classicist/Romantic in Arcadia

A detailed Summary of classicist/Romantic in Arcadia

The play, Arcadia, written by Tom Stoppard, shows different characters that expresses varied opinions on certain subjects. The characters in the play are either classified as Romantics or Classicists. Although some characters are both Classicist and Romantic, such as Thomasina, Septimus and Hannah. Thomasina certainly has most of the characteristics of a Classicist, but she is also spontaneous, and has feelings for Byron. Septimus appears to be a Romantic because he views events as being all different, unpredictable and scattered, yet he also is a classicist because he is a practical person, like Hannah. Hannah, like Septimus, is both a Classicist and a Romantic. She first appears to be a Classicist, talking of 'sublime geometry' and then she goes through a transition and becomes a Romantic. She soon realizes that things change and become chaotic. Thomasina on the other hand, is purely a Romantic and tends to view things as scattered and un-predictable. Through out the play, Classicism and Romanticism play a major role in how the characters behave.

"When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, this spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor

Hannah is trying to tell Bernard that things follow in a pattern. This shows that Hannah in the beginning is a Classicist because she believes in a pattern, and that things are predictable. She expresses the principles of classical literature and art. People have gardens and beautiful landscapes because people wanted to recreate foreign paintings in their backyard. And everything has a way of getting around. As an analogy, if someone told 10 people something, and those 10 people told another 10 people, and so on; The word would get spread around the world because everyone knows someone else. And that is how the idea of gardens came to England. She seems to be a committed Classicist, talking of 'sublime geometry' and being 'quite sentimental' over it. But through out the play, Hannah, makes a transition and appears to be a Romantic as well. Hannah starts to realize that things more into a disordered state when Valentine points out that her "tea is getting cold by itself, but will not get hot by itself." By the last scene of the play, Hannah is dancing with Gus, Hannah seems to have descended into chaos and Romanticism. She too also believes in science and art. She needs facts to believe something, yet at the same time she also believes in emotions.

"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 into disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it for ever. This is known as fr

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Approximate Word count = 1028
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English