the deja vu of Bernard emulating Lord Byron's behaviour
• Difficult to find a start, only obscure patterns
• Can't account for the infinite number of variables - confusing
• It's as much about what we don't know as what we know
• The enlightenment thought that one has to be able to explain everything easily and rationally - replaced by romanticism - emotion and knowledge are intertwined

Valentine: 'It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing.... A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best possible time of being alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.'

Chaos Theory and the Structure of the Whole Play:

• Lots of 'noise' to be cleared away so that Hannah, Bernard and the audience can discover what really happened
• Similar things happen in each time period - life follows patterns
• Peices come apart and then come back together wrong
• Characters misinterpret historical data
• Lots of information but do we really get answers or not
• Lack of linear time
• Newtonian physics = classicism   being ousted by...
• Picturesque = chaos theory

Newtonian Physics vs Chaos Theory:

• Newton invented rules for physics
• You can never measure things exactly
• Newtonian physics isn't wrong it just relates to the first model of the universe
• No theory works in every circumstance
• Septimus is talking from a belief in Newtonian physics - Nothing is ever lost
• When he loses Thomasina he sees that this isn't true/wants to make her famous by proving her theorem
• Everything is interlinked but things are random
• Classical gardening is more order compared to picturesque landscape and chaos theory - questioning old simple rules
• Valentine loves chaos theory

Septimus '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?'

Entropy in the play:

• Entropy in increasing in the universe/increasing the chaos (the entropy increases in a closed system or usable, ordered energy is dissipating) - amount of props on the shared table is always increasing
• Impossible to recover initial conditions - trying to figure out what happened in past, and how they will evolve in the future

The Coverly Set:

• Valentine finally completes Thomasina's algorithm
• Thomasina was on the cusp of discovery but because she only has a pencil and paper she can't get that far
• Time periods merge to work together

Determinism states that everything happens because the conditions are such that nothing else could happen

Chloe: 'The universe is deterministic all right, just like Newton said, I mean it's trying to be, but the only thing going wrong is people fancying people who aren't supposed to be in that part of the plan.'

Burning In Arcadia

• Leaves nothing behind - contradicts Newton's theory of everything being rediscovered, and nothing being lost
• Cuts the link to the future - people will never know
• The great library of Alexandria burnt - Thomasina mourns over this
• Thomasina burns and all her genius and potential is lost
• Do things really get picked up by future generations?
• Flame between Septimus and Lady Croom - fire of lust/ passion

Academic Disciplines in Arcadia

• Hannah and Bernard vs Valentine
• Book geeks vs maths geeks

  vs  

Bernard

• Bernard sees himself as a literature critic
• Bernard's discipline is not as publicized any more - he's publicity hungry and angry about scientist's power and status
• Bernard thinks that reading makes you a better person - classical literary idea
• Literature teaches us about humanity
• Bernard is a balance to the many scientific theories in the play
• Saying you don't need to understand Newton to understand the universe

Hannah

• Likes discovering things
• Joy in exploration and learning
• Censuring the past with her more liberal/reasonable hindsight
• Very skeptical but is always right
• Idealizes human endeavour
• Takes underdog's side

Arcadia Scene 2 Summary

Same room in 'present day'. Hnannah looks through Noakes and Lady Croom's gardening books then leaves with the theolodite. Chloe and Bernard enter looking for Hannah.

Chloe steps out to look for Hannah while Valentine enters, says 'Sod' and leaves.

Chloe explains to Bernard:

• that Hannah is writing a history of the garden
• that the room has been cleared for the dance

Bernard asks Chloe not to tell Hannah his real name when she goes to get her.

Gus enters and leaves straight away.

Valentine enters, once again saying 'sod' then leaves again. He returns and talks to Bernard about:

• Not being able to get into the commode/toilet
• How his father hates typewritten letters and japanese cars
• Talking to Bernard on the phone
• Hannah and her book
• Lady Croom (modern day)
• A seminar they both attended and how one of Bernard's friends was proved wrong by maths

Gus enters and leaves again.

Valentine exits. Hannah enters and Bernard tries to charm her, but starts talking about 'ha-hah's.

