On a very basic level, the garden at Sidney Park is the setting for many small, yet often important events. The gazebo, in particular, is where several illicit affairs take place, between Septimus and Mrs Chater and of course between Lord Byron and Lady Croom. Most significantly, perhaps, after the gazebo is turned into a hermitage by Mr Noakes, Septimus lives out the rest of his life there, trying to prove Thomasina's theories. This change from the gazebo to hermitage is only part of the transformation that take up much discussion of Act One of 'Arcadia'. The change manifests itself in three main stages, and forms the basis of what Hannah is writing about, therefore forming one of the strongest links between past and present:

Besides merely giving us examples of the Classical and Romantic styles, Stoppard uses the garden to point out the irony of making a completely 'natural' scene, when in fact each stage is more artificial and man-made than the last. The Classical, ordered garden, is perhaps the most honest, as it at least makes no attempt to appear 'as God intended', unlike the carefully planned placing of each craggy boulder or crumbling ruin in the Romantic stage.

The motif of the garden and its gradual transformation becomes more significant when seen in relation to the play's characters and some of their developments. Thomasina's insistence, for example, that Newton's laws of motion can explain life and the natural word, has a very classical, structured feel to it: 'If you could stop every alarm atom in its positions 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'.

Stoppard's skill, however, is in ensuring that the garden's transformation reflects not only the individual characters in his play, but on the entire piece. For one of the main themes of 'Arcadia', the development of science and more importantly, scientific thinking, undergoes a similar transformation. Beginning with the early nineteenth century premise that Newton

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Approximate Word count = 909
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)