“But Sidley Park is already a picture”: Painting and Playwriting in Stoppard’s Arcadia

• Main Author: Marianne Drugeon
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès 2013-11-01
• Series: Miranda: Revue Pluridisciplinaire du Monde Anglophone
• Subjects: Stoppard; Arcadia; painting; history of art; art; drawing
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/5552

Tom Stoppard chose, as his main theme in his play Arcadia, to depict the aesthetic transformations undergone by the park of a stately home in England, from the beginning of the 19th century to the present. But the reason why landscape gardening is so captivating, for him and for the spectators, is that it transcribes in Nature the various aesthetic movements which led art from Classicism to Romanticism. Painting and drawing are thus at the crux of the characters’ occupations and preoccupations, whether they are artists themselves, or study and judge the art produced by others. The playwright has woven a network of links and ties between human beings, their personalities, the Nature that surrounds them, and the history of art, thus creating a complete composition, where each character must find his or her rightful position in the painting, so as to produce a harmonious work of art.