Jan 2, 2010

Arcadia | Thomasina Coverly

The progress Thomasina Coverly makes in Arcadia is from precocious to poignant. She begins the play as the nearly fourteen-year-old daughter of Lord and Lady Croom, owners of Sidley Park. Young as she is though, Thomasina knows—and guesses at—truths far beyond her years. While studying her mathematics, she asks her tutor, Septimus Hodge, with mock innocence, "What is carnal embrace?'' She is undeterred when he tells her it is "the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef,’’ and proceeds to relay a story she heard about one of the house guests caught in carnal...