Free Arcadia by Tom Stoppard Page A

anyway. Bernard: What is? Valentine:
Who wrote what when ... Bernard: Trivial? Valentine: Personalities. Bernard: I’m
sorry—did you say trivial? Valentine: It’s a technical term. Bernard: Not where
I come from, it isn’t. Valentine: The questions you’re asking don’t matter, you
see.
    It’s like arguing who got there first with the calculus. The
    English say Newton, the Germans say Leibnitz. But it doesn’t matter. Personalities. What matters is the calculus. Scientific
progress. Knowledge.
    Bernard: Really? Why?
    Valentine: Why what?
    Bernard: Why does scientific progress matter more than personalities?
    Valentine: Is he serious?
    Hannah: No, he’s trivial. Bernard—
    Valentine: (Interrupting, to Bernard) Do yourself a
favour, you’re on a loser.
    Bernard: Oh, you’re going to zap me with penicillin and pesticides.
Spare me that and I’ll spare you the bomb and aerosols. But don’t confuse
progress with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great
philosopher is an 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 people con us out of all that status?
All that money? And why are you so pleased with yourselves?
    CHLOE: Are you against penicillin, Bernard?
    Bernard: Don’t feed the animals. (Back to Valentine)
I’d push the lot of you over a cliff myself. Except the one in the wheelchair,
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.’ 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 and is followed at a
run by GUS.
    Pause.) Hannah: Well, I think that’s everybody. You
can leave now, give
    Lightning 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? Hannah: What
about it? Bernard: It’s not them. Hannah: (She explodes) Who says!?
    (Bernard brings the Byron Society Journal/rom 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—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