“Hubble on steroids!”That is how actively involved astronomy Professor Garth Illingworth of the University of California describes the new James Webb telescope, launched on Dec. 25, 2021.
Valentine: And everything is mixing the same way, all the time, irreversibly . . .
Septimus: Oh, we have time, I think.
Valentine: . . . till there’s no time left. That’s what time means.
Begun in 1991, worked on through 1992 and staged in 1993,
Arcadia is a mid-life play. It is written at a time of looking back and looking forward, just as the play looks back and forward. The parallel lines spoken by Septimus and Valentine in the last act hold in one mental space the moment in which we still have time to act, and the prospect that time will in the end run out, for us individually as well as for the universe: “we have time”/ “there’s no time left.” The play is full of anxiety and sadness about time. But it is also a comedy of time, and timings, and plays with time in enchantingly light and suspenseful ways.