Arcadia by Tom Stoppard - Analysis

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Style and devices

·       Ambiguous responses

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 purposes of procreation and pleasure.  Fermat's last theorem, by contrast, asserts that when x, y and z are whole numbers each raised to power of n, the sum of the first two can never equal the third when n  is greater than 2.
       (Pause.)
THOMASINA: Eurghhh!
SEPTIMUS: Nevertheless, that is the theorem.

·       Paradoxical statements – he says free will but points to it being unchangeable, that is, predetermined

THOMASINA: Well, I do. You cannot stir things apart.
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 into 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.

·       Multiple meanings (two levels/understandings)- landscaping/sex

LADY CROOM: Oh, no! Not the gazebo!
(She enters, followed by BRICE who carries a leatherbound sketch book.)
Mr Noakes! What is this I hear?
BRICE: Not only the gazebo, but the boat-house, the Chinese bridge, the shrubbery –
CHATER: By God, sir! Not possible!
BRICE: Mr Noakes will have it so.
SEPTIMUS: Mr Noakes, this is monstrous!
LADY CROOM: I am glad to hear it from you, Mr Hodge.

·       Another contradiction, this time between god and man's handiwork

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 advantage. The rill is a serpentine ribbon unwound from the lake peaceably contained by meadows on which the right amount of sheep are tastefully arranged – in short, it is nature as God intended




Themes and recurring elements

·       Lying
·       Sex
·       Religion
·       Punning
·       The irony of building ruins without them having been a house first
·       Knowledge is not fixed
LADY CROOM: Mr Chater, you are a welcome guest at Sidley Park but while you are one, The Castle of Otranto was written by whomsoever I say it was, otherwise what is the point of being a guest or having one?

·       Identity hiding (Bernard)
·       Breaking politesse limits
·       Originality, nostalgia, looking for idealism in the present, facsimile of facsimile

·       From Enlightenment to Romanticism



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