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Arcadia Paperback – July 11, 2017

by Tom Stoppard (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 597 ratings
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“It is a defect of God’s humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.”―Tom Stoppard, Arcadia

In a large country house in Derbyshire in April 1809 sits Lady Thomasina Coverly, aged thirteen, and her tutor, Septimus Hodge. Through the window may be seen some of the “five hundred acres inclusive of lake” where Capability Brown’s idealized landscape is about to give way to the 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 masterful 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,” as Hannah says, “which Newton left out.”
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Previous page
  1. Part of series
    Faber Drama
  2. Print length
    144 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Grove Press
  5. Publication date
    July 11, 2017
  6. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.5 x 8.25 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    0802126995
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0802126993
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Arcadia:

“A masterpiece . . . I feel irrationally, impossibly confident that Arcadia is the finest play written in my lifetime.”―New Yorker

“There’s no doubt about it. Arcadia is Tom Stoppard’s richest, most ravishing comedy to date, a play of wit, intellect, language, brio and . . . emotion. It’s like a dream of levitation: you’re instantaneously aloft, soaring, banking, doing loop-the-loops and then, when you think you’re about to plummet to earth, swooping to a gentle touchdown of not easily described sweetness and sorrow.”―New York Times

“One of the greatest English-language plays of the postwar era, a highbrow whodunit that starts out as a sparkling artificial comedy about extramarital lust, then gradually evolves into a poetic meditation on the philosophico-romantic implications of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.”―Wall Street Journal

“Enchanting . . . [Arcadia] has an erudition that is not so much intimidating as touching. You leave with a reinvigorated admiration for Stoppard’s gifts, for the gratifying warmth with which he paints his characters, for the breadth of ideas he so seductively and amusingly imparts . . . A contemporary voice that tells us almost as much as Shakespeare did about the common plight of the people of this planet.”―Washington Post

“Brims with intelligence . . . Prismatic, formidably intellectual . . . A masterpiece of Stoppardian dramatic construction, and a peerless intellectual-emotional analysis of life's relationship with Newtonian physics . . . [Arcadia] seems all the more relevant at this Trumpian moment . . . Great drama.”―Chicago Tribune

“A dazzling showcase . . . [A] mix of complex ideas, sparkling wit and verbal acrobatics.”―Chicago Sun-Times

“A tour-de-force, consistently deemed one of the best plays of the 20th century.”―Los Angeles Times

“Stoppard’s warmest and most affecting play . . . A prodigiously smart piece of theater that touches on fractal geometry, gossipy speculation about Lord Byron, contemporary academic backbiting and the physics of uncertainty.”―San Francisco Chronicle

“Tom Stoppard’s 1993 masterpiece about sex, literature, epistemology, sex, landscaping, sex, the second law of thermodynamics, and the tantalizingly unrequited romance between mind and body . . . In it, suspense, sexual tension and an almost geological patience are all one . . . Nothing sets off Stoppard’s crystalline intellect like a nice, rude intrusion of carnality and folly.”―New York

“A funny, touching play, one of [Stoppard’s] best.”―Boston Globe

“Stoppard’s finest play in years . . . The passions of those who came before us, Stoppard reminds us so eloquently, are just like ours . . . Only the landscape changes.”―San Diego Union-Tribune

“Brilliantly written, funny and thought provoking.”―News Tribune

“Arcadia is one of the most acclaimed works of Tom Stoppard’s career and a seminal work in the genre of science plays . . . [A] dazzling script.”―Arts Fuse

“Tom Stoppard’s dazzling masterpiece Arcadia [is] a time-tripping drama that’s as mind-blowing as the Enlightenment and as passionate as the Romantic era that followed . . . [An] intricate collision of eros, literature and metaphysics . . . Arcadia is a triumph on multiple levels . . . A crackling fine swath of storytelling . . . Arcadia will leave your head spinning. In the best possible way.”―Chicago Theater Beat

