College Papers

Following the implications of a Newtonian universe to their logical conclusion, thirteen year-old Thomasina Coverly reasons, “if you could stop every atom in its position and direction…you could write the formula for all the future…the formula must exist just as if one could (5). Unconvinced that Euclidean geometry properly reflects the complexities of life, the precocious student pursues her theory and thereby discovers a glitch in classically based physics: “Newton’s equations go forwards and backwards…But the heat equation…goes only one way” (87). Her revelation, which combines the foreseeable results of mathematics with a degree of unpredictability, affirms a view of the universe in which “we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder and until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it for ever” (5). Thomasina’s moment of epiphany allowed her to glimpse a world beyond the confines of seventeenth-century beliefs, connecting her with people of the twentieth century looking back on the remains of her discovery.

Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia is a play in which data and epiphany work together to trace the path of past, present and future events. The play’s very structure affirms the importance of both elements. In one sense, the work is structured much like Thomasina’s iterated algorithm: by plugging in data from the text (y), and viewing the story in light of Thomasina’s conclusions (the manipulation), complex thematic patterns (x) begin to emerge. However, these thematic patterns only develop a purpose through connections of the seemingly unconnected. Like Valentine’s inherited game books, the text of the play records data, hinting at meaning that can only be appreciated through what the audience’s interpretation.

A notable conflict throughout the play is disbelief: not every character accepts Thomasina’s vision and sense of interconnectedness. One such character, Hannah Jarvis, discredits calculations based on the theory as madness:

The testament of the lunatic serves as a caution against French fashion…for it was Frenchified mathematik that brought him to the melancholy certitude of a world without light or life…as a wooden stove that must consume itself until ash and stove are as one, and heat is gone from the earth” (65).

As the audience discovers, these “cabalistic proofs” are the work of Septimus Hodge, completed in the years following Thomasina’s premature death in a house fire (27). Hannah’s assessment in the twentieth-century, which derives from a set of incorrect assumptions about the past, is surprisingly similar to the opinions of characters from the seventeenth-century. For example Thomasina’s mother, Lady Croom, prefers the balance and order of a Newtonian universe for its supposedly superior aesthetics. Her taste in landscaping particularly reflects this predilection: she desires a controlled and balanced environment, where “trees are companionably grouped,” the stream is “a serpentine ribbon unwound from the lake peaceably,” and “the right amount of sheep are tastefully arranged” (12). From her perspective, nature that can be derived from classical mathematics is “nature as God intended” (12). Lack of order, as exemplified in Mr. Noakes’ landscaping, represents descent into chaos, a notion both distasteful and frightening to the Newtonian thinker. This is precisely the perspective that Thomasina mocks when she says, “God must love gunnery and architecture if Euclid is his only geometry” (84).

Sidley Park’s resident tutor Septimus Hodge also discounts Thomasina’s theory for most of the play, regarding her process of “trial and error” discovery with amusement (84). Septimus educates his pupil according to the Newtonian model, and his conversations reflect a genuine belief in the system. When Thomasina laments the burning of the library in Alexandria, Septimus consoles her with the idea of a balanced and immutable universe:

We shed as we pick up, like travelers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it (38).

He then adds, “ I have no doubt that the improved stream-driven heat-engine which puts Mr. Noakes into an ecstasy that he and it and the modern age should all coincide, was described on papyrus” (39). From these comments, a cyclical view of the world emerges, one in which repetition and perpetual order are taken for granted as the true order of things.

Lady Croom and Septimus Hodge each value the Newtonian model for its order, completeness and ability to explain life mathematically. However, neither can account for the disparity between theory and reality because they do not go beyond the mathematically proven. Similarly, characters in twentieth-century arrive at incorrect theories through an inadequate comprehension of historical data. Bernard and Hannah, researching Sidley Park and Lord Byron, offer a variety of explanations to account for historical evidence, but the audience knows these theories are riddled with misinterpretations.

