by Tom Stoppard
Valentine: If you knew the algorithm and fed it back say ten thousand times, each
time there'd be a dot somewhere on the screen. You'd never know where to expect
the next dot. But gradually you'd start to see this shape, because every dot will be
inside the shape of this leaf. It wouldn't be a leaf, it would be a mathematical
object. But yes. The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make
everything the way it is. It's how nature creates itself, on every scale, the snowflake
and the snowstorm. It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing
almost nothing. People were talking about the end of physics. Relativity and
quantum looked as if they were going to clean out the whole problem
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between them. A theory of everything. But they only explained the very big and the
very small. The universe, the elementary particles. The ordinary-sized stuff which
is our Jives, the things people write poetry about - clouds -daffodils - waterfalls -
and what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in - these things are full
of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks. We're better at
predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than
whether it'll rain on auntie's garden party three Sundays from now. Because the
problem turns out to be different. We can't even predict the next drip from a
dripping tap when it gets irregular. Each drip sets up the conditions for the next, the
smallest variation blows prediction apart, and the weather is unpredictable the same
way, will always be unpredictable. When you push the numbers through the
computer you can see it on the screen. The future is disorder. A door like this has
cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best
possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is
wrong. (Pause.)
Hannah: The weather is fairly predictable in the Sahara.
Valentine: The scale is different but the graph goes up and down the same way. Six
thousand years in the Sahara looks like six months in Manchester, I bet you.
Hannah: How much?
Valentine: Everything you have to lose.
Hannah: (Pause) No.
Valentine: Quite right. That's why there was corn in Egypt. (Hiatus. The piano is
heard again.)
Hannah: What is he playing?
Valentine: I don't know. He makes it up.
Hannah: Chloe called him 'genius'.
Valentine: It's what my mother calls him - only she means it. Last year some expert had her digging in the wrong place for months to find something or other - the
foundations of Capability Brown's boat-house - and Gus put her right first go.
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Hannah: Did he ever speak?
Valentine: Oh yes. Until he was five. You've never asked about him. You get high
marks here for good breeding.
Hannah: Yes, I know. I've always been given credit for my unconcern.
(Bernard enters in high excitement and triumph.)
Bernard: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. A pencilled superscription. Listen
and kiss my cycle-clips! (He is carrying the book. He reads from it.) 'O harbinger
of Sleep, who missed the press And hoped his drone might thus escape redress! The
wretched Chater, bard of Eros' Couch, For his narcotic let my pencil vouch!' You
see, you have to turn over every page.
Hannah: Is it his handwriting?
Bernard: Oh, come on.
Hannah: Obviously not.
Bernard: Christ, what do you want?
Hannah: Proof.
Valentine: Quite right. Who are you talking about?
Bernard: Proof? Proof? You'd have to be there, you silly bitch!
Valentine: (Mildly) I say, you're speaking of my fiancee.
Hannah: Especially when I have a present for you. Guess what I found. (Producing
the present for Bernard.) Lady Croom writing from London to her husband. Her
brother, Captain Brice, married a Mrs Chater. In other words, one might assume, a
widow.
(Bernard looks at the letter.)
Bernard: I said he was dead. What year? 1810! Oh my God, 1810!
Well done, Hannah! Are you going to tell me it's a different Mrs Chater?
Hannah: Oh no. It's her all right. Note her Christian name. Bernard: Charity.
Charity . . .'Deny what cannot be proven for Charity's sake!'
Hannah: Don't kiss me!
Valentine: She won't let anyone kiss her.
Bernard: You see! They wrote - they scribbled - they put it on paper. It was their
employment. Their diversion. Paper is
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what they had. And there'll be more. There is always more. We can find it!
Hannah: Such passion. First Valentine, now you. It's moving.
Bernard: The aristocratic friend of the tutor-under the same roof as the poor sod
whose book he savaged - the first thing he does is seduce Chater's wife. All is
discovered. There is a duel. Chater dead, Byron fled! P. s. guess what?, the widow
married her ladyship's brother! Do you honestly think no one wrote a word? How
could they not! It dropped from sight but we will write it again!
Hannah: You can, Bernard. I'm not going to take any credit, I haven't done
anything.
(The same thought has clearly occurred to Bernard. He becomes instantly po-
faced.)
Bernard: Well, that's - very fair - generous -
Hannah: Prudent. Chater could have died of anything, anywhere.
(The pa-face is forgotten.)
Bernard: But he fought a duel with Byron!
Hannah: You haven't established it was fought. You haven't established it was
Byron. For God's sake, Bernard, you >haven't established Byron was even here!
Bernard: I'll tell you your problem. No guts.
Hannah: Really?