“[A] rich text . . . a dazzling construct . . . Instantly Stoppard belies the idea that time cannot go backwards and movingly shows how small choices have fateful consequences . . . [He] also wittily demonstrates how we misinterpret the past.”―Guardian (UK)

“Stoppard’s magisterial Arcadia has only grown in power and relevance . . . Perhaps the greatest play of its time . . . A masterpiece―but it is even more than that. The play stirs the most basic and profound questions humans can ask. How should we live with the knowledge that extinction is certain―not just of ourselves, but of our species?”―Independent (UK)

“Arcadia is Tom Stoppard’s most intellectually exhilarating and emotionally involving play, and it is this combination of mind and heart, which no one does as well, that makes it so thrilling . . . The marvellous intrigue . . . is in Stoppard’s gloriously intricate writing, which draws together all the strands―the ideas, the emotions, the lust for other people and the lust for understanding.”―Australian

About the Author

Tom Stoppard was born "Tomás Straüssler" in Zlin, Czechoslovakia in 1937 and moved to England with his family in 1946. Catapulted into the front ranks of modern playwrights overnight when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead opened in London in 1967, he has become recognized as a contemporary comic master, the brilliantly acclaimed author of The Real Inspector Hound, Enter a Free Man, Albert's Bridge, After Magritte, Travesties, Dirty Linen, Jumpers, New-Found-Land, Night and Day, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Artist Descending a Staircase, Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, Arcadia, The Invention of Love, The Coast of Utopia (Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage), and Rock 'n' Roll. He has also written a number of screenplays, including The Romantic Englishwoman, Despair, and Brazil. In 2017, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in literature.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Grove Press (July 11, 2017)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 144 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0802126995
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0802126993
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 597 ratings

About the author

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Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard

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Tom Stoppard is the author of such seminal works as Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Travesties, Every Good Boy Deserves a Favor, Arcadia, Jumpers, The Real Thing, and The Invention of Love.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
597 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Nancy Goldberg Wilks
5.0 out of 5 stars ARCADIA by Tom Stoppard
Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2014
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Arcadia is a play that takes place at Sidley Park, a stately country home in Derbyshire. The play shifts back and forth between the early 19th century and modern day Sidley Park. The action in both time periods takes place in a bare room with a large table.

In the 19th century, Thomasina, the daughter of the house, is working with her tutor, Septimus Hodge; there are books and Hodge’s tortoise. In the modern time, Hannah Jarvis, an author, is working on a book about the history of the gardens – or, more precisely, about the hermit-genius who lived in the 19th century gardens like a “garden ornament” or “pottery gnome”. She is joined by, among others, Valentine, a son of the house, and his tortoise.

In each time period, people come and go and dramas unfold. But the room and table remain constant. As the play proceeds, everything from both time periods remains on the table. The table and its contents are period neutral, and, by the end of the play, the table has become quite cluttered with objects.

There are striking parallels between the two time periods. Early on, questioning her tutor whether God is a Newtonian, Thomasina asks “[a]m I the first person to have thought of this?” (p. 9). In the modern time, Chloe asks her brother “Valentine, do you think I’m the first person to think of this?” (p. 77).

There is humor. Valentine explains to Hannah how her tea is getting cold – by itself. “Your tea will end up at room temperature. What’s happening to your tea is happening to everything everywhere….It’ll take a while but we’re all going to end up at room temperature.” (p. 82).

The modern day dramas involve the 19th century dramas – an attempt to sort out the past with meager historical evidence. There is poetry and duels; parks and a hermitage; heat exchange and Lord Byron.

And, there is Entropy. As the play progresses, so does the chaos. Toward the end of the play, the distinct time periods begin to bleed into one another. They proceed at the same time and intertwine. Chaos ensues.

