In many of Stoppard's plays, he places his characters in situations that confuse or baffle them, situations in which they overlook or cannot know the forces that actually drive events. Their predicament is summed up in Thomasina's metaphor of the maze, in the quotation from Arcadia that serves as the title of the course: Life is like a maze -- it bewilders and frustrates us, presenting us with an intricate structure but no locally discernible pattern.
What are the traits of character that Stoppard sees as helpful in confronting this predicament? Which of Stoppard's characters are most successful in coping with life as a maze, and how do they do it?
Read another of Stoppard's plays (I can recommend Professional foul, Neutral ground, Every good boy deserves favour, and The real thing as most relevant to this topic) and use what you learn from it to help answer the questions posed above.
Write up your answer and have it ready to turn in at the beginning of class on December 12. It should be legibly typed or set, double-spaced, with ample margins (I recommend an inch and a quarter at top, bottom, and sides). If it runs to more than one page, each page after the first should bear your surname and a page number in the upper right-hand corner.
This document is available on the World Wide Web as
http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~stone/courses/stoppard/maze.xhtml
created December 3, 2002
last revised December 3, 2002