Arcadia: A Play by Tom Stoppard & Szabolcs Farkasvolgyi

Author:Tom Stoppard & Szabolcs Farkasvolgyi [Stoppard, Tom & Farkasvolgyi, Szabolcs]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Classics, created by hanna, Plays & Screenplays, upload
ISBN: 9782742714841
Google: MMj4PkaurkgC
Amazon: 2742714847
Goodreads: 28384894
Publisher: Actes Sud-Papiers
Published: 1993-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Act Two

Scene Five

Bernard is pacing around, reading aloud from a handful of typed sheets, Valentine, Chloe and GUS are his audience, GUS sits somewhat apart, perhaps less attentive, Valentine has his tortoise and is eating a sandwich from which he extracts shreds of lettuce to offer the tortoise.

Bernard: ‘Did it happen? Could it happen? Undoubtedly it could. Only three years earlier the Irish poet Tom Moore appeared on the field of combat to avenge a review by Jeffrey of the Edinburgh. These affairs were seldom fatal and sometimes farcical but, potentially, the duellist stood in respect to the law no differently from a murderer. As for the murderee, a minor poet like Ezra Chater could go to his death in a Derbyshire glade as unmissed and unremembered as his contemporary and namesake, the minor botanist who died in the forests of the West Indies, lost to history like the monkey that bit him. On April 16th 1809, a few days after he left Sidley Park, Byron wrote to his solicitor John Hanson: ‘If the consequences of my leaving England were ten times as ruinous as you describe, I have no alternative; there are circumstances which render it absolutely indispensable, and quit the country I must immediately.’ To which, the editor’s note in the Collected Letters reads as follows: ‘What Byron’s urgent reasons for leaving England were at this time has never been revealed.’ The letter was written from the family seat, Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire. A long day’s ride to the north-west lay Sidley Park, the estate of the Coverlys—a far grander family, raised by Charles II to the Earldom of Croom ...’

(Hannah enters briskly, a piece of paper in her hand.)

Hannah: Bernard ...! Val ...

Bernard: Do you mind?

(Hannah puts her piece of paper down in front of Valentine.)

Chloe: (Angrily) Hannah.

Hannah: What?

Chloe: She’s so rude!

Hannah: (Taken aback) What? Am I?

Valentine: Bernard’s reading us his lecture.

Hannah: Yes, I know. (Then recollecting herself.) Yes—yes—that was rude. I’m sorry, Bernard.

Valentine: (With the piece of paper) What is this?

Hannah: (To Bernard) Spot on—the India Office Library. (To Valentine) Peacock’s letter in holograph, I got a copy sent—

Chloe: Hannah! Shut up!

Hannah: (Sitting down) Yes, sorry.

Bernard: It’s all right, I’ll read it to myself.

Chloe: No.

(Hannah reaches for the Peacock letter and takes it back.)

Hannah: Go on, Bernard. Have I missed anything? Sorry.

(Bernard stares at her balefully but then continues to read.)

Bernard: The Byrons of Newstead in 1809 comprised an eccentric widow and her undistinguished son, the “lame brat”, who until the age often when he came into the title, had been carted about the country from lodging to lodging by his vulgar hectoring monster of a mother—’ (Hannah’s hand has gone up)—overruled—‘and who four months past his twenty-first birthday was master of nothing but his debts and his genius. Between the Byrons and the Coverlys there was no social equality and none to be expected. The connection, undisclosed to posterity until now, was with Septimus Hodge, Byron’s friend at Harrow and Trinity College-’ (Hannah’s hand goes up again)—sustained—(He makes an instant correction with a silver pencil.

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