Arcadia: A Play
by Tom Stoppard
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tom StoppardEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1994-09-24
ISBN: 0571169341
Number of pages: 112
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Book Reviews of Arcadia: A Play
Book Review: "In an ocean of ashes, islands of order . . ."
Summary: 5 Stars
Though I am very fond of "The Invention of Love," "Jumpers, " "The Real Thing," "The Real Inspector Hound," and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, " this is Stoppard's best play, his most beautiful and most moving. We get the usual Stoppard erudition and the usual Stoppard wit, but these never distract us from the play's structural felicities. Or its emotional force.
Idea-wise, we get order and creation versus chaos and entropy. Something not quite explicable about the arrow of time makes the tea always get colder, never hotter, and the same fate (heat death) awaits the universe and every person in it. Strangely, though, in this seemingly random, ever chillier place we find unexpected beauties, the unexpected "islands of order" that can also be found in Thomasina's equations as surely as they can in Tom S.'s imagination.
The real punch of the play, though, is in the immediate rather than the cosmic. Whether we know about entropy or not, we *have* noticed that things go awry and that eventually we will, too. Even if we are lucky enough to find ourselves in Arcadia, we're still going to die. Even worse, some people are going to die before us, leaving us utterly alone. On the other hand--the pretty hand--"Arcadia" suggests that the fact that neither art nor memory need follow the arrow of time might just offer some sort of escape from futility and grief. Time can overlap with time, as love can overlap with love. Two people can synchronize in time and space in a most uncanny way, and what is this but love or dancing?
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