The result is a fascinating, intellectual drama. Arcadia is a great read, and I hope one day to see it performed.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
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Mark A. Weiss
5.0 out of 5 stars Many Pleasures from Such a Well-Done, Well-Interweaved Variety of Topics and Characters
Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2006
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Another reviewer began the review with this: "Arcadia is one of the most touching and enlightening works of literature I have ever read. The interweaving of ideas from physics, fractals, literature, architecture, history, psychology and many other fields of knowledge hidden in the play is just perfect." I agree with the sentiment. I adored the live play; saw it twice! I also read the play afterwards -- now twice, too. The reviewer I quoted, though, got bogged down later in the review of whether Stoppard is brilliant enough as Einstein or is just showing off. The play is not a Philosophical Inquiry of Great Rigor. The ideas, to me anyway, are like the proverbial unicorn story: see one (wow! is it real?; a couple folks see it: super-wow; but once everyone sees it: "so what? it's a horse with a horn in its head."). The delight for me was not in the "novel" ideas, but in the way in which they are used as another means of entertainment: much as characters in an Eric Rohmer (French) Film might discuss Kant's Synthetic A Priori. The characters are IMMENSELY entertaining and that they discuss philosophy or math just adds to what is entertaining about them -- specifically it adds variety. So you have the usual drama subjects, but more too. The main thing then is this: ALL is WONDERFULLY done and you derive your pleasure from all the very well-done VARIETY of fun and drama and topics ALL NICELY WOVEN TOGETHER, not hodge-podged at all.
12 people found this helpful
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Anton Chekhov
4.0 out of 5 stars Tom Stoppard is a step behind Anton Chekhov.
Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2010
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With the release of "Guildenstern and Rosencratz are Dead", Tom Stoppard emerged as an original voice in a literary theater world already overpopulated by past geniuses. Applying a deft combination of law of probability, nihilistic philosophizing, and comely tribute to the rich inheritance of Shakespeare, Stoppard articulated a definition of human death that was powerful and, most significantly, uniquely in his own words.

In "Arcadia", an unmistakable shot at greatness, Stoppard expands both his thematic concerns and billing of characters to artistically express his own sensitivities to human drama. A quick description of the play, that it involves thermodynamics, time-travelling, and the parallelism of lives being lived in two different time periods, is enough to raise a curious eyebrow from most anyone. Does the play succeed?

Yes and no. The characters are a mixed bag of lively personalities and terrible bores. Septimus Hodge and Thomasina Coverly dominate the play as the most engaging characters given the best lines to speak. Their swordsman-like rapport on the algebra of determinism is rapt, and Stoppard's blending of the wonders of science in a literary world largely allergic to numbers game is a breath of fresh air. Concurrently, how future characters Hannah Jarvis and Valentine Coverly react to the characters Septimus and Thomasina as they discover their personalities through old letters and mathematical proofs is the genius of the play, since their discovery of the past allows the audience to see how lives go on even after death and participates with our own in the present.

Unfortunately, this thematic concern of life after death is fumbled a bit by ancillary characters which are necessary to clarify thematic concerns and move the plot forward but whose characterization got away from Tom somehow. Ezra Chater is a vacuous air that takes up space, Lady Croom's purported sexual attraction to Septimus goes nowhere, and Bernard Nightingale is drawn too simply as a paperthin 'villain' meant to act principally as a foil to Hannah and Valentine's pursuit of the past without true pathos of his own. To be considered a masterpiece, all the characters have to be legitimate realizations in their own way and the characterization has to be tight as a drum. Stoppard sightsees too often with ancillary characters and the result is a slightly out-of-focus play.

To critically speak, Stoppard's philosophy on life as presented in "Arcadia" bears too close a resemblance to Anton Chekhov and his theatrical masterpieces "Three Sisters" and "The Cherry Orchard". Chekhov's cleverness and wit is all over the pages of "Arcadia", and the result is a voice that is only half Stoppard's own. Stoppard handles Chekhovian dramaturgy beautifully, but the end result is not the dark energy of "Rosencratz And Guilderstern are Dead", which so painfully captures Tom Stoppard's own young voice in torment, but a sort of amalgamation between Chekhov [in the treatment of the past] and Ibsen [in the treatment of the future.] And if a playwright speaks principally through one or even two characters in his play, then Stoppard is most assuredly speaking through Thomasina Coverly. And yet her own philosophy and angst towards life, if we can attribute it to Tom Stoppard's own, is only a beautiful recitation of Anton Chekhov's genius sublimed with algebra, calculus, and physics.

