Dec 18, 2009

Arcadia | Stoppard's Critical Reputation as a Wordsmith

Glenn is a Ph.D. specializing in theatre history and literature. In this essay he examines Stoppard’s critical reputation as a wordsmith, and his use of language in Arcadia as a means of creating humor, identifying characters, and exploring themes in the play.

In his Poetics (c. 335 BC), Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher and literary theorist, suggested six elements that are crucial to theatre: plot, character, thought (or theme), diction, music, and spectacle. He explained each element in what he felt was its order of importance and devoted to each a corresponding amount of space in his treatise. When he arrived at "diction," the words the playwright places in the mouths of his characters, Aristotle explained the difference between common and elevated vocabulary, riddles, and jargon. He suggested: "The greatest thing by far is to...