Essay on Classicism Versus Romanticism in Tom Stoppards...

Tom Stoppard is one of the finest playwrights of the modern age. Some of his well-known plays are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thingand many more.The finest of all his plays is Arcadia.The literary meaning of the term â€Å"Arcadia† inspired Tom Stoppard to write his play Arcadia. It was titled â€Å"Et in Arcadia ego†. â€Å"Arcadia† actually means a vision of pastoralism and harmony within nature. The Greek province of the same name has helped in the derivation of the term. The term’s existence has also been figured out in Renaissance Mythology. â€Å"Arcadia† refers as something unattainable as commonly as Utopia. The term â€Å"Arcadia† is symbolic of pastoral†¦show more content†¦The play focuses on the romance of the mind and the body. Remarked by early reviewers to be similar to Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, Tom Stoppard had excelled in t his field and gives a glimpse of his theatrical genius with Arcadia. Arcadia covers the two different ages- the early nineteenth century and the present modern world, matched, juxtaposed together bringing in a rare combination of the different facets of Classicism and Romanticism. The two timelines talk about sex, literature, love, epistemology, landscaping, the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the romance. Stoppard’s intellect looms large over the plot of the play and is efficiently presented in the form of this play. It is a two-act play containing seven scenes. The characters belonging to the early nineteenth century are Septimus, Thomasina, Mr. and Mrs. Chater, Lady Croom, Captain Brice, Mr. Richard Noakes. Hannah Jarvis, Valentine, Bernard, Gus and Chloe are the characters belonging to the present modern world. Thomasina Coverly, the thirteen-year-old daughter of Lady Croom, is more interested to know â€Å"what carnal embrace is than anything else.† With her Stoppard had presented a truly heartbreaking character. She is driven not only by intellectual knowledge but by sexual desires also. Although Lady Croom tells Thomasina that she must wed before she is over educated. With her Stoppard puts forth the classicism in an elegant way. The questions and the