Times Are Changing
In Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia there is a play on time and the continual flow of time. Besides just the time periods in which the main characters are flipping back and forth there is also a play in the literary changing of time. There’s a visible shift of literary periods from the Age of Enlightenment to the Romantic Period. As such this play is a prime showcase of the literary time periods of Enlightenment, Romantic, and the Modern periods. Stoppard shows this transformation in some very remarkable ways such as the architecture of Sidley Park, the characters and their beliefs, and then continues to shift from the Romantic period to the Modern as is shown with the unfolding of the present within the play itself.
The shift of time can be seen within the architecture of Sidley Park, in the sense that the park is a kind of metaphor for the changing of times. As mentioned in Arcadia, “The Age of Enlightenment banished into the Romantic wilderness,” (2798). Within the play the garden in 1809 is described by Lady Croom as, “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, and I can say with the painter, “Et in Arcadia ego!” ‘Here I am in Arcadia’, Thomasina,” (2762). In this quotation it is shown that Sidley Park is beautiful, neatly arranged, and shows the natural awe of beauty in a very subdued manor. It is logical, controlled, clear, and concise. Lady Croom mentions that it is Nature as God intended, which shows the arrangement of the garden as rational. The implication is that this is a direct similarity between the Age of Reason. All the while Sidley Park is about to be transformed into something that goes with the changing of time, “Here is the Park as it appears to us now, and here as it might be when Mr Noakes has done with it. Where there is the familiar pastoral refinement of an Englishman’s garden, here is an eruption of gloomy forest and towering crag, of ruins where there was never a house, of water dashing against rocks where there was neither spring nor a stone I could not throw the length of a cricket pitch. My hyacinth dell is become a haunt for hobgoblins, my Chinese bridge…is usurped by a fallen obelisk overgrown with briars,” (2761). Here we get the beginning glimpse into that of the gothic and by extension the Romantic Age. The park is feigning age, chaos, and ruins. Which gives the place an air of history, gloom, and which results in an emotional reaction from those who lay eyes upon it. The sight of ruins brings about emotion in people; you see and feel the history that passed through the stone that crumbles before your eyes. Nature is the key to the shifting of the ages within Arcadia because it is one of the few things in life that humans cannot usually control, yet the irony in this case is that nature is being manipulated. In the case of the gothic Sidley Park, it’s meant to look like nature is overrun and taken control again – when in reality it is humans who made it look like it had been overrun, it’s a false reality. The changing of the scenes is the visible aspects of the changing of the periods to key the audience into the shift of the ages.
Besides just informing the audience in the shifting of the ages by the physical reality of Sidley Park, it’s also done using the characters themselves, their beliefs, and the things that they say. The character of Valentine is a figure for the Age of Enlightenment as he is using the scientific in order to record the population levels of Grouse. He considers the logical and is straightforward – he’s about the progress of knowledge and the scientific. “The questions you ask don’t matter, you see. It’s like arguing who got there first with the calculus. The English say Newton, the Germans say Leibnitz. But it doesn’t matter. Personalities. What matters is the calculus. Scientific progress. Knowledge,” (2794).
Bernard is a figure for the Romantic Period, he fits into the mold of a byronic hero in the sense he is arrogant, disrespectful of rank, emotionally conflicted, seductive, self-destructive, educated, and intelligent. Bernard is emotional and is quick to jump to conclusions, “I’ve proven Byron was here…” (2814). Hannah points out, “You’ve left out everything which doesn’t fit,” (2793). In his eagerness to prove that Lord Byron murdered Ezra Chater he ignores the evidence that doesn’t yet make sense and relies on his gut, not the proof or logic behind it. As Valentine reasons, “Actually, Bernard, as a scientist, your theory is incomplete,” (2793). Bernard is so caught up in his beliefs that he is right that nothing matters, even to the point of scoffing at all scientific evidence, “Don’t confuse progress with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need. There’s no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotle’s cosmos. Personally, I preferred it. Fifty-five crystal spheres gears to God’s crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can’t think of anything more trivial than the speed of light. Quarks, quasars – big bangs, black holes – who gives a shit?” (2794-95).
Septimus, like Valentine, relies on knowledge and truth – he would represent the age of Enlightenment as well.”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…nothing can be lost…The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again,” (2779). He is the genius who tutors Thomasina, who ends up outdoing him later on. However, he relies on knowledge, mathematics, and science in life.
