ARCADIA

Sir Tom Stoppard (born Tom Straussler; 3 July 1937) is a British playwright and screenwriter, knighted in
1997.[1]He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such
as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing,
and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He co-wrote the screenplays for Brazil, The Russia House,
and Shakespeare in Love, and has received one Academy Award and four Tony Awards.[2] Themes of human
rights, censorship and political freedom pervade his work along with exploration of linguistics and philosophy.
Stoppard has been a key playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed
dramatists of his generation.[3]
Born in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard left as a child refugee, fleeing imminent Nazi occupation. He settled with his
family in Britain after the war, in 1946, having spent the three years prior (194346) in a boarding school
in Darjeeling in the Indian Himalayas. After being educated at schools in Nottingham and Yorkshire, Stoppard
became a journalist, a drama critic and then, in 1960, a playwright. He has been married three times, to Josie
Ingle (m. 1965), then Miriam Stoppard (m. 1972), and Sabrina Guinness (m. 2014).
In 1945, his mother Martha married British army major Kenneth Stoppard, who gave the boys his English
surname and, in 1946, after the war, moved the family to England.[1] His stepfather believed strongly that "to be
born an Englishman was to have drawn first prize in the lottery of life" a quote from Cecil Rhodes telling his
small stepson: "Don't you realise that I made you British?"[10] setting up Stoppard's desire as a child to become
"an honorary Englishman". "I fairly often find I'm with people who forget I don't quite belong in the world we're
in", he says. "I find I put a foot wrong it could be pronunciation, an arcane bit of English history and
suddenly I'm there naked, as someone with a pass, a press ticket." This is reflected in his characters, he notes,
who are "constantly being addressed by the wrong name, with jokes and false trails to do with the confusion of
having two names".[10] Stoppard attended the Dolphin School in Nottinghamshire, and later completed his
education at Pocklington School in East Riding, Yorkshire, which he hated.[9]
Stoppard left school at seventeen and began work as a journalist for the Western Daily Press in Bristol, never
receiving a university education, having taken against the idea.[9]Years later he came to regret not going to
university, but at the time he loved his work as a journalist and felt passionately about his career.[9] He
remained at the paper from 1954 until 1958, when the Bristol Evening World offered Stoppard the position of
feature writer, humour columnist, and secondary drama critic, which took Stoppard into the world of theatre. At
the Bristol Old Vic at the time a well-regarded regional repertory company Stoppard formed friendships with
director John Boorman and actor Peter O'Toole early in their careers. In Bristol, he became known more for his
strained attempts at humour and unstylish clothes than for his writing.
Career
Stoppard wrote short radio plays in 195354 and by 1960 he had completed his first stage play, A Walk on the
Water, which was later re-titled Enter a Free Man. Within a week after sending A Walk on the Water to an
agent, Stoppard received his version of the "Hollywood-style telegrams that change struggling young artists'
lives." His first play was optioned, staged in Hamburg, then broadcast on British Independent Television in
1963.[1] From September 1962 until April 1963, Stoppard worked in London as a drama critic
for Scene magazine, writing reviews and interviews both under his name and the pseudonym William
Boot (taken from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop). In 1964, a Ford Foundation grant enabled Stoppard to spend 5
months writing in a Berlin mansion, emerging with a one-act play titled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet
King Lear, which later evolved into his Tony-winning play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.[1] In the
following years, Stoppard produced several works for radio, television and the theatre, including "M" is for
Moon Among Other Things (1964), A Separate Peace (1966) and If You're Glad I'll Be Frank (1966).

Stoppard has written one novel, Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966), set in contemporary London. Its cast
includes the 18th-century figure of the dandified Malquist and his ineffectual Boswell, Moon, and also cowboys,
a lion (banned from the Ritz) and a donkey-borne Irishman claiming to be the Risen Christ.
In the 1980s, in addition to writing his own works, Stoppard translated many plays into English, including works
by Sawomir Mroek, Johann Nestroy, Arthur Schnitzler, and Vclav Havel. It was at this time that Stoppard
became influenced by the works of Polish and Czech absurdists. He has been co-opted into theOutrapo group,
a far-from-serious French movement to improve actors' stage technique through science.[12]
Stoppard has also co-written screenplays including Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Spielberg states that
though Stoppard was uncredited, "he was responsible for almost every line of dialogue in the film". [13] It is also
rumoured that Stoppard worked on Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith, though again Stoppard
received no official or formal credit in this role. [14] He worked in a similar capacity with Tim Burton on his
film Sleepy Hollow.[15]
In 2008, Stoppard was voted number 76 on the Time 100, Time magazine's list of the most influential people in
the world.
Stoppard serves on the advisory board of the magazine Standpoint, and was instrumental in its foundation,
giving the opening speech at its launch.[16] He is also a patron of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, a charity
that enables school children across the UK to perform Shakespeare in professional theatres.[17]
In July 2013 Stoppard was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize for "determination to tell things as they are.
PEN Pinter Prize
The PEN Pinter Prize was established in 2009 in memory of the Nobel-winning playwright Harold Pinter. The
Prize is awarded annually to a writer from Britain, the Republic of Ireland or the Commonwealth who, in the
words of Harold Pinters Nobel speech, casts an unflinching, unswerving gaze upon the world, and shows a
fierce intellectual determination to define the real truth of our lives and our societies. The winner must the
author of a significant body of plays, poetry, or fiction of outstanding literary merit, written in English. The prize
is shared with an international writer of courage selected by English PENs Writers at Risk Committee in
association with the winner. This half of the prize is awarded to someone who has been persecuted for
speaking out about their beliefs.
LAURENCE OLIVER AWARD: (1994) The Laurence Olivier Awards, or simply the Olivier Awards, are
presented annually by the Society of London Theatre to recognise excellence in professional theatre
in London at an annual ceremony in the capital. Originally known as the Society of West End Theatre
Awards, they were renamed in honour of the British actor Laurence Olivier in 1984.
The awards are given to individuals involved in West End productions and other leading non-commercial
theatres based in London across a range of categories covering plays, musicals, dance, opera and affiliate
theatre. The Olivier Awards are recognised internationally as the highest honour in British theatre, equivalent
to Broadway's Tony Awards and France's Molire Award.
Since its inception, the awards have been held at various venues and theatres across the capital and, most
recently, the Royal Opera House since 2012. The BBC used to broadcast the ceremony on television, but ITV

acquired the broadcast rights for the 2013 ceremony onwards. The BBC continues to broadcast radio coverage
of the event each year.

Characters:
1809

1993

Thomasina

Hanna

Septimus

Cloe

Jellaby

Bernard

Ezra

Valentine

Richard

Gus

Lady Croom

Augustus

Captain Brice
DIVISION:
2 acts
1st Act : Its divided into 4 scenes
2nd Act: Its divided into 3 scenes
1st act, scene 1
Setting: 1809, a room on the garden front of a very large country house in Derbyshire.
Characters: Thomasina and Septimus, Jellaby, Chater, Lady Croom, Brice, Noakes.
Main ideas:
*Carnal embrace
*Knowledge
*Gossiping