Summary of Arcadia
Home version #1:24 April 2000 Arcadia index
    10 most important speeches   more detailed commentary available   both: important, and with commentary    
Page Events/speeches Themes/effects Characters
  scene one; scene two; scene three; scene four; scene five; scene six; scene seven    
Scene One    
1.   description of setting;
'what is carnal embrace?'		 study/'carnal embrace' Sept + Thom
2.   
Fermat's last theorem- introduced 
as distraction from 'carnal embrace';
intro of Mrs Chater in the gazebo
 Maths v 'carnal embrace' Sept + Thom
+1st mention of Mrs Chater
3. Sept's embarrassment re: Mrs Chater;
Thom's reaction to the bald definition of 'carnal embrace'		 levels of conversation: the news of Mrs Chater in the gazebo - Sept's reaction v Thom's understanding Sept + Thom
4. 'sexual congress' v love:
Chater's challenge to a duel;
Thom and the rice pudding		   Sept + Chater;
Thom
5.   'You cannot stir things apart';
Thom's anticipation of Laplace - 'if you were really, really god at algebra you could write the formula for all the future..';
'..am I the first person to have thought of this?'		 Time: the arrow of Time; prediction in the Newtonian universe Thom - as intuitive mathematician
6. Chater enters;
Thom on Fermat's last theorem:'..the note in the margin was a joke to make you all mad.'; Chater's attempt to upbraid Sept		 Fermat;
rules (proper procedure): Chater v Sept (wit)		 Thom;
Chater + Sept
7. 'I cannot spend my time day and night satisfying the demands of the Chater family';
'..her chief renown is for a readiness that keeps her in a state of tropical humidity as would grow orchids in her drawers in January.';
'...a perpendicular poke in a gazebo..'		 Mrs Chater + desire; Chater's ridiculous ambition to be taken as a poet Sept and his impertinent wit;
Chater
8.  first mention of the review of Chater's poem in the Piccadilly Recreation;
'..there is nothing that woman would not do for me.'		 Chater interpreting his wife's behaviour through his own vanity Chater
9. Chater's inscription in Sept's copy of his book: 'To my friend Septimus Hodge, who stood up and gave his best on behalf of the author..';
Lady Croom's entrance: 'Oh no!  Not the gazebo!		 the vanity of writers;
misunderstandings		 Chater
10 Noakes's sketch books: before and after;
misunderstanding-Sept thinking the conversation is about him and Mrs Chater, Lady C and Noakes arguing about the redesign of the garden; Thom's re-entry		 multiplying misunderstandings  
11. 'As her tutor you have a duty to keep her in ignorance';
'It is plain that there are some things a girl is allowed to understand, and these include the whole of algebra, but there are others, such as embracing a side of beef, that must be kept from her until she is old enough to have a carcass of her own.'		 Thom: knowledge + naivety Thom
12. the redesign of the garden;
first mention of the hermitage;
'..I can say with the painter, Et in Arcadia ego!'
'How old are you this morning? - Thirteen years and ten months, mama.'		 garden;
irregularity;
relation between Lady C and Thom;
yhe meaning of Arcadia		 Lady C
13. '..your friend..'(first mention of Byron - although not yet named);
'..Papa has no need of the recording angel, his life is written in the game book.';
'..A calendar of slaughter. 'Even in Arcadia, there am I!' - 'Oh, phooey to Death!' (Thom)		 Byron;
(shooting of) game;
Arcadia;
Death		  
14. Thom drawing in a hermit in the hermitage;
'You must not be cleverer than your elders..' 'Am I cleverer?' 'Yes.  Much.'
'Does carnal embrace addle the brain?'
..Thom..runs off into the garden, cheerfully, an uncomplicated girl.'		 the hermit;
Thom: her intelligence; her girlishness;
effects of 'love' (carnal embrace')		 relation between Sept + Thom;
Thom
  Scene Two    
15. same setting/modern characters; Stoppard's 'explanation' of setting;
'...by the end of the play the table has collected an inventory of objects.'		 setting;
Description of Hannah; description of Bernard.		 Hannah
16. Chloe's explanation to Bernard of what Hannah is doing:'..she's writing a history of the garden..'..'I bet she's in the hermitage..'   Hannah
17. Bernard not wanting to Hannah to know his name (not yet clear why - although we already know he has 'read' her book');
first appearance of Valentine: Sod, sod, sod, sod, sod.';(he's looking for the game books)
first appearance of Gus		   Bernard; Valentine;
Gus
18. we learn Hannah is researching hermits;
Lightning the tortoise		 the casualness/prejudices of the aristocracy
  
19. Valentine and Bernard: computer analysis of literary texts;
Hannah's re-entrance-first meeting with Bernard		 computers (science/technology) v literature  
20. Bernard introducing himself to Hannah: overdoing it; Hannah's shrewdness and scepticism; Bernard's explanation of 'ha-has': difficulty in knowing how to take Bernard - uneasy combination of the erudite + the jokey + the ingratiating + the insulting   Bernard;
Hannah
21. Hannah realising who Bernard is: 'I'm putting my shoes on again' - 'You're not going to go out?' - 'No, I'm going to kick you in the balls.'
Bernard wanting to know if Hannah knows anything about Chater - quotes the dedication we saw Chater write in Sept's copy of 'The Couch of Eros': 'To my friend....';
Chater - not mentioned in the DNB:'...by that time he's been completely forgotten.'		 interpretation (contrast what the dedication sounds like to Bernard and what it sounded like to us Sept. in the preceding scene);
any pathos regarding Chater (for all his ridiculous vanity in scene one - he is now completely forgotten)		 Hannah;
Chater
22. Chater - two: a poet, and a botanist;
Hannah with the upper hand over Bernard ('I'm in your hands.');Hannah's dislike of being patronized;
Stoppard's image of Hannah:  '..She remains standing.  Possibly she smokes; if so, perhaps now.  A short cigarette-holder sounds right, too.  Or brown-paper cigarillos.'
 interpretation of the past Hannah  
23.