In conclusion, it's a welcome sound to hear the beauty of math and science being given their proper due diligence in a literary work instead of being lambasted as somehow apart and irrelevant to the human experience. Science has a lot of wonderful things to relate to mankind in the field of humanities. And it's also equally wonderful to see a playwright fully push the limits of audience patience, intelligence, and attention with sensationally dense dialogue reserved for the conversation halls of MIT. But the play as a play, as a tragedy, does not hit its mark of greatness due to the aforementioned shortcomings. It fails to decline from thinking to feeling, and in so doing, has no heartbreak to call its own.
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Top reviews from other countries

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Lea
5.0 out of 5 stars Usato ma nuovissimo
Reviewed in Italy on November 23, 2023
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Acquistato x università, risultava usato con prezzo un po più basso rispetto al nuovo, ma è arrivato intatto, ottimo acquisto.
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Allan D
5.0 out of 5 stars A compelling excursion into both general ideas about chaos theory ...
Reviewed in Canada on April 24, 2017
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A compelling excursion into both general ideas about chaos theory and also a little bit of literary and academic studies. Although the subjects are somewhat exaggerated or otherwise simplified. The real strength of the piece is the engaging characters and narrative Stoppard paints, with his double story of both the 19th century aristocrats and the 20th century historians and scholars trying to reconstruct what they were up to. By having interesting characters and situations he helps make the ideas particularly vivid.
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Lisette Woest-Appeldoorn
5.0 out of 5 stars Het lijkt zo eenvoudig, maar is zo gelaagd.
Reviewed in the Netherlands on February 9, 2018
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Briljant gevonden. Twee verschillende decennia . Zo verschillend en toch ook zo eender. De zoektocht naar het waarom. De vooruitgang, de stilstand, de ontdekking. De kringloop van het leven. Zo mooi in beeld gebracht, met zo minimale "props".
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J. Simpson
5.0 out of 5 stars Tom Stoppard's 'Arcadia' performed by L.A Theatre Works (Audio book)
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 29, 2013
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This is a splendid production of 'Arcadia' by L.A.Theatre Works, recorded in 2009 using an earlier script version than the (barely noticeably) revised edition published in the same year. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it with, for me, only one minor reservation. Lady Croom was portrayed as rather shrill and not played nearly grandly enough, that is to say, in the way one would imagine Lady Bracknell to sound like, given that this is how her character reads in the script, with her acerbic comments and Wildean aphorisms. Other than that, the performances are commendable and there are only the rarest and slightest of clues in pronunciation that the cast is American and not British.

The cd production has been altered since the printing of the cover information. There is, in addition to the production, an interview but rather than the one advertised with Ira Nadel, Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, there is instead a half-hour discussion between producer Susan Lowenberg and Steven H Strogatz, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University, who gives a very interesting and approachable explanation of chaos theory and other mathematical insights within the context of the play.

I do recommend this audio book as being well worth listening to if, like me, you haven't had the opportunity to see a stage production, or if you are studying the play, as it interprets the brilliance of the script to a very high standard and in a most enjoyable way.

Jim Simpson
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Mr. L-francois Pilard
5.0 out of 5 stars L'Univers dans un dé à coudre.
Reviewed in France on April 2, 2013
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C'est une culture encyclopédique qui se fait jour à travers les répliques des personnages. On aborde le théorème de Fermat. On apprécie des perspectives inattendues sur les noms d'êtres illustres, des formules sèches prennent vie, de l'humain apparaît à leur origine.
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