Arcadia explores the nature of evidence and truth in the context of modern ideas about history, mathematics and physics. It shows how the clues left by the past are interpreted by scholars. The play refers to a wide array of subjects, including mathematics, physics, thermodynamics, computer algorithms, fractals, population dynamics, chaos theory vs. determinism (especially in the context of love and death), classics, landscape design, romanticism vs. classicism, English literature (particularly poetry), Byron, 18th century periodicals, modern academia, and even South Pacific botany. These are the concrete topics of conversation; the more abstract philosophical resonances veer off into epistemology, nihilism, the origins of lust, and madness.
The title refers to the pastoral ideal of Arcadia and to the memento mori spoken by Death: "Et in Arcadia ego", roughly translatable as "I too am in Arcadia", but the true meaning is enigmatic and the subject of much academic discourse.[1][2] The character of Septimus offers the translation "Even in Arcadia, there am I".
Some ideas in the play recall Goethe's 1809 novella Elective Affinities.