Bernard: By which I mean a visceral belief in yourself. Gut instinct. The part of
you which doesn't reason. The certainty for which there is no back-reference.
Because time is reversed. Tock, tick goes the universe and then recovers itself, but
it was enough, you were in there and you bloody know.
Valentine: Are you talking about Lord Byron, the poet?
Bernard: No, you fucking idiot, we're talking about Lord Byron the chartered
accountant.
Valentine: (Unoffended) Oh well, he was here all right, the poet.
(Silence.)
Hannah: How do you know?
Valentine: He's in the game book. I think he shot a hare. I read through the whole
lot once when I had mumps - some quite interesting people -
Hannah: Where's the book?
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Valentine: It's not one I'm using - too early, of course -
Hannah: 1809.
Valentine: They've always been in the commode. Ask Chloe.
(Hannah looks to Bernard. Bernard has been silent because he has been incapable
of speech. He seems to have gone into a trance, in which only his mouth tries to
work. Hannah steps over to him and gives him a demure kiss on the cheek. It works.
Bernard lurches out into the garden and can be heard croaking for' Chloe...
Chloe!)
Valentine: My mother's lent him her bicycle. Lending one's bicycle is a form of
safe sex, possibly the safest there is. My mother is in a flutter about Bernard, and
he's no fool. He gave her a first edition of Horace Walpole, and now she's lent him
her bicycle.
(He gathers up the three items [the primer, the lesson book and the
diagram] and puts them into the portfolio.) Can I keep these for a while?
Hannah: Yes, of course.
(The piano stops. Gus enters hesitantly from the music room.)
Valentine: (To Gus) Yes, finished . .. coming now. (To Hannah) I'm trying to work out the diagram. (Gus nods and smiles, at Hannah too, but she is preoccupied.)
Hannah: What I don't understand is . . . why nobody did this feedback thing before
- it's not like relativity, you don't have to be Einstein.
Valentine: You couldn't see to look before. The electronic calculator was what the
telescope was for Galileo.
Hannah: Calculator?
Valentine: There wasn't enough time before. There weren't enough pencils (He
flourishes Thomasina's lesson book.) This took her I don't know how many days
and she hasn't scratched the paintwork. Now she'd only have to press a button, the
same button over and over. Iteration. A few minutes. And what I've done in a
couple of months, with only a pencil the calculations would take me the rest of my life to do again - thousands of pages - tens of thousands! And so boring!
Hannah: Do you mean - ?
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(She stops because Gus is plucking Valentine's sleeve.) Do you mean - ?
Valentine: All right, Gus, I'm coming.
Hannah: Do you mean that was the only problem? Enough time? And paper? And
the boredom?
Valentine: We're going to get out the dressing-up box.
Hannah: (Driven to raising her voice) Val! Is that what you're saying?
Valentine: (Surprised by her. Mildly) No, I'm saying you'd have to have a reason
for doing it. (Gus runs out of the room, upset.) (Apologetically) He hates people
shouting.
Hannah: I'm sorry. (Valentine starts to follow Gus.) But anything else?
Valentine: Well, the other thing is, you'd have to be insane.
(Valentine leaves.Hannah stays, thoughtful. After a moment, she turns to the>table
and picks up the Cornhill Magazine. She looks into it briefly, then closes it, and
leaves the room, taking the magazine with her. The empty room. The light changes
to early morning. From a long way off, there is a pistol shot. A moment later there
is the cry of dozens of crows disturbed from the unseen trees.)
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ACT TWO
SCENE FIVE
Bernard is pacing around, reading aloud from a handful of typed sheets, Valentine,
Chloe and Gus are his audience, Gus sits somewhat apart, perhaps less attentive,
Valentine has his tortoise and is eating a sandwich from which he extracts shreds
of lettuce to offer the tortoise.
Bernard: 'Did it happen? Could it happen? Undoubtedly it could. Only three years
earlier the Irish poet Tom Moore appeared on the field of combat to avenge a
review by Jeffrey of the Edinburgh. These affairs were seldom fatal and sometimes
farcical but, potentially, the duellist stood in respect to the law no differently from a murderer. As for the murderee, a minor poet like Ezra Chater could go to his death
in a Derbyshire glade as unmissed and unremembered as his contemporary and
namesake, the minor botanist who died in the forests of the West Indies, lost to
history like the monkey that bit him. On April 16th 1809, a few days after he left
Sidley Park, Byron wrote to his solicitor John Hanson: 'If the consequences of my
leaving England were ten times as ruinous as you describe, I have no alternative;
there are circumstances which render it absolutely indispensable, and quit the
country I must immediately.' To which, the editor's note in the Collected Letters
reads as follows: 'What Byron's urgent reasons for leaving England were at this
time has never been