Arcadia

Arcadia

 

Tom Stoppard

 

ISBN 0-571-16934-1

 

In a large country house in Derbyshire in April 1809 sit
Lady Thomasina Coverly, aged thirteen, and her tutor, Septimus Hodge. Through
the window may be seen some of the ‘500 acres inclusive of lake’ where Capability
Brown’s idealized landscape is about to give way to the ‘picturesque’ Gothic
style: ‘everything but vampires’, as the garden historian Hannah Jarvis remarks
to Bernard Nightingale when they stand in the same room 180 years later.

Bernard has arrived to uncover the scandal which is said to
have taken place when Lord Byron stayed at Sidley Park.

 

Tom Stoppard’s absorbing play takes us back and forth between
the centuries and explores the nature of truth and time, the difference between
the Classical and the Romantic temperament, and the disruptive influence of sex
on our orbits in life—‘the attraction which Newton left out’.

Arcadia
opened at the Lyttelton Theatre, Royal
National Theatre, on 13 April 1993. The cast was as follows:

A room on the garden front of a very large country house
in Derbyshire in April 1809. Nowadays, the house would be called a stately
home. The upstage wall is mainly tall, shapely, uncurtained windows, one or
more of which work as doors. Nothing much need be said or seen of the exterior
beyond. We come to learn that the house stands in the typical English park of
the time. Perhaps we see an indication of this, perhaps only light and air and
sky.

The room looks bare despite the large table which
occupies the centre of it. The table, the straight-backed chairs and, the only
other item of furniture, the architects stand or reading stand, would all be
collectable pieces now but here, on an uncarpeted wood floor, they have no more
pretension than a schoolroom, which is indeed the main use of this room at this
time. What elegance there is, is architectural, and nothing is impressive but
the scale. There is a door in each of the side walls. These are closed, but one
ofthefrench windows is open to a bright but sunless morning.

There are two people, each busy with books and paper and
pen and ink, separately occupied. The pupil is
Thomasina coverly,
aged
13. The tutor is
Septimus HODGE,
aged 22. Each has an open book. Hers is
a slim mathematics primer. His is a handsome thick quarto, brand new, a vanity
production, with little tapes to tie when the book is closed. His loose papers,
etc, are kept in a stiff-backed portfolio which also ties up with tapes.

Septimus has a tortoise which is sleepy enough to serve
as a paperweight.

Elsewhere on the table there is an old-fashioned
theodolite and also some other books stacked up.

Thomasina: Septimus, what is carnal embrace?

Septimus: Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one’s
arms around a side of beef.

Thomasina: Is that all?

Septimus: No ... a shoulder of mutton, a haunch of venison
well hugged, an embrace of grouse ...
caro, carnis;
feminine; flesh.

Thomasina: Is it a sin?

Septimus: Not necessarily, my lady, but when carnal embrace
is sinful it is a sin of the flesh, QED. We had
caro
in our Gallic Wars—‘The
Britons live on milk and meat’—‘
lacte et carne vivunf
. I am sorry that
the seed fell on stony ground.

Thomasina: That was the sin of Onan, wasn’t it, Septimus?

Septimus: Yes. He was giving his brother’s wife a Latin lesson
and she was hardly the wiser after it than before. I thought you were finding a
proof for Fermat’s last theorem.

Thomasina: It is very difficult, Septimus. You will have to
show me how.

Septimus: If I knew how, there would be no need to ask
you.
Fermat’s last theorem has kept people busy for a hundred and fifty years, and I
hoped it would keepjyow busy long enough for me to read Mr Chater’s poem in
praise of love with only the distraction of its own absurdities.

Thomasina: Our Mr Chater has written a poem?

Septimus: He believes he has written a poem, yes. I can see
that there might be more carnality in your algebra than in Mr Chater’s ‘Couch
of Eros’.

Thomasina: Oh, it was not my algebra. I heard Jellaby telling
cook that Mrs Chater was discovered in carnal embrace in the gazebo.

