Arcadia, written by the renowned playwright Tom Stoppard, is widely hailed as one of the greatest plays of the 20th century. Set in a stately manor house in Derbyshire in the 19th century, the play is divided into two acts and follows characters from different time periods and widely varying walks of life. Through a mix of comedy and tragedy, the play explores themes of fate, knowledge, and time and how they are interwoven with one another.
The play begins in 1809 and follows the lives of the family that lives in the manor house, the Coverlys. Hannah Coverly is the daughter of the family, strongly devoted to her studies in Mathematics and the natural sciences, while her younger brother Thomas is a lover of chaos and disorder. As the action progresses, the audience is introduced to an eclectic group of antagonists, such as the reclusive Lord Byron who stayed in the manor house in 1809, Lady Croom, worried about her son who defies her wish for him to join the military, and the highly analytical tutor Septimus who educates the younger Coverlys.
In the second act, set in the present day, the descendants of the Coverlys, Valentine and Chater, are introduced. Valentine is a researcher of the past and obsessed with getting to the bottom of a mysterious event which occurred between Lord Byron and Septimus in 1809. By way of a computer model and Valentine’s ingenious deductions, he is able to figure out what happened back then while staying true to the play’s scientific bent.
These two acts tell very distinct stories, but Stoppard connects them with his use of repetition of characters and images, particularly in the second act where characters “become” their counterparts in the past, such as Thomas Coverly becoming his ancestor Lord Byron. In one of the play’s most famous scenes, Byron and Septimus have an argument that “spans” the centuries in order to explore the philosophical ideas of free will versus destiny.
Overall, Arcadia is a brilliant exploration into the ideas of chaos-and-order, scientific progress, relationships, and the idea of science as a form of art. It speaks to themes of human nature and immortality, with characters ranging from the rational to the illogical in order to show the complexity of life. Through an intricate blending of genres and an intriguing use of themes, Stoppard has created a timeless classic, offering a look into a distant past and how which it is still connected to our present day.
