Arcadia (play) - Title

Title

The title is an abbreviation of an initial, pre-publication, title: "Et in Arcadia ego" (with Arcadia referring to the pastoral ideal of Arcadia), a phrase most commonly interpreted as a memento mori spoken by Death. The phrase translates as "and in Arcadia I am", frequently rendered as "I too am in Arcadia" or "Even in Arcadia I am", although the meaning of the phrase is enigmatic and the subject of much academic discourse.

Discussing paintings of pleasant landscapes, Lady Croom mistranslates the phrase as "here I am in Arcadia", on which Thomasina drily comments, "Yes Mama, if you would have it so". Thomasina's tutor Septimus notices; later, knowing that she will appreciate the true meaning, he offers the translation "Even in Arcadia, there am I". He is right: "Oh, phooey to Death!" she replies. Although these brief exchanges are the only direct references in the work to the play's title, they presage the fates of the two main characters: Thomasina's early death and Septimus's voluntary exile from life. Stoppard originally wanted to make this connection plainer by using Et in Arcadia Ego for the title but "box office sense prevailed".

In a more obvious sense, the title also alludes to the ideal of nature as a rustic paradise, with the landscaping of the estate to give a less stylised, irregular form as a major theme in the play. This serves as a recurring reference to the different ways in which "true nature" can be understood, and as a pragmatic parallel to Thomasina's theoretical method of describing the structure of the natural world using mathematics.