Dramaguide Written by Gary Cadwallader Dramaguide the Play

Table of Contents The Play p. 2-3 The Playwright p. 4-5 The History p. 5 The Regency p. 6 Et in Arcadia p. 6-7 Ego Classicism & p. 8 Romanticism Free Will vs. p. 9 Determinism Science of p. 10 Arcadia Lord Byron p. 11 The Duel p. 12 Education for p. 13 Girls Glossary p. 14-21 Further Reading p. 22 Director J. Barry Lewis By Donald Margulies Producer By Tom Stoppard Sally Nathanson Costume Sponsor Miriam and Alec Flamm March 31 – April 30, 2017 Charitable Foundation Dramaguide written by Gary Cadwallader Dramaguide The Play Characters 1809: Septimus Hodge – tutor at Sidley Park and friend of Lord Byron Thomasina Coverly – a brilliant, teenaged math prodigy. Daughter of Lady Croom Lady Croom – the lady of Sidley Park Ezra Chater – second-rate poet and guest at Sidley Park Captain Brice – royal naval officer and brother to Lady Croom Richard Noakes – renowned landscape architect altering the Sidley Park gardens Augustus Coverly –Thomasina’s brother and heir to the Croom title Jellaby – the butler at Sidley Park Present Day: Hannah Jarvis – historian and author researching a new book at Sidley Park Bernard Nightingale –University of Sussex professor researching a book on Ezra Chater Valentine Coverly – Son and heir to the Croom title studying mathematics Chloe Coverly – Valentine’s younger sister who becomes infatuated with Bernard Gus Coverly – Valentine and Chloe’s nonverbal younger brother The Setting A drawing room at Sidley Park, the large Derbyshire country estate owned by the aristocratic Croom family. The action takes place in the early 19th century and the present day. The Story “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…Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again.” Septimus It is 1809, and Septimus Hodge is tutoring Thomasina Coverly, the thirteen-year-old daughter of Lord and Lady Croom. She asks Hodge about rumors of an unknown man and Mrs. Chater in “carnal embrace” in the gazebo. Ezra Chater barges in, challenging Hodge to a duel for his romantic peccadillo with his wife in the gazebo. Hodge placates Chater by flattering his poetry, and Mr. Noakes accidentally interrupts the conversation. Lord Croom has hired landscape architect Richard Noakes to transform the manor’s Classical gardens into the more fashionable, Romantic style. Lady Croom and her brother, Captain Brice, appalled at the changes proposed for the landscape, confront Noakes about his design. Mr. Noakes defends his position, citing the new vogue for ruins and “irregularity” in the “picturesque” style. 2 The Story, continued In the present, Lady Chloe Coverly shows researcher Bernard Nightingale into the room. He is seeking Hannah Jarvis, an author and guest at Sidley Park who is researching the hermit who lived there in the early 19th century. Bernard meets Valentine, Chloe’s elder brother, a mathematics graduate student at Oxford, who is conducting analytical research on the historical grouse population at Sidley Park. Bernard’s interest is Ezra Chater, who he thinks may be connected to Lord Byron’s hasty departure from England in 1809, and is hoping to find any evidence of Chater’s visit to Sidley Park. Hannah discovers that Bernard is the author of a scathing review of her last book, and just as she is about to leave, he shows her a copy of Chater’s book, The Couch of Eros, which contains several handwritten notes by Chater and Mrs. Chater that were discovered between the pages. Bernard theorizes that Byron killed Chater in a duel. In 1809, Hodge is tutoring Thomasina in Latin. Thomasina expresses a deep sadness at the great loss of ancient Greek literature in the burning of the library of Alexandria. Hodge discovers that at breakfast Lord Byron told Ezra Chater that Hodge wrote a scathing, satirical review of Chater’s first book, The Maid of Turkey. Captain Brice and Chater confront Hodge and challenge him to a duel, and he accepts. Brice asks Hodge to consider Lord Byron as his “second” at the duel. In the present day, Hannah reads from Thomasina’s school notebooks, revealing her early exploration of mathematical and scientific concepts. She asks Valentine to explain Thomasina’s notes, but he claims Thomasina was only doodling and unaware of what she was creating. Bernard excitedly reveals his discovery of a handwritten note in a book satirizing Chater’s work, and he believes it to be Byron’s. Hannah reads a newfound letter from Lady Croom which reveals that Captain Brice married Chater’s widow. Valentine tells Bernard and Hannah that there is proof Byron was at Sidley Park; he is notated in an 1809 game book for shooting a hare. Bernard now fully believes that Byron killed Chater, and decides