Only Valentine, who attempts a study of grouse populations through biology and mathematics, seems particularly aware and despairing of his severe limitations. As the play progresses, he becomes increasingly disheartened by the impossibility of his project and eventually complains to Hannah:

It’s all very, very noisy out there. Very hard to spot the tune. Like a piano in the next room, it’s playing your song, but unfortunately it’s out of whack, some of the strings are missing, and the pianist is tone deaf and drunk—I mean, the noise! Impossible! (46)

Valentine laments because mathematical ability is not the problem: even with the increased speed of computer calculations, he cannot complete his work because too many variables remain unknown and unpredictable. As he later explains to Hannah, this is where Thomasina fundamentally differs from her contemporaries: “She didn’t have the maths, not remotely. She saw what things meant, way ahead, like seeing a picture” (93). Her accurate translation of Et in Arcadia ego!, “Even in Arcadia there am I!” indicates her early awareness of inconsistency in a balanced and determined universe: like death in the midst of an idyllic setting, certain aspects of the universe defy mathematical ideas and produce unexpected results. Through intuition, not proofs, Thomasina recognizes truths about reality, ultimately transforming both scientific and philosophical thinking.

To express the significance of this realization, Stoppard attributes a sort of prophetic quality to Septimus, who following Thomasina’s death devotes his life to working out her proofs as a secluded and fanatical hermit. Stoppard foreshadows this future role shortly after Mr. Noakes presents his drawings of the proposed landscape to residents of the manor house. Thomasina draws a hermit into the picture and says, “I have made him like the Baptist in the wilderness” (14). Her reference to John the Baptist, combined with Septimus’ role as an eccentric hermit prolific in “cabalistic proofs” brings to mind the fulfillment of a prophecy quoted in Matthew 3:3: “A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight paths for him.” In a world that views God as a Newtonian, Septimus heralds Thomasina as the mediator of a new understanding of God’s relationship to the universe.

Characters in the twentieth century describe the intensity this revelation in more Romantic terms. When Hannah and Valentine discuss Septimus and Thomasina, incorrectly assuming Septimus is the more brilliant of the two, Valentine expresses his frustration in understanding the process of revelation. He says, “You can’t open a door till there’s a house,” to which Hannah replies, “I thought that’s what genius was” (79). Long before the she could ever construct proofs to support her claim, Thomasina conceives of a new theory that better accounts for her experience of life.

Thus far textual examples have been fairly straightforward, directly addressing the discussion of incomplete theory and epiphanic experience. However, Stoppard also expresses themes in his play through the subtlety of stage direction. Piano playing, for example, serves the purpose of illustrating the search for understanding. At intervals throughout the play, particularly at moments of epiphany, one of the members of the household begins to play the piano. Sometimes the performance is cacophonous and represents the “trial and error” theorizing of Thomasina; at other times, as when Gus Coverly improvises, the work is attributed to “genius” that grasps as yet unidentified truths (48). Their common musical pastime connects them and prompts comparison. Indeed, they are similar: each recognizes how Newton’s explanation is incomplete on its own, and specifically understands how to interpret heat exchange and draw out its implications. When Gus examines the heat exchange diagram with Hannah, he silently “Nods and smiles,” quietly recognizing its importance (51). Thomasina, the more vocal of the two, explains the diagram’s significance in terms of human relationship: “the only thing going wrong is people fancying people who aren’t supposed to be in that part of the plan” (73). From the burning passion of a carnal embrace, to the burning of letters filled with love and jealousy, to Thomasina’s death by burning, unanticipated bursts of heat appear throughout the play as the characters themselves gradually mix and coalesce, transcending even the barrier of time at the play’s end.

Thomasina explains that the universe cannot be deterministic when she says, “The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is” (47). It is useful to think about this statement in terms of the names of the two tortoises that appear in the play. Plautus, named after the ancient playwright, represents human knowledge that has survived the ravages of time and helps us to understand history to a certain degree. Lightening, by contrast, represents the instantaneous, powerful and unpredictable experience of revelation.

Valentine and his game book also helpfully illustrate this point. It is particularly notable that Valentine, whose name associates him with blind passion, inherited the game books that hold supposedly calculable data. Incapable of escaping this mixture, he reaches his own epiphany: the gunnery proves predictable; the people do not.