Arcadia (1993), written by English playwright Tom Stoppard, explores the relationship between past and present, order and disorder, certainty and uncertainty. It has been praised by many critics.
In a stately home in 1809, Thomasina Coverly is a precocious teenager with ideas about mathematics, nature and physics well ahead of her time. She studies with her tutor Septimus Hodge, a friend of Lord Byron (a guest in the house). In the present day, writer Hannah Jarvis and literature professor Bernard Nightingale both converge on the house: She is investigating a hermit who once lived on the grounds; he is researching a mysterious chapter in the life of Byron. As their studies unfold – with the help of Valentine Coverly, the current heir to the state – the truth about what happened in Thomasina's time is gradually revealed.