for the last 30 pages of the text, characters from both timelines are coming and going freely on the stage, never interacting with one another or acknowledging the others’ presence, but continually inhabiting the same space (“beginning with scene seven, characters from the two time periods now have the option of standing onstage together, though they do not see each other,” Brater 146). it transitions to the 1810s characters when the stage direction “Pause. Two researchers” *Stoppard 81* has Hannah and Valentine study the materials on stage as Thomasina, Augustus, and Septimus enter the stage; in turn, the 1810s thread is silenced by stage directions that have them study their materials, too *82*. Curiously, the stage directions note that the book Hannah studies and the book
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In his article “‘Oh, Phooey to Death!’: Boethian Consolation in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia,” some guy postulates another possibility—“events repeatedly happen out of ‘order,’ until the two historical periods seem to merge into simultaneity at the end of the play.” (Alwes 392-3) Under Alwes’ model, time is presented as a collapsed, boundary-less entity. The “repeated overlapping of the two time periods” gives the audience a “godlike perspective” because it “allows [them] to experience historical time as an unchanging tableau…[t]o stand outside of time, to see the flux of human history as an eternal instant.” (393)
Alwes’ attempt to incorporate other props, however, is far less successful. In particular, he examines the use of the apple that Brater makes note of as a demonstration for his proposed model of
In his article “‘Oh, Phooey to Death!’: Boethian Consolation in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia,” some guy postulates another possibility—“events repeatedly happen out of ‘order,’ until the two historical periods seem to merge into simultaneity at the end of the play.” (Alwes 392-3) Under Alwes’ model, time is presented as a collapsed, boundary-less entity. The “repeated overlapping of the two time periods” gives the audience a “godlike perspective” because it “allows [them] to experience historical time as an unchanging tableau…[t]o stand outside of time, to see the flux of human history as an eternal instant.” (393)
Alwes’ attempt to incorporate other props, however, is far less successful. In particular, he examines the use of the apple that Brater makes note of as a demonstration for his proposed model of