People and Places
Arcadia has plenty of interesting people and places. Real people and events who influenced the script are Lord Byron, Capability Brown, the British Navy during 1809, and sites like Croome Court. These all probably helped inspire Stoppard to decide where his play is located.
Landscape Designer Humphrey Repton’s Red Books: Repton used Red Books as ways to get business. A typical Red Book would begin with a ground plan summarizing his proposals. An introductory epistle would address the client in suitably deferential terms and recapitulate the terms of the commission.
Stoppard uses Capability Brown's work; he is one of England's most famous landscape artists during the Romanticism period. Brown worked for 30 years on nearly 270 landscapes which mark him as an engineer and inventor. Stoppard offers two contrasting views of Brown's landscaping style in Sidley Park.
The script laments of destruction of "Sublime Geometry" by Romantic landscape engineering.
The script laments of destruction of "Sublime Geometry" by Romantic landscape engineering.
British Navy
1809 England took hold of the French Caribbean island of Martinique. During the English Regency era the British Navy had a major win at the Battle of Trafalgar which happened on 10/21/1805, which helped decimate the French Navy. The British Navy was known to bring Botanists on their explorations who 'discovered' new plant and animal life.