Some call him Tom Stoppard, but I call him Tom "Don't Stop-pard"

As others have already discussed in their own postings, I find positing Stoppard's Arcadia as a perfect play to be intrinsically problematic, not due to the source material but rather to the unavoidable subjectivity I am forced to impose upon the concrete, objective concept of "perfection." As Stoppard himself says of perfection through Barnard in Arcadia: "Don't confuse progress with perfectability. A great poet is always timely." What we call "perfect" now is mostly a composite of fad, fashion, and personal opinion. The very plays we uphold and "perfect" examples from the past we would rip to pieces if written today, and I find myself wondering whether or not I am capable of even recognizing perfection if presented with its minions, craft and inspiration.

For instance, I could discuss the incontestable topical authority evident in Stoppard's discussion of English gardens, but I don't believe a perfect play necessarily requires extensive research. I could focus on the blinding theatricality of the final scene, which juxtaposes two scenes taking place in the same room over a century apart and coherently intercuts the dialogue and action. Yet not all great plays make excessive use of their own theatricality and this would be a judgment call on my part. I could address the wealth of Wildian wit inherent in such lines as Brice telling Septimus of Thomasina that "as her tutor you have a duty to keep her in ignorance," or mention the well of subtext, most often sexual, available for actors and directors to mine in most interactions between men and women. Yet I would be forced to concede that there are plenty of plays that don't feature a single epigram yet are still superior, and also that "True West" is arguably a perfect play even though I don't think underneath the jabs the brothers want to sleep with each other. Well, they do in MY version, but anyways...my point is that perfection is problematic.

So, in order to operationalize "perfection," I concluded that there may be many perfect plays in the world, but that each one sets up its own objective criteria for being perfect, and its perfection then resides in its ability to meet that criteria. In the opening scene of the Arcadia, Stoppard has Thomasina and Septimus create a metaphor concerning jam in rice pudding:

Thomasina: When you stir your rice pudding...the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trials...but if you stir backward, the jam will not come together again. Indeed the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before...you cannot stir things apart.

Septimus: Time must needs run backward, and since it will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of disorder into disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it forever. This is known as free will...

Regardless of the inclusion of this passage, structure would be one of the highlights of Stoppard's wonderful play. However, in these lines Stoppard hand-delivers a method for reading his work. He sets up a highly original and unique structure in lieu of the traditional inciting incident/rising action/climax/denouement and then methodically goes about bringing this new form to fruition in the form of his play. It is for this reason that I propose structure as the perfect element in Arcadia.

1. The structure, rather than rising and falling, is stirred, which is to say that each scene adds another twist or turn that seems to further complicate matters, much like each new turn of the spoon creates another red rivet of jam in the pudding.

2. Whether the spoon is moved forward or backward in the jam, the action still has the same effect of propelling the mixture to its resolved "pink" conclusion - the jam cannot be "unspread" just by mixing the spoon back in the other direction. Much in the same way, each scene in the past and its corresponding scene in the present creates a dialogue or "call-and-response," where a question is raised and then echoed in the mirror scene, i.e. the strange practice of characters in different centuries and oblivious of one another offering food to tortoises, or the repetition of Lady Croom's line, "I do not know when I have received a more unusual compliment" in scene six by Hannah in modern times in scene seven. Each response echoes its mother call but does not resolve it. Instead it further complicates it and drives the action on.

3. Finally comes the thrashing stir of the "mixing" scene (scene seven), where characters from both epochs are juxtaposed suddenly and without explanation, occupying the same set and speaking lines to each other. Contemporary music from the present plays over the waltz in the past. Space and time dissolve like strips of white pudding and red jam, irrevocably blending and mixing into pink. The new mixture is different than the pure white pudding at the start - it is altered, but stable and consistent once again. The play has worked itself out, like a cat's cradle that for one extra loop utterly disentangles itself and becomes a piece of string again. The moment is when Valentine and Hannah and Septimus and Thomasina observe the same diagram from centuries apart and draw the same conclusion - feel the same feelings. Synchronicity. Uniformity. Pink.

4. As Septimus points out, this "pink" is a foregone conclusion. No matter what variation of stirs you may make, the end result it always the same. The universe itself is cooling, he points out, and will "all end up at room temperature." This may seem like determinism or unavoidable fate, yet Stoppard makes a strong case for free will; Septimus later says of life that "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." In the same way, there is nothing outside the container of pudding, and though we may know pink is the inevitable outcome, we need not succumb to living out the ends as the means. There is freedom in knowing the outcome, however unpalatable, after all. As this pertains to Arcadia, we find out relatively early from dialogue in the modern scenes that Thomasina is to die in a fire. This is the inescapable "pink" outcome. Yet the fire, which would be staged in another play and constitute the climax, is only alluded to in Arcadia with Thomasina taking the candle upstairs at the end. Her death is not what Stoppard wants us to take away - it is merely the approaching pink, meant to add meaning and beauty to the stirs of her spoon that remain. What matters is each individual stir she makes as she twirls her spoon in her pudding. This unrepeatable human signature is what Stoppard argues is free will - the unique permutation with which we stir ourselves to our eventual pink conclusion.

5. Hence, Stoppard creates a structure for his play that doesn't merely ape life but informs life - informs audience how to experience life even as it informs them how to experience the play. It is an affirmation and an invocation - to exercise your own free will, grab your spoon and start stirring. Stoppard ends his play with an image of Gus appearing in full Regency attire in the final modern scene and bowing awkwardly in an "invitation to dance." In the past, Septimus and Thomasina dance as well. Stoppard invites us to bow awkwardly. Dance badly. Appear in ridiculous costume. Whatever you have to do. Only accept the invitation. Only keep dancing.

For extending its study of structure into a lesson and model for life, I believe Stoppard's Arcadia to be a perfect play.

Sorry this was long.

AP

p.s. If I did this in class I was actually going to bring in rice pudding and jam and stir it to make my point. Then I was going to let you eat it. It made the presentation a lot cooler. If you feel cheated just respond to this thread and I'll hook you up with a snack pack and some Smuckers. No joke. Peace out.