Thomasina is a character who herself seems to shift from the ideals of both the age of enlightenment and the romantic period. She uses logic and relies on science, but also allows herself to react to emotions as well. For example in Thomasina’s explaination of why she doesn’t like Cleopatra she states, “Oh, Septimus! – can you bear it? All the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides – thousands of poems – Aristotle’s own library brought to Egypt by the noodle’s ancestors! How can we sleep for grief?” (2779). Yet all the while she remains to be thinking critically and immersed in the problems of mathematics and science to glimpse into the scientific future before her time should allow, “Hannah: What did she see? Valentine: That you can’t run the film backwards. Heat was the first thing which didn’t work that way. Not like Newton… She saw why. You can put back the bits of glass but you can’t collect up the heat of the smash. It’s gone. Septimus: So the Improved Newtonian Universe must cease and grow cold. Dear me,” (2817). Thomasina glimpses into the future with her knowledge in ways she can never fully explain nor comprehend.
There’s a demonstration of the shift from the Romantic Period to the Modern Age just showing the flow of time within the play itself. Arcadia begins with the characters in 1809, Septimus and Thomasina where they’re partaking in a study session while time jumps forward to the present time – 1993. There Hannah desires to learn of the Hermit of Sidley Park; Bernard about Lord Byron and the potential of murdering another poet, and the desire to search for truths. This fits the modern genre as a testament to the absurd, “Valentine: No. Yes. Because there’s an order things can’t happen in. You can’t open a door till there’s a house,” (2807). Here time and order doesn’t matter as much, it’s a work of the absurd. Events don’t have to be wholly logical. Shifting of time, changing of the ages, and how everything may or may not be connected in the larger picture. There’s a certain harmony of knowing and knowing within the play. The Modern Era still remains to take a look at logical, and the play also shows the modern age perhaps just by the information known in the present time of the play, “You can’t run the film backwards,” (2817). While Thomasina seems to get glimpses into the future she cannot fully comprehend the findings she comes across. She knows but she doesn’t know how she knows. She doesn’t have the math or the knowledge required in order to prove her discoveries.
Arcadia offers a play on time and a shifting of the ages before your very eyes. Time continues and things change as all must change. The play shows a visible shift of the literary time periods from the Age of Enlightenment, to the Romantic Period, and then to the Modern Age. Through the physical architecture of Sidley Park, to the character’s personalities, and then shifting within the time period into the modern age of the time of the play itself. This play is one of the best visible shifting from literary genre to really understand what was going on and the philosophies of the time.
The shift of time can be seen within the architecture of Sidley Park, in the sense that the park is a kind of metaphor for the changing of times. As mentioned in Arcadia, “The Age of Enlightenment banished into the Romantic wilderness,” (2798). Within the play the garden in 1809 is described by Lady Croom as, “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, and I can say with the painter, “Et in Arcadia ego!” ‘Here I am in Arcadia’, Thomasina,” (2762). In this quotation it is shown that Sidley Park is beautiful, neatly arranged, and shows the natural awe of beauty in a very subdued manor. It is logical, controlled, clear, and concise. Lady Croom mentions that it is Nature as God intended, which shows the arrangement of the garden as rational. The implication is that this is a direct similarity between the Age of Reason. All the while Sidley Park is about to be transformed into something that goes with the changing of time, “Here is the Park as it appears to us now, and here as it might be when Mr Noakes has done with it. Where there is the familiar pastoral refinement of an Englishman’s garden, here is an eruption of gloomy forest and towering crag, of ruins where there was never a house, of water dashing against rocks where there was neither spring nor a stone I could not throw the length of a cricket pitch. My hyacinth dell is become a haunt for hobgoblins, my Chinese bridge…is usurped by a fallen obelisk overgrown with briars,” (2761). Here we get the beginning glimpse into that of the gothic and by extension the Romantic Age. The park is feigning age, chaos, and ruins. Which gives the place an air of history, gloom, and which results in an emotional reaction from those who lay eyes upon it. The sight of ruins brings about emotion in people; you see and feel the history that passed through the stone that crumbles before your eyes. Nature is the key to the shifting of the ages within Arcadia because it is one of the few things in life that humans cannot usually control, yet the irony in this case is that nature is being manipulated. In the case of the gothic Sidley Park, it’s meant to look like nature is overrun and taken control again – when in reality it is humans who made it look like it had been overrun, it’s a false reality. The changing of the scenes is the visible aspects of the changing of the periods to key the audience into the shift of the ages.
