Arcadia by Tom Stoppard: Act 1, Scenes 1 and 2 - Summary

Act 1, Scene 1

We are in a country house, Sidley, in Derbyshire in 1809. Septimus, 22, and his student Thomasina, 13, are each studying their own thing, she math and he reading Mr/ Chater's poem. She looks up from her attempt to solve Fermat's last theorem to ask about "carnal embrace". He tells her it means to hug meat.

Nokes (landscape gardener) told Mr. Chater that Mrs. Chater was engaged in a carnal embrace with someone in the gazebo

Groom hears this

Tells Jellaby

Jellaby tells cook

Thomasina overhears

Thomasina tells Septimus.

He tells her what the phrase really means and she is disgusted. The butler Jellaby enters with a letter for Septimus from Mr. Chater and relays the message that he will meet him after the lesson. Mr Chater, angry, enters the room and confronts Septimus about bedding his wife, and challenges him to a duel. Septimus distracts him by praising his poetry, and even turns it around by saying a poetry journal appealed to him for a review of Mr. Chater's poem and suggesting that Mrs. Chater slept with him to bribe him, but makes Mr Chater think it's his idea. Mr. Chater gives Septimus a signed copy of his book. Noakes enters and panics but sees them friendly.

Lady Croom, Thomasina's mother, enters with Captain Brice. They are speaking of landscaping but Mr. Chater and Septimus mistake it for talk about infidelity. They look at Noakes' sketchbook that has "after" drawings of the garden superimposed on "before". Thomasina enters and hears the phrase "side of beef", upon which her mother grows angry at Septimus, but Thomasina, perceiving this, saves the tutor by pretending to think it means "hugging meat". She rebukes him for filling her daughter's head with nonsense. She surveys Noakes' plans for her garden which consist of building ruins on it, and opposes them because as the garden is it is green and pleasant, heavenly, a notion which Thomasina opposes.

Thomasina notes that her father's life revolves around hunting. She draws in a hermit on the hermitage Noakes plans instead of the gazebo.

Act 1, Scene 2

Present day. 

Hannah is in the same room, and Chloe, daughter of the house, and Bernard, a visitor, enter. Hannah leaves. From the conversation we understand that the landscape has been changed to Noakes' vision. Chloe leaves too after having put on garden boots and leaves Bernard alone in the room. Gus enters and leaves. The room is bare because everything has been removed for the dance. 

Bernard wants to meet Hannah, who is researching hermits and has written about Caroline Lamb, but doesn't want her to know his name. Hannah is composed and has Bernard tripping over himself. He tells her he is interested in the poet Ezra Chater, about whose note to Septimus he is aware, and asks her to let him know if she finds anything on him in the course of her research. We find out Bernard gave her last book a horrible review. Also that Valentine is doing mathematical analysis of grouse populations. 

Bernard charms Hanna into telling him about Septimus who studied math and natural philosophy at Cambridge. She shows him the sketchbook with Thomasina's drawing on it. She is researching the Sidley hermit. Hannah says he and the change in the garden symbolize the transition from Enlightenment to Romanticism, from thinking to feeling and it's a "decline". Bernard is skeptical about her aversion to sentimentality. 

Chloe comes in and betrays Bernard's name, and Hannah gets mad and Bernard asks her to collaborate because Byron is involved. Bernard attributes the notes between Septimus and Mr. Chater and Septimus and Mrs. Chater to Byron instead of Septimus. Septimus's theory is that Byron killed Chater because Chater disappeared after 1809 which is when the threatening note was written.

Hannah is skeptical and says the evidence is inconclusive and she found no mention of Byron while perusing the Croom archives. She says Septimus and Byron were contemporaries at Trinity College which strengthens his theory. 

Bernard leaves, ecstatic and Gus gives Hannah an apple.