On The Focus Of Scientific Issues In Arcadia

Tom Stoppard is a famous contemporary British playwright,who has won Tony Award four times and won numerous other awards such as London Theatre Critics Award,Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay,Laurence Olivier Award,Evening Standard Award and so on.In 1993,the drama Arcadia was premiered at the Royal National Theatre in London and was recognized by the entertainment industry and audience.The play is rich in content,involving love,marriage,architecture,literature,archaeology,science,history and many other aspects.One of the most striking features of the play is that it presents a large number of obscure physical and mathematical issues through the characters' dialogues.It is worth exploring the reasons why a play for the general public is full of profound scientific issues and is well-received.Consulting a large number of domestic and foreign literature,the author carefully and thoroughly reads the drama text and on this basis carries out the research and writing of this thesis.Including introduction and conclusion,there are six chapters in this paper.The first chapter mainly introduces Stoppard's life and his masterpieces.It can be seen from the introduction that the playwright's life experience in his childhood makes him have more in-depth thinking about life,and his thought of seeking truth is revealed in many works.In the second chapter,the author points out that the studies of Stoppard and his plays abroad are very fruitful and the studies of Arcadia are also intensive.However,currently the domestic studies on Stoppard are relatively limited,and there is only one research paper on Arcadia published on the core journals.The third chapter introduces the scientific issues in Arcadia and makes a brief analysis of them.In the play,the characters talk a lot about Newton's classical physics,the second law of thermodynamics,chaos theory,Fermat's theorem,iterative algorithm and other physical and mathematical issues.The discussions of those issues form a part of the plot of the play.The fourth chapter mainly discusses how the playwright's focus on science enriches and deepens his dramatic thoughts.The play Arcadia is broad and profound and covers a wide range of subjects.In the play,the playwright deepens his dramatic thoughts in three aspects through the discussion of the scientific issues by the dramatic characters.First,reflections on the tortuousness and repetitiveness of the historical development.In Arcadia,the plot moves back and forth between the 19 th century and the 1990 s,but all the stories take place in the same room with few changes in the furnishings.In addition,people in both times were discussing scientific issues,but the heroine Thomasina,who lived in the 19 th century,touched on the second law of thermodynamics and iterative algorithm,and her knowledge of science was earlier than that of the dramatic figures in the 20 th century.Thus,the play reflects that history is not always moving forward,on the contrary,history is often repetitive,cyclic,or even stagnant or retrogressive.Second,the world is full of uncertainties,and there are orderly things and disorderly things.At the beginning of the 19 th century,Newton's laws were regarded as the truth,and it was generally believed that the universe as a whole obeyed determinism.Thomasina,who was 13,observed the world she lived in with child's imagination and curiosity and challenged those authorities.Theatrical character Valentine agreed that the world is full of unpredictability,just as when a dripping tap drips irregularly,it is impossible to predict when the next one will drip.Third,reflections on the interaction between science and social life.In the play,with the use of steam engine,the life of feudal aristocracy,once regarded as ideal “Arcadia”,gradually faded away.The discussion of scientific issues became a part of people's life,and people's unintentional discoveries in daily life would promote them to approach the scientific truth.Just as Thomasina accidentally discovered the second law of thermodynamics while stirring rice pudding.However,the play also shows that scientific progress can have a negative impact on people's lives.Chapter Five discusses the influence of Stoppard's concern for scientific issues on the structure of the play.In the stage of Newton's classical physics cognition,it is generally believed that the development of everything in the world is linear andorderly.However,when science develops to the stage of chaos theory,people realize that their original cognition has some shortcomings.There is something with non-linear and disorderly characteristics in the world.The consideration of this issue not only makes Stoppard reflect his thoughts through the dramatic form,but also makes him adopt the dramatic structure combining linear narration with non-linear narration.There are two acts of Arcadia.The first of act consists of four scenes and the second act consists of three scenes.Scenes one,three and six tell the story of 1809,Scenes two,four and five depict the story of the present,and the last scene interweaves the life of the present with the life of 1812.Stoppard originally uses the unique dramatic structure to serve the dramatic themes,making the structure become the powerful annotation of the themes,and the mutual reflections of the structure and the themes form the distinctive dramatic characteristics of Arcadia.Chapter six is the conclusion.Many of Stoppard's plays involve the discussion of scientific issues,and the presentation of those issues is one of the important reasons why his plays are called “plays of elite”.Through humorous and witty dialogues,Arcadia dramatically interweaves the obscure and difficult scientific issues with love,marriage,garden design and other issues that the audience is interested in,making the drama both harmonious and solemn.It not only maintains the solemnity of thought,but also satisfies the audience's general aesthetic needs,thus becoming a model for the integration of advanced art and popular culture.