to publish a story. A week later, Bernard rehearses his lecture on Byron and Chater’s duel. Hannah and Valentine challenge his lack of concrete facts, but Chloe defends his research as plausible. Bernard and Valentine dispute one another’s evidences of science and literature, and Bernard angrily offends Valentine and Chloe. Bernard shows Hannah a passage he found in a magazine giving evidence of a hermitage at Sidley Park “occupied by a lunatic.” Hannah theorizes that Hodge may have been the hermit. Early the next morning in 1809, Hodge enters from outdoors, removing two pistols and a dead rabbit from his coat. The butler, Jellaby, tells Hodge that Captain Brice, Mr. and Mrs. Chater, and Lord Byron were all banished from the house in the middle of the night by Lady Croom. The duel never occurred. Lady Croom assumes that Hodge will follow Mrs. Chater, but he expresses his passion for her. In the present day, Valentine, Chloe and their brother Gus are readying for a “fancy dress” party, and are dressing in 19th-century period clothing. Valentine has added Thomasina’s “iterations” into his computer, proving that her mathematic skills were accurate. The past and present intersect when Thomasina, now 16, and her brother, Augustus, enter the room, arguing and tussling. Hodge stops the altercation. A letter is discovered disproving Bernard’s claim of a duel when Chater’s name appears with Captain Brice’s in a letter from Martinique. Bernard is miserable. Lady Croom complains about the state of her garden makeover and the loud noise from Noakes’ garden machine. She realizes that Thomasina has been expertly and overly educated, and determines she should be married as soon as possible. Thomasina asks Hodge to teach her the waltz, as it is the eve of her 17th birthday and she wants to learn to dance. Valentine now realizes that Thomasina was a brilliant, mathematical genius. Gus asks Hannah to dance and they and Thomasina and Hodge waltz simultaneously. 3 The Author: Tom Stoppard “From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.” Tom Stoppard Sir Tom Stoppard is one of the most successful and respected playwrights and screenwriters of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. His popular plays include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), Jumpers (1972), Travesties (1974), The Real Thing (1982), Hapgood (1988), Arcadia (1993), and The Invention of Love (1997). His screenplay collaborations include Brazil (1985), Indiana Jones and the Lost Crusade (1989), and the Academy Award-winning Shakespeare in Love (1998). Stoppard was born Tomáš Straüssler into a Jewish family in Zlin, Czechoslovakia on July 3, 1937. Two years later, the day Hitler invaded the country, his father, a doctor for the Bata shoe company, and the family were sent by the company to its manufacturing facility in Singapore. Several years later, as Singapore was threatened by Japan, the Straüssler family was evacuated to Australia. His father, Eugen, recognizing the need for medical professionals, stayed behind in Singapore. In 1941, as Eugen was evacuating Singapore, his ship was bombed and sunk, killing him. Later that year, Tomáš, his brother Petr, and his mother Martha were evacuated to Darjeeling, India. The brothers attended an American school where their names were anglicized to Thomas and Peter. While in India, Martha met and married a British officer, Kenneth Stoppard, who adopted the boys and, after the war, moved the family to England. In 1954, at age 17, Tom Stoppard finished school, eschewed college, and became a journalist for the Western Daily Star, a regional newspaper in southwestern England. In 1958, Stoppard moved to the Bristol Evening World, where one of his many assignments was to review plays as the “second-string” drama critic. There, his love for the theatre flourished. In 1960, he sent his first play, A Walk on the Water, to an agent and received an immediate response. The play was optioned, performed in Hamburg, Germany, and presented on television in 1963. Stoppard moved to London in 1962, where he worked as the drama critic for Scene magazine. Simultaneously, he wrote plays for radio, television, and the stage. In 1966, his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It was a success, and subsequently produced at the Old Vic Theatre in London, and then on Broadway in 1967. 4 The Author: continued Stoppard’s work is often characterized as “intellectual,” but he prefers focusing on meticulous language, intricate wordplay, and characters with passionate pursuits. He incorporates unlikely opposites in order to allow multiple philosophies or ideas to bump up against one another.

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