Arcadia - Tom Stoppard

A detailed Summary of Arcadia - Tom Stoppard

Arcadia, a typically postmodern play by Tom Stoppard exemplifies this movement

through use of the features of postmodernism and by it's ambiguous ending.

Some of the features used in the play which demonstrate this include the shifts in time from past to present, concurrent props used sets of both eras, the characters overlapping at the end, parallel characters in both eras and textual references. Its ambiguous ending and satirical style also combine to make it a very fresh, new play.

The play begins with a humorous introduction into the student-tutor relationship between Thomasina Coverly and Septimus Hodge. Stoppard immediately sets the tension between cerebral and passion themes by Thomasina's curiosity, "tell me more about sexual congress." while Septimus attempts to engage Thomasina's attention in proving Fermat's theorem. These opposites become numerous in the play as Stoppard contrasts free will and determination, science and the humanities, romantic and classical and female intuition with male dogmatism.

The play, takes on a number of different meanings when looked at from different

perspectives; some would claim that it is satire on academia and the world of researchers such as Bernard, others would s

He also uses the waltz as a symbol for Arcadia: a dance filled with so much passion yet requiring the skill of complex steps and moves.

In the main theories suggested of free will and determination, Stoppard proposes that while there may be patterns in the physical universe that suggest our existence has order (can be determined), human nature in it's perversity defies neat definition. That while we may be able to make order out of the chaos of our world, our own lives remain unpredictable, but interesting. In the same way, he does not make any neat conclusions about any of the theories presented and leaves it to the reader to make sense of what Stoppard really means.

ay that was more about history and the fallacies of studying primary evidence. The play utilizes many theories concerning science and philosophies on life, and so many might say this play is about living life, an existential thought in the play as Thomasina fulfills her potential in life and burns on the eve of her seventeenth birthday.

The existential factor in the play, is very much a post-modern idea and Stoppard

The last scene is the most confusing and the hardest scene to understand. This is primarily because Stoppard constantly alternates between the two time periods and intermixes dialogue from both. With the use of multiple conversations, the main objective of this scene is to show the viewer the connection between the characters of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Hodge Stoppard, Charlotte Lamb, Thomasina Septimus, Tom Stoppard, Byron Hannah's, Hannah Gus, Septimus Thomasina, Thomasina Stoppard, Recreation Intertextuality, Bernard Valentine, thomasina septimus, fermat's theorem, information play, free determination, seventeenth birthday, learn information, nineteenth century, textual references,

Approximate Word count = 1054
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English