Style
Stoppard scholar Jim Hunter writes that Arcadia is a relatively realist play, compared to Stoppard's other works, although the realism is "much enhanced and teased about by the alternation of two eras". The setting and characters are true-to-life, without being archetypal. It is comprehensible: the plot is both logical and probable, following linear series of events. Arcadia's only true deviation from this definition is the inclusion of two separate, though interrelated, plotlines: both follow a linear structure along parallel lines. An example of this comes after we see the historical Thomasina deriving her mathematical equations to describe the forms of nature; we later see Val, with his computer, plotting them to produce the image of a leaf.
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Famous quotes containing the word style:
“Style is the dress of thoughts; and let them be ever so just, if your style is homely, coarse, and vulgar, they will appear to as much disadvantage, and be as ill received, as your person, though ever so well-proportioned, would if dressed in rags, dirt, and tatters.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Hemingway was a prisoner of his style. No one can talk like the characters in Hemingway except the characters in Hemingway. His style in the wildest sense finally killed him.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behoves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c’est l’homme, what is likely to happen if l’homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?”
—Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944)