Bonhomie exuberant friendliness or a good-natured manner; geniality.

Bernard: Early nineteenth is my period as much as anything is.

Bernard continues to come across as a dickhead, endlessly rambling until Hannah interrupts him by saying...

Hannah: I'm putting my shoes on again.
Bernard: Oh. You're not going to go out?
Hannah: No. I'm going to kick you in the balls.
Bernard: Right. Point taken. Ezra Chater.

Bernard tells her:

• That Chater only wrote 2 poems, the last of which was 'The Couch of Eros' 
• After 1809 Chater 'disappears from view'
• Reads out Chater's inscription on Septimus' book
• Bernard wants to write about Chater
• There is only one other Chater known of who was a 'botanist who described a dwarf dahlia and died there after being bitten by a monkey
• There are two reviews of his work from the Picadilly Recreation
• Found the book in a private collection
• He wants information on Chater, Septimus or Sidley Park

  

Hannah: The Byron gang unzipped their flies and patronized all over [her book].

Hannah starts to tell him things and, depending on the production, starts smoking.
 or 

Hannah says that Valentine is her fiancee, Bernard says that she is lying. She is. They discuss the family:

• Valentine is a post grad biology student
• He's 'doing computer grouse'
• What is wrong with Gus
• 'father sounds like a lot of fun'
• 'mother is the gardener' called 'Hermione' and Hannah is 'helping'

Bernard: I'm beginning to admire you.

Hannah: Before was complete bullshit?

Bernard: Completely.

Hannah starts to tell him information:

• Septimus was tutor
• Croom's daughter his pupil
• septimus studied mathematics and natural philosophy at Cambridge
• Has nothing on Chater
• There is a 'Sidley Hermit' who died in 1834

Hannah: English Landscape was invented by gardeners imitating foreign painters who were evoking classical authors. The whole thing was brought home in the luggage from the grand tour. Here, look - Capability Brown doing Claude who was doing Virgil. Arcadia! And here, superimposed by Richard Noakes, untamed nature in the style of Salvator Rosa. It's the Gothic novel expressed in landscape. Everything but vampires. There's an account of my hermit in a letter by your illustrious namesake.

The hermit was clever, but Hannah is not allowed to finish what she is saying as Bernard spots an oppurtunity to show off his knowledge, lecturing her on Thackeray.

Hannah: The hermit of Sidley park was my...
Bernard: Peg.
Hannah: Epiphany.

Hannah mentions that the hermit was suspected of being a genius and had covered the hermitage with papers covered in maths.

Hannah: The whole romantic sham, Bernard! It's what happened to the Enlightenment isn't it? A century of intellectual rigour turned in on itself. A mind in chaos suspected of genius. In a setting of cheap thrills and false emotion. The history of the garden says it all, beautifully. There's an engraving of Sidley Park in 1730 that makes you want to weep. Paradise in the age of reason. By 1760 everything had gone - the topiary, pools and terraces, fountains an avenue of limes - the whole sublime geometry was ploughed under by Capability Brown. The grass went from the doorstep to the horizon and the best box hedge in Derbyshire was dug up for the ha-ha so that fools could pretend they were living in God's countryside. And then Richard Noakes came in to bring God up to date. By the time he'd finished it looked like this (the sketch book). The decline from thinking to feeling, you see.
Bernard: That's awfully good.

They discuss possible research, until Hannah finally twigs that Bernard actually wants to research Byron. Chloe enters with mugs and mentions that Bernard's last name is Nightingale not Peacock, and Hannah gets angry.

Bernard: The Byron gang are going to get their dicks caught in their zip.

Bernard explains his argument:

• Couch of Eros that was in Byron's possession when he died
• Has underlined passages
• Links to the reviews in the Picadilly Recreation
• Reviews sound like Byron
• 3 letters in the book
• Chater disappeared after 1809
• Byron went to Lisbon for 2 years afterwards

Bernard invites himself to stay, and Hannah reluctantly tells him that Septimus and Byron both went to Trinity College at the same time. Bernard is so pleased he kisses Hannah on the cheek and Chloe re-enters. Bernard leaves, and Hannah and Chloe awkwardly discuss Bernard and Gus. Chloe leaves Hannah alone on the stage.

