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A comment on The Algorithmic Genius of Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia”. Parent comment

Re:The Algorithmic Genius of Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia” by imrehg on Saturday February 27, 2021 @02:44PM (#26287543)
If there was an online course/lecture version of this, I'd totally sign up/watch it. It's a great play (generally Adore what Stoppard wrote, in all their variety), and I'm sure most of it went whoosh over my head. The projects sound very interesting too, miss a bit the uni environment when people are forced to think more creatively - learning on my own it's a lot harder to kick that into gear. :)
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Re:The Algorithmic Genius of Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia” by eszed on Saturday February 27, 2021 @03:52PM (#26288057)
The bit that usually went "whoosh" over my students' heads was what happened to the Regency characters following the end of the play. You kind of have to put it together from clues dropped throughout:

- On the evening of her sixteenth birthday Septimus and Thomasina dance

- They kiss

- She invites him to her room, to de-flower (ugh, awful word) her

(This is where the play ends)

- Thomasina leaves a candle burning, waiting for him to go to her

- He doesn't

- The candle catches the house on fire

- She burns to death

So, poor Septimus is left in an awful mental / moral position, where by doing the "right" thing, and not taking (awful word again) his pupil's virginity, he's accidentally caused her death. He goes (possibly) mad, and spends _the rest of his life_ living in the fake hermitage, running the iterations of Thomasina's algorithm by hand.

It's so beautifully tragic, and Stoppard leaves it there as a trail of breadcrumbs for his readers / audience to suss out on their own. I love it.

When I got out of the education game the Online Everything push was just beginning. I'm kind of glad I missed it, to be frank. As techy as I am, as a teacher I really grooved on the immediate, in-person nature of a classroom environment. I never put any of my classes online, and (though not taking anything away from those who have found success doing it) have no desire to teach like that.

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