Septimus:
(Pause)
Really? With whom, did Jellaby
happen to say?

(Thomasina
considers this with a puzzled frown.)

Thomasina: What do you mean, with whom?

Septimus: With what? Exactly so. The idea is absurd. Where
did this story come from?

Thomasina: Mr Noakes.

Septimus: Mr Noakes!

Thomasina: Papa’s landskip gardener. He was taking bearings
in the garden when he saw—through his spyglass—Mrs Chater in the gazebo in
carnal embrace.

Septimus: And do you mean to tell me that Mr Noakes told the
butler?

Thomasina: No. Mr Noakes told Mr Chater.
Jellaby
was
told by the groom, who overheard Mr Noakes telling Mr Chater, in the stable
yard.

Septimus: Mr Chater being engaged in closing the stable
door.

Thomasina: What do you mean, Septimus?

Septimus: So, thus far, the only people who know about this
are Mr Noakes the landskip architect, the groom, the butler, the cook and, of
course, Mrs Chater’s husband, the poet.

Thomasina: And Arthur who was cleaning the silver, and the
bootboy. And now you.

Septimus: Of course. What else did he say?

Thomasina: Mr Noakes?

Septimus: No, not Mr Noakes. Jellaby. You heard Jellaby telling
the cook.

Thomasina: Cook hushed him almost as soon as he started. Jellaby
did not see that I was being allowed to finish yesterday’s upstairs’ rabbit pie
before I came to my lesson. I think you have not been candid with me, Septimus.
A gazebo is not, after all, a meat larder.

Septimus: I never said my definition was complete.

Thomasina: Is carnal embrace kissing?

Septimus: Yes.

Thomasina: And throwing one’s arms around Mrs Chater?

Septimus: Yes. Now, Fermat’s last theorem—

Thomasina: I thought as much. I hope you are ashamed.

Septimus: I, my lady?

Thomasina: If
you
do not teach me the true meaning of
things, who will?

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.

Thomasina: It is disgusting and incomprehensible. Now when I
am grown to practise it myself I shall never do so without thinking of you.

Septimus: Thank you very much, my lady. Was Mrs Chater down
this morning?

Thomasina: No. Tell me more about sexual congress.

Septimus: There is nothing more to be said about sexual congress.

Thomasina: Is it the same as love?

Septimus: Oh no, it is much nicer than that.

(One of the side doors leads to the music room. It is the
other side door which now opens to admit
JELLABY,
the butler.)

I am teaching, Jellaby.

Jellaby: Beg your pardon, Mr Hodge, Mr Chater said it was urgent
you receive his letter.

Septimus: Oh, very well, (Septimus
takes the letter.)
Thank
you.
(And to dismiss
Jellaby.) Thank you.

Jellaby:
(Holding his ground)
Mr Chater asked me to
bring him your answer.

Septimus: My answer?

(He opens the letter. There is no envelope as such, but
there is a ‘cover” which, folded and sealed, does the same service.
Septimus
tosses the cover negligently aside and reads.)
Well, my answer is that
as is my custom and my duty to his lordship I am engaged until a quarter to
twelve in the education of his daughter. When I am done, and if Mr Chater is
still there, I will be happy to wait upon him in—
(he checks the letter)—
in
the gunroom.

Jellaby: I will tell him so, thank you, sir.

(Septimus folds the letter and places it between the
pages of ‘The Couch of Eros’.)

Thomasina: What is for dinner, Jellaby?

Jellaby: Boiled ham and cabbages, my lady, and a rice pudding.

Thomasina: Oh, goody. (Jellaby
leaves.)

Septimus: Well, so much for Mr Noakes. He puts himself forward
as a gentleman, a philosopher of the picturesque, a visionary who can move
mountains and cause lakes, but in the scheme of the garden he is as the
serpent.

Thomasina: When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the
spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a
meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backward, the jam will not
come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn
pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?

Septimus*. No.

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.