Arcadia

This book, I should start by saying, is a play by Tom Stoppard and has nothing to do with Guillermo del Toro's ongoing Netflix entanglements.* Much like the other play of his I've posted about before, this seems to be relatively minimal in terms of story, instead weaving another deft web of surmised interconnections and/or freshly-dug-up intellectual treasure in its intricate dialogue, which truly does throw you headfirst into these characters' world.

   To give you a taster without giving away any spoilers... well, first off I mean obviously go and see this live in a theatre if you ever get the chance! But onwards: we fluctuate between two time periods, the early 19th century and late 20th, with the constants between these being a library and concordant desk within which most of the action takes place. The action being, of course, one Bernard turning up at the stately home with the express intent of uncovering a historical long-buried plot involving trauma, shame, Lord Byron, and the quest for a mathematical theory capable of unfurling such meta-complexity within its parameters that the future's events can be ascertained through proper examination of events through this formula; long-dead and scarcely-known poet Chater and academic Hodge are responsible for nurturing this mathematical golem into life with the genius insights of young Thomasina, while in the deep future of the play, garden historian Hannah unpicks enough threads to shed light on the whole damn mix of stuff and ruins Bernard's project by pipping him to the post of truth. We by the curtain-fall are brought to the realisation that Newtonian physics is missing something of immense import to anthropocentric metaphysics: that is, the laws of sexual attraction, the missing piece of the Grand Formula's puzzle.

   If none of that makes sense then you might not get the play. But you'd probably enjoy it - as with Stoppard's other work that I've read, while there is an enormous amount of intellectual subtextual weight being lifted by almost every line uttered herein the speech itself flows with a naturalistic poise that muffles that otherwise-pretentious sheen on everything and brings you face to face with these intrepid bookish characters, for better or worse...

* Seriously, if you haven't seen or read Trollhunters, Wizards or 3 Below - get on that shit right now. It's kid-friendly epic fantasy for the 21st century done far more properly than properly even knows.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

This book, a play by Tom Stoppard which I acquired a secondhand copy of years ago after seeing it on-stage (at the Lantern Theatre in Nether Edge with my mum) and being so blown away by the sheer inventive ridiculousness of its utterly droll, meandering, angsty script - to be honest, I probably shouldn't have read it today, having just finished it in one sitting despite having the bulk of packing and cleaning to do as I'm moving out of my student house on Friday - but whatever - anyway. The play.

   If you're not familiar with William Shakespeare's (possibly?) best-known work, Hamlet,* this play would just be basically two guys chatting drivel about them not knowing what's going on. But even if you are familiar with Hamlet, that's kind of all it is. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's roles in Shakespeare's opus are so negligibly small, so devoid of agency and history and identity and context, that we can only speculate as to what those characters are like, how they reacted to the bizarre improbable circumstances in which they found themselves, and what, if anything, they could have tried to do to make things happen any other way. Of course, the unstoppable narrative train of Shakespearean tragedy rolls the plot inexorably onward and our two protagonists never really have a say in directing or even muchwise understanding it - they are simply happened to - all the way up to, as the title of the play (and the events of Hamlet) dictates, their unexpected, undeserved, and more or less meaningless deaths.

   The genius of this play lies in Stoppard's constant looping around this aimlessness of both its protagonists, their complete lack of individual decision-making (and even small occasions where they do try, their efforts yield little fruit or are foiled by other characters just confusing them) and even distinct identities (they don't remember their personal histories or trajectories, because Shakespeare never wrote them one - they for all intents and purposes exist to play a tiny role in the drama of their friend who was the heir to the Danish throne); buffeted about on the winds of chance, not knowing what is worth caring about or why or how they would even determine that, questioning whatever they see and hear and say and remember but having so little to go on in terms of determining what's going on around them that they have to just take everyone else's word for stuff anyway - they are bound to an objective deterministic fate, almost by chance and effectively out of their control, and all they can do is play their parts. Other than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern**** the only character from Hamlet who plays a largish role is the head of the troupe of players - allowing for some pretty meta and thoroughly amusing explorations of the existential quandaries which R & G find themselves in and how it in many ways reflects the condition of the actor generally.

   Dunno. I don't want to say too much - I just think this play adds so much extra brilliant depth to a pair of otherwise entirely unremarkable characters in what is probably one of the best plays of all time. If you know Hamlet already, read this; you will be bemused and enthused and most certainly amused. If you don't, well, they do say it's not for everyone, but who's they? Not whoever's writing this blog. I say, it's a flipping classic, so get it down you and then give this a go because it's incredibly funny, and to my mind the most unusually (almost lazily) thought-provokingly incisively little banger of a stageplay I've ever had the privilege of seeing. It was also a hoot to read.

* I don't want to do spoilers because it's great and you should read/watch** it and then also read/watch*** this, because it's so much grander in context.

** There are so many excellent screen adaptations of Hamlet that it doesn't even bear to list a handful of good ones. Google it or something.

*** There's a really good film adaptation starring Tim Roth and Gary Oldman.

**** Years ago I got a pair of fishtank shrimps named this, because they were impossible to tell apart, and a recurring joke in the play is that nobody can tell the difference between R & G (they often fail to even properly differentiate between each other).