We can see that creating sympathy requires the writer to use certain techniques to make the audience feel for these made-up characters. Creating a vulnerable character is one technique, which Stoppard has used in a limited way with Thomasina. Two other major techniques are: making the audience identify with the character, and showing the characters relating to one another in a way that makes us care about them.
Many characters in this play are ridiculous or unpleasant. For example, Bernard seems self-deluded and arrogant. His theory that Lord Byron killed Mr. Chater in a lover's duel is clearly the product of his desire for fame and recognition. Yet the audience can see right away that the evidence he puts together is sketchy at best and that his theory and results lack substance academically. Bernard, however, demands recognition of his achievement, saying ‘no credit for probably the most sensational literary discovery of the century’. He is foolish because he has not proved his theory to be correct. He is also rude and insensitive, calling Hannah a ‘dickhead’. Bernard’s desire for fame provides dramatic interest in the play, as it causes chaos between the modern day academics, but it is not likely to make the audience identify with him. We are pleased when we see his efforts come to nothing, as he is proved wrong by Hannah Jarvis. Bernard is an amusing character but not a likeable one, and we do not care what happens to him on a personal level. In fact, we have a sense of satisfaction when we see him fail.
Another character that does not invite audience sympathy is Lady Croom, the dominant battle-axe who storms around the estate. For instance, in the first scene, when the members of the house come together to hear Mr Noakes’ plan for the garden, Lady Croom’s unpleasant nature come across. Noakes is never allowed to start, let alone finish, his presentation because Lady Croom persistently cuts in. Every time she says ‘Mr Noakes, back to you’ or Mr Noakes- now at last it is your turn’ she then cuts in on him and disapproves of him before he completes a whole sentence. It is hard to relate to such characters.
Characters we identify with should have virtues we have or would like to have. Stoppard’s characters do not have these qualities. Ezra Chater is another character we are not emotionally engaged with because he is vain and gullible. He is naive when falling for Septimus’s words:
Sept: There are no more than two or three poets of the first rank living, and I will not shoot one of them dead…’
Chater: ‘Ha! You say so! Who are the others?’
The way that Septimus manipulates Chater is so obvious to the audience that we have no respect for Chater’s intelligence. Even though we have not read his poetry, we have heard Septimus’s opinion of it, and we are forced to conclude that a man who is so obviously unintelligent cannot possibly have written good poetry. The character provides amusement as Stoppard creates dramatic irony in this scene, with the audience aware of Septimus flattering the poet to prevent him from going ahead with the duel while Chater is blinded to the truth by his own desire for praise. Chater is a figure of fun, the cuckolded husband, but we can neither identify nor sympathise with him.
The way characters relate to each other plays an important part in making the audience feel sensitive to them. In Arcadia, the characters often deceive, tease and act in a spiteful way towards one other. For example, as we have seen, the incident between Septimus and Ezra Chater involves one character mocking and teasing another. Another relationship that dominates the play, the communication between Hannah and Bernard, is full of bitterness and malice. Bernard constantly takes the opportunity to insult Hannah’s academic status:
Bernard: You’ve never understood him, as you’ve shown in your novelette.
Here, he refers to Hannah’s book as a ‘novelette’, implying that it is a trivial work of no importance. This is characteristic of the way he talks to her. Hannah is slightly more sympathetic than Bernard, but she also participates in the spiteful conversations that the academics have between them. Thus we rarely see genuine caring interaction so this makes it hard to care about the characters. The only relationship in the play that does make us feel something for the characters involved is the one between Thomasina and Septimus. It is clear that he genuinely cares about her, and at the end, when they dance together, there is a sense of connection which makes the audience feel an emotional response.
I think the great achievements of this play must be considered intellectual rather than emotional. Stoppard keeps the audience amused with witty conversation, irony and playful use of language. The audience enjoys this and gets intellectual satisfaction from admiring Stoppard’s cleverness. The knowledge he displays will appeal to the well-educated person in the audience able to appreciate the skill with which he manipulates ideas and concepts. His numerous references to classical literature, mathematics, music and languages are very skilfully woven into the play and anyone who recognises these references will gain satisfaction from the play.
For example, mathematics is a difficult subject to present on the stage, but Stoppard introduces concepts such as Fermat’s last theorem in a humorous way when Septimus asks Thomasina to solve it, and then elaborates by using the dramatic structure as a way of illustrating some of the complex mathematical ideas involved in chaos theory. Chaos theory proposed that time was not a straight line from the past to the present, but that all moments might exist at the same time forever. The image of Thomasina’s porridge and jam is a good illustration of these ideas: it is both amusing and explanatory. At the time when Arcadia was written, chaos theory was a new concept and the audience would have been intrigued and amused by Stoppard’s original dramatic exploration of the ideas. The time structure of the play enables the audience to experience some of the aspects of chaos theory in their imagination by the clever use of shifting time frames which interact and overlap. The past and the present do not remain separate but seem to connect, which is one of the possibilities raised by chaos theory.
In conclusion I agree with the critics who suggest that Stoppard’s plays are more remarkable for their ‘dazzling, intellectual display’ rather than ‘any genuine emotional’ involvement. The audience’s pleasure derives from having their minds teased, execised and stimulated. They are likely to leave the theatre discussing ideas rather than feelings. However, without the characters’ individuality the play would not be able to convey these ideas effectively to the audience, so I do not think that the intellectual display is achieved at the expense of genuine emotional involvement. Instead, it gives the ideas their rightful place in the play: as the most important element.