Besides just informing the audience in the shifting of the ages by the physical reality of Sidley Park, it’s also done using the characters themselves, their beliefs, and the things that they say. The character of Valentine is a figure for the Age of Enlightenment as he is using the scientific in order to record the population levels of Grouse. He considers the logical and is straightforward – he’s about the progress of knowledge and the scientific. “The questions you ask don’t matter, you see. It’s like arguing who got there first with the calculus. The English say Newton, the Germans say Leibnitz. But it doesn’t matter. Personalities. What matters is the calculus. Scientific progress. Knowledge,” (2794).
Bernard is a figure for the Romantic Period, he fits into the mold of a byronic hero in the sense he is arrogant, disrespectful of rank, emotionally conflicted, seductive, self-destructive, educated, and intelligent. Bernard is emotional and is quick to jump to conclusions, “I’ve proven Byron was here…” (2814). Hannah points out, “You’ve left out everything which doesn’t fit,” (2793). In his eagerness to prove that Lord Byron murdered Ezra Chater he ignores the evidence that doesn’t yet make sense and relies on his gut, not the proof or logic behind it. As Valentine reasons, “Actually, Bernard, as a scientist, your theory is incomplete,” (2793). Bernard is so caught up in his beliefs that he is right that nothing matters, even to the point of scoffing at all scientific evidence, “Don’t confuse progress with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need. There’s no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotle’s cosmos. Personally, I preferred it. Fifty-five crystal spheres gears to God’s crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can’t think of anything more trivial than the speed of light. Quarks, quasars – big bangs, black holes – who gives a shit?” (2794-95).
Septimus, like Valentine, relies on knowledge and truth – he would represent the age of Enlightenment as well.”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…nothing can be lost…The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again,” (2779). He is the genius who tutors Thomasina, who ends up outdoing him later on. However, he relies on knowledge, mathematics, and science in life.
Thomasina is a character who herself seems to shift from the ideals of both the age of enlightenment and the romantic period. She uses logic and relies on science, but also allows herself to react to emotions as well. For example in Thomasina’s explaination of why she doesn’t like Cleopatra she states, “Oh, Septimus! – can you bear it? All the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides – thousands of poems – Aristotle’s own library brought to Egypt by the noodle’s ancestors! How can we sleep for grief?” (2779). Yet all the while she remains to be thinking critically and immersed in the problems of mathematics and science to glimpse into the scientific future before her time should allow, “Hannah: What did she see? Valentine: That you can’t run the film backwards. Heat was the first thing which didn’t work that way. Not like Newton… She saw why. You can put back the bits of glass but you can’t collect up the heat of the smash. It’s gone. Septimus: So the Improved Newtonian Universe must cease and grow cold. Dear me,” (2817). Thomasina glimpses into the future with her knowledge in ways she can never fully explain nor comprehend.
There’s a demonstration of the shift from the Romantic Period to the Modern Age just showing the flow of time within the play itself. Arcadia begins with the characters in 1809, Septimus and Thomasina where they’re partaking in a study session while time jumps forward to the present time – 1993. There Hannah desires to learn of the Hermit of Sidley Park; Bernard about Lord Byron and the potential of murdering another poet, and the desire to search for truths. This fits the modern genre as a testament to the absurd, “Valentine: No. Yes. Because there’s an order things can’t happen in. You can’t open a door till there’s a house,” (2807). Here time and order doesn’t matter as much, it’s a work of the absurd. Events don’t have to be wholly logical. Shifting of time, changing of the ages, and how everything may or may not be connected in the larger picture. There’s a certain harmony of knowing and knowing within the play. The Modern Era still remains to take a look at logical, and the play also shows the modern age perhaps just by the information known in the present time of the play, “You can’t run the film backwards,” (2817). While Thomasina seems to get glimpses into the future she cannot fully comprehend the findings she comes across. She knows but she doesn’t know how she knows. She doesn’t have the math or the knowledge required in order to prove her discoveries.
Arcadia offers a play on time and a shifting of the ages before your very eyes. Time continues and things change as all must change. The play shows a visible shift of the literary time periods from the Age of Enlightenment, to the Romantic Period, and then to the Modern Age. Through the physical architecture of Sidley Park, to the character’s personalities, and then shifting within the time period into the modern age of the time of the play itself. This play is one of the best visible shifting from literary genre to really understand what was going on and the philosophies of the time.
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