About the Book

Book Synopsis

"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."

Review Quotes

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 is the author of such seminal works as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Jumpers, The Real Thing, Arcadia, The Invention of Love, and the trilogy The Coast of Utopia. His screen credits include Parade's End, Shakespeare in Love, Enigma, Empire of the Sun, and Anna Karenina.