Letters in Arcadia

• They're secret
• Different from the communication between characters that audience see
• Contain truth
• Things aren't always what they seem
• They burn in the fire and therefore create an incomplete picture, which is why Bernard gets confused
• Way of avoiding confrontation
• Insight into characters - Septimus' romantic side
• Poor evidence
• Missing Link
• Like a jigsaw puzzle, with Hannah and Bernard finding the pieces
• 'What use is a love letter from beyond the grave?' Lady Croom
• Give information
• Gives opportunity for confusion
• Double edged - evidence but unreliable
• Sincerity in letters does not take away from the comedy of the play
• Can see the reaction of the recipitents

   

Arcadia Scene 1 Summary

Key Quotes and Events:

April 1809: Thomasina aged 13, Septimus aged 22

Thomasina: Septimus, what is carnal embrace?
Septimus: Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef.

Septimus and Thomasina discuss:

• Fermat's last theorem
• Mr Chater's poem
• Who Mrs Chater was having 'carnal embrace' with in the 'gazebo'

Septimus: Ah. Yes I am ashamed. Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which is the insertion of the male genital organ into the female genital organ for the purposes of procreation and pleasure. Fermat's last theorem, by contrast, asserts that when x,y and z are whole numbers each raised to the power of n, the sum of the first two can never equal the third when n is greater than 2.

Thomasina: Is it the same as love?

Septimus: Oh no it is much nicer than that.

Jellaby enters with a letter for Septimus from Mr Chater inviting him to duel to defend Mrs Chater's honour and exits with Septimus' reply.

Thomasina: When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red tails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backward, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding des not notice and continues to tun pink just as before. Do you not think this is odd?

Septimus: No more you can, time must needs run backward, and since it will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it for ever. This is known as free will or self determination.

Thomasina: If you could stop every atom in its position and direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended, then if you were really, really good at algebra you could write the formula for all the future; and although nobody can be so clever as to do it, the formula must exist just as if one could.

Septimus mentions that Fermat wrote he had proof for his theorem in a margin of a book. Chater enters. Septimus sends Thomasina out of the room. Chater demands that he and Septimus duel to defend Mrs Chater's honour after Septimus and Mrs Chater 'made love... in the gazebo'. Septimus cajoles him into calming down by saying:

Septimus: There are no more than two or three poets of the first rank now living, and I will not shoot one of them dead over a perpendicular poke in a gazebo'

This flatters Chater and Septimus goes on to allude that Mrs Chater only made love to Septimus to entice him to write a nice review of Chater's poem.

Septimus: ...I order my thoughts, and finally, when all is ready and I am calm in my mind...
Chater: (shrewdly) Did Mrs Chater know all this before she - before you -
Septimus: I think I very likely she did.
Chater: (Triumphantly) There is nothing that woman wouldn't do for me! Now you have an insight into her character. Yes, by God, she is a wife to me sir! (pg 14)

Chater writes in Septimus' edition of 'The Couch Of Eros'. It is hinted that Captain Brice is also Mrs Chater's lover. Noakes enters.

Lady Croom and Captain Brice as she says:

Lady Croom: Oh, no! Not the gazebo!'

Sepimus and Chater assume she is talking about the incident with Mrs Chater when in fact she is bemoaning Noakes' picturesque garden design. They both leap to his defence. Thomasina enters. Thomasina realises what they are actually talking about, but mentions carnal embrace which makes her family think she has had sex with Septimus.

Brice: As her tutor you have a duty to keep her in ignorance.

Thomasina saves the situation by implying she believes that carnal embrace is actually 'the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef'.

Lady Croom: Where there is the familiar pastoral refinement of an Englishman's garden, here is an eruption of gloomy forest and towering crag, of ruins where there never was a house, of water dashing against rocks where there was neither spring or stone I could not throw the length of a cricket pitch. My hyacinth dell is become a haunt for hobgoblins, my Chinese bridge, which I am assured is superior to the one at Kew, and for all I know at Peking, is usurped by a fallen obelisk overgrown with briars.

