Distinguishing or defining characteristics.
.
ARCADIA II.5 / 2795
urgent need. There's no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotle's cosmos. Personally, I preferred it. Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God's crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can't think of anything more trivial than the speed of light. Quarks, quasars?big bangs, black holes?who gives a shit? How did you people9 con us out of all that status? All that money? And why are you so pleased with yourselves?
CHLO E Are you against penicillin, Bernard?
BERNARD Don't feed the animals.1 [Back to VALENTINE.] I'd push the lot of you over a cliff myself. Except the one in the wheelchair,2 I think I'd lose the sympathy vote before people had time to think it through.
HANNAH [Loudly.] What the hell do you mean, the dust-jacket?
BERNARD [Ignoring her.] If knowledge isn't self-knowledge it isn't doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing 'When Father Painted the Parlour'? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you. 'She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.'3 There you are, he wrote it after coming home from a party. [With offensive politeness.] What is it that you're doing with grouse, Valentine, I'd love to know?
[VALENTINE stands up and it is suddenly apparent that he is shaking and close to tears.]
VALENTINE [To CHLOE.] He's not against penicillin, and he knows I'm not
against poetry. [To BERNARD.] I've given up on the grouse. HANNAH You haven't, Valentine! VALENTINE [Leaving.] I can't do it. HANNAH Why? VALENTINE TOO much noise. There's just too much bloody noisel
[On which, VALENTINE leaves the room. CHLOE, upset and in tears, jumps up and briefly pummels BERNARD ineffectually with her fists.] CHLOE YOU bastard, Bernard! [She follows VALENTINE out. Pause.]
HANNAH Well, I think that's everybody. You can leave now, give Gus a kick on your way out. BERNARD Yes, I'm sorry about that. It's no fun when it's not among pros, is it?
HANNAH No.
BERNARD Oh, well . . . [He begins to put his lecture sheets away in his briefcase, and is thus reminded . . . ] do you want to know about your book jacket? 'Lord Byron and Caroline Lamb at the Royal Academy'? Ink study by Henry Fuseli?4
HANNAH What about it? BERNARD It's not them. HANNAH [She explodes.] Who says!?
[BERNARD brings the Byron Society Journal from his briefcase.] BERNARD This Fuseli expert in the Byron Society Journal. They sent me the latest .. . as a distinguished guest speaker. HANNAH But of course it's them! Everyone knows?
9. Scientists. 3. Lord Byron, 'She walks in beauty,' lines 1^4. 1. Don't encourage them; i.e., don't keep the dis-4. Swiss-born artist (1741 ? 1825) who lived and cussion going. worked in England. 2. Stephen Hawking (b. 1942), physicist.
.
279 6 / TOM STOPPARD
BERNARD Popular tradition only. [He is finding the place in the journal.] Here
we are. 'No earlier than 1820'. He's analysed it. [Offers it to her.] Read at
your leisure. HANNAH [She sounds like BERNARD jeering. ] Analysed it? BERNARD Charming sketch, of course, but Byron was in Italy . . . HANNAH But, Bernard?I know it's them. BERNARD How? HANNAH How? It just is. 'Analysed it', my big toe! BERNARD Language! HANNAH He's wrong. BERNARD Oh, gut instinct, you mean? HANNAH [Flatly.] He's wrong.
[BERNARD snaps shut his briefcase.]
BERNARD Well, it's all trivial, isn't it? Why don't you come? HANNAH Where? BERNARD With me. HANNAH To London? What for? BERNARD What for. HANNAH Oh, your lecture. BERNARD No, no, bugger that. Sex. HANNAH Oh . . . No. Thanks . . . [Then, protesting.] Bernard! BERNARD You should try it. It's very underrated. HANNAH Nothing against it. BERNARD Yes, you have. You should let yourself go a bit. You might have
written a better book. Or at any rate the right book. ELANNAH Sex and literature. Literature and sex. Your conversation, left to
itself, doesn't have many places to go. Like two marbles rolling around a
pudding basin. One of them is always sex. BERNARD Ah well, yes. Men all over. HANNAH No doubt. Einstein?relativity and sex. Chippendale?5 sex and fur
niture. Galileo?'Did the earth move?' What the hell is it with you people?
Chaps sometimes wanted to marry me, and I don't know a worse bargain.
Available sex against not being allowed to fart in bed. What do you mean
the right book? BERNARD It takes a romantic to make a heroine of Caroline Lamb. You were cut out for Byron.
[Pause.]
HANNAH So, cheerio. BERNARD Oh, I'm coming back for the dance, you know. Chloe asked me. HANNAH She meant well, but I don't dance. BERNARD No, no?I'm going with her. HANNAH Oh, I see. I don't, actually. BERNARD I'm her date. Sub rosa.6 Don't tell Mother. HANNAH She doesn't want her mother to know? BERNARD No?I don't want her mother to know. This is my first experience
of the landed aristocracy. I tell you, I'm boggle-eyed. HANNAH Bernard!?you haven't seduced that girl? BERNARD Seduced her? Every time I turned round she was up a library ladder.
