Arcadia

Here is a link to the text of Arcadia...

Thoughts...

-There's a pervasion of superiority throughout the play. In the sexual jokes the adults know the literal meanings while Thomasina is somewhat confused, the older generation keeps the young naive about certain topics. Additionally, there's the social system of power where Lady Croom for instance has much more superiority over Noakes or Jellaby. And we (the readers) also know more than the characters do for the most part. We know the math and advanced technologies that Thomasina and Septimus lacked and we know the true course of events that Bernard is so desperate to figure out. (This is much unlike The Magus, where we never knew much more than Nick. Interesting, the correlation between knowledge and the feeling of superiority)

-"we shed as we pick up" everything lost will return, just as actions, objects, and ideas are repeated in both time periods in the play. This is how the researchers of today are piecing together the past.

-the confluence of math and nature (is art??)

-the true meaning of things, and how they're distorted within these levels of superiority, for instance when Lady Croom incorrectly stated the author of a work

-Noakes' superimposed watercolors are like the two superimposed time periods present in the work 

-there are constantly people deluding themselves in order to avoid truth

-so the Croom's property is real, built in the mid 1700's by this pervasive "Capability Brown". So were Lord Byron and Caroline Lamb

Also, there seemed to be a lot of references to pieces of art, so I included them below. There is math that is art throughout the entire play as well. 

Act One Scene One

-septimus says "Et in Arcadia ego" the title of two paintings by Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665)

-salvator rosa is mentioned

-noakes' superimposed watercolors are admired

-thomasina mentions "st. john the baptist in the wilderness"

Act One Scene Two

-Noakes' sketches are now admired

-hannah says "english landscape was invented by gardeners imitating foreign painters who were evoking classical authors" and gives an example

Act One Scene Four

-"maths left the real world behind like modern art" nature was classical and maths picasso

Act Two Scene One

-Henry Fuseli Sketching Lord Byron

Act Two Scene Three

-the drawing lesson with geometrical solids vs naked ladies

-a mention again of fuseli sketching lord byron

-thomasina sketching septimus and the turtle