'You have a way with you, Bernard.  I'm not sure I like it.';
'..the joke that consoles.'		 the difficulty of reaching one single judgment on Bernard's character Bernard  
24. Bernard revising his opinion of Hannah - not the writer of pulp-history he took her to be - no longer patronising her: 'Your photograph does you justice, I'm not sure the book does.' (revising his conventional/patronising flattery of her on  page 19 -'..the photograph doesn't do you justice.');
Hannah's description of Septimus:'....not quite a guest but rather more than a steward...studied mathematics and natural philosophy at Cambridge.  A scientist, therefore, as much as anything.'		 knowledge about the past; (Hannah's knowledge is in some ways more accurate than ours - even though we've seen Sept; it, perhaps though, is also marked by modern distinctions which don't apply to the past - the arts/science division doesn't apply to the earlier period. Bernard; Hannah; Septimus  
25.   Hannah's interest in the Sidley hermit - the drawing of the Sidley hermit (in Noakes's sketch book - which we've just seen Thom draw);
Landscape:  B: 'Lovely.  The real England.'
H: '..stop being silly now, Bernard.  English landscape was invented by gardeners imitating foreign painters who were evoking classical authors......Arcadia!..'		 the hermit;
landscape - not an idealised realm, separate from Time, but something created in Time, and therefore, subject to Time. Arcadia is revised in meaning from scene 1.  (Poetry set in Arcadia - either classical, or written in imitation of that, concentrates on problems of Love - as though all the shepherds and shepherdesses it writes about have only to concern themselves with Love)		    
26. Hannah quotes from Thomas Love Peacock's letter about the hermit of Sidley: '..a savant among idiots, a sage of lunacy.';
Bernard's 'professionalism' in dealing with the letter in terms of its provenance.		 the hermit;
Bernard as professional		    
27. 'B: Peg
H: Epiphany.'
The difference between H and B (B is looking for subjects to write a book/article about to forward his career - a peg is something to hang something on; H is looking to understood - 'epiphany' originally derives from religion: a revelation, a 'showing forth';
Hannah describing the hermit further: 'When he died, the cottage was stacked solid with paper....He'd covered every sheet with cabalistic proofs that the world was coming to an end..'		 the hermit;
Interpretation ( Hannah is more dependable than Bernard when it comes to interpretation - but she is not without errors - which she will come to revise: her interpretation of the hermit - what he was about - will be shown by the play to be the opposite - and 'the decline from thinking to feeling..the whole Romantic sham..' will come to seem a very misleading judgment.		 Hannah  
28. H: I don't like sentimentality
B:...You seem quite sentimental over geometry...';
Hannah's title for her proposed book: the genius of the place ( a pretty good title- 'genius' in 1800 would mean 'spirit, presiding minor god' rather than what we take it to mean: someone endowed with exceptional intelligence.)  Hannah of course wants both meanings.  (But she will only eventually find herself to have been wrong - Septimus, the hermit, is (are) not the genius of the place;
Bernard's first suggestion of his interest in the connection between Byron and Sidley Park.
 Hannah - her character (there's a resistance to feeling in her) + her difference to Thomasina (we will learn that simple, classical geometry is disliked by T.) Hannah (and Thomasina)  
29. Hannah's final realisation that Bernard wrote the patronising review of her book;
suggestion of Bernard's interest in Chloe;
Bernard begins to explain the Byron connection;
 Byron;
    
30. 'The Couch of Eros' - the book we've seen in Sept's hands - ended up in Byron's library - who wrote the review of Chater's poem in The Piccadilly Recreation ? (H: the reviews are by Sept; B: the reviews are undiscovered writings by Byron - and therefore, significant - enough to help his academic career) the interpretation of the past (the audience don't have enough information to decide between H and B)    
31. the letters in the book - Chater's challenges - B's interpretation of these -'[Byron] killed Chater';
B wanting to believe in his interpretation:' Hannah, this is fame'		 interpretation - as vulnerable to what is wanted to be believed;
B's jumps in interpretation		 Bernard  
32. Hannah's scepticism that Byron was ever at Sidley Park ('..there is nothing to suggest that Byron was here, and I don't believe he ever was.') - in this H is wrong -as we will come to discover;
realisation that Sept was at school with Byron		      
33. B's exit: 'Aren't you glad I'm here?' - ( a difficult question for the audience -now and later: B is wrong about some (most) things - because of his ambition, he takes short cuts in interpretation - but he is right on some things - his riskiness does move things forward.  (Would Hannah have come to realise all that she eventually does without Bernard?);
Chloe on Bernard:'...a lot of sexual energy there..If you don't want him, I'll have him.';
Hannah's surprise at Chloe's early sexual predatoriness:'...Aren't you supposed to have a pony?';
Chloe's mention of 'her genius brother' - the audience, and Hannah, assume she means Valentine: she doesn't - it's Gus.		 judgment of Bernard;
Chloe - as sexually forward; Gus - as genius (genius as not where you expect it - not in the Cambridge educated tutor, but in the 13-16 year old pupil, as Hannah will only eventually discover)
 Bernard:
Chloe;
Gus		  
34. Gus gives an apple to Hannah (p34 C to H: 'He's in love with you.' (looking forward to the very end of the play) the apple    
  Scene Three      
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