Lady Croom: But Sidley Park is already a picture, and a most amiable picture too. The slopes are green and gentle. The trees are companionably grouped at intervals that show them to an advantage. The rill is a serpentine ribbon unwound from the lake peacably contained by meadows on which the right amount of sheep are tastefully arranged - in short it is nature as God intended, and I can say with the painter, 'Et in Arcadia Ego!' 'Here I am in Arcadia,' Thomasina.

Lady Croom notices something different about Thomasina then is rude to Chater.Byron is introduced  as having shot a pigeon but never seen. Lady Croom exits with Chater, Brice and Noakes.

Septimus: A calendar of slaughter. 'Even in Arcadia, there am I!'
Thomasina: Oh phooey to Death! (She dips a pen and takes it to the reading stand) I will put in a hermit, for what is a hermitage without a hermit? Are you in love with my mother Septimus?

Thomasina: There. I have made him like the Baptist in the wilderness.

Thomasina gives Septimus a letter from Mrs Chater then exits. He puts the letter into 'The Couch of Eros'.

Characters introduced:

• Septimus
• Thomasina
• Mr Chater
• Mrs Chater
• Mr Noakes
• Jellaby
• Lady Croom
• Captain Brice

Themes Introduced:

• Sex
• Knowledge and discovery
• Fermat's last theorem
• Newtonian physics
• Garden design
• Determism vs chaos  theory

An Explanation of some of the jokes:

1. Thomasina: Septimus, what is carnal embrace?
Septimus: Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef.
Caro means meat in latin.

2. Septimus: I am sorry the seed fell on stony ground.

Thomasina: That was the sin of Onan

In the bible Onan disobeys levirate law when Onan he has sex with Tamar, and withdrew before climax and "spilled his seed on the ground", since any child born would not legally be considered his heir.

3. Septimus: Mr Chater being engaged in closing the stable door.

A well known phrase is 'Don't close the door if the horse has already bolted'

4. Septimus: 'When I cannot sleep I take up 'The maid of turkey' like an old friend!'
Chater: (gratified)
Implies that Chater's poetry is so boring it sends him to sleep, audiences laugh at Chater's stupidity and arrogance.

5. Lady Croom: A lesson in folly...
Double entendre of the garden folly and the folly of Septimus and Mrs Chater's affair

Sex in Arcadia

• Underlying theme of the whole play
• Flirtation between Lady Croom and Septimus
• Mrs Chater is the typical whore female character - doesn't get any time on stage so we only hear what others say about her - she can't defend or explain herself
• Brice invited the Chaters to Sidley Park and organizes the botanical mission to be able to have sex with Mrs Chater
• Only person Mrs Chater won't have sex with is Mr Chater
• Letters are predominately about lust and romance
• Adult comedy
• 'Bring a book' Lady Croom invites Septimus to her room - link between literature and sex
• Lady Croom is wooed by Septimus through letters
• Shows Lady Croom's hypocriticalness - scorns Mrs Chater then does exactly the same, even with the same men
• Sex is not openly out - not crude

Et In Arcadia ego!

Analysis of the Quote from Tom Stoppard's Play Arcadia

It is said and translated twice in the poem, and Stoppard was even going to call the play by the full quotation:

Lady Croom

• Here in Arcadia I am!
• Inaccurate translation of a famous quotation
• It is simplistic as well as inaccurate - It is just her looking at her garden and thinking that its nice
• An 'arcadia' is an idealized world landscape or pastoral idyll
• Rich people wanted their gardens to be both cultivated and natural at the time - classical gardening was the in style
• Arcadia was natural and yet unnatural - Nature as God intended
• Lady Croom acts as though she is divine - her opinion can never be contradicted - she can say waht God means
• Illustrates the arrogance of the upper classes

Septimus

• Even in Arcadia, there I am!
• The 'I's is death
• Even in the lavishness of Sidley Park/The joy of her ans Septimus' love, Thomasina dies
• Can't escape death
• Even in beautiful places, even when you are rich, you can never escape death
• When he says this the play is already taking a more serious turn -death is present
• Arcadia looks like a comedy of manners but has darker undertones