Tom Stoppard's Arcadia

Arcadia

Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia": The Poet who comes, goes, and never appears -- Lord Byron

Lord Byron was a great poet of the Romantic era. An aristocrat, he features prominently in the social milieu of the 'past' in Tom Stoppard's play "Arcadia." However, he does not appear as a character in the play. Instead, Byron's comings and goings in 1809 are merely alluded to by the characters of the past and also by scholars of the present. The viewer gains his or her first exposure to Byron via Septimius and Thomasina's discussion about the poet's alleged immorality. Then, the viewer gains a contemporary perspective on Byron through the eyes of Byron scholars Bernard and Hannah.

But Byron as a man and a poet, and a personal and poetic object of scholarship connect the past and present characters inhabiting the house. The characters of the past such as Lady Croom meet Byron. The scholar Bernard believes Byron may have murdered Mr. Chater. Thematically, Byron's life is also used to symbolize poetry and art and passion, versus scientific and mathematical understanding in both worlds. Act 2, scene 5 features Bernard fulminating against science, "Spare me that and I'll spare you the bomb and aerosols," he says of the scientific worldview and its excesses, while he advances the theory Byron was a murderer.

But ultimately the plays suggests no one can reject science, nor poetry altogether. Even the mathematics scholar Valentine whose worldview is seen as incommensurate with the literature scholars, finds a connection in the past between the 19th century young woman's Thomasina's work and his own, when he discovers her notebook. The laws of thermodynamics and its relation to poetic creation, the 'correct' way of seeing Byron, as opposed to "Bernard's Byron," as Chloe calls him (Act II, Scene 7) are all connected in the physical presence of the house. Ultimately Byron provides the connective, emotional thread between both science and math. And later in the play when Bernard returns after his appearance on "The Breakfast Hour," Hannah discovers a note that proves that Chater died in Martinique in 1810. The note destroys Bernard's argument completely and Hannah sees it as just revenge for his bad review of her last book, the kind of review that nearly drove Thomasina's tutor Septimus to a duel. Thus although the viewer never gets to know Byron the way he or she gets to know the depicted characters, the viewer can never forget Byron throughout the play's duration, as Byron's portrayal is as complex and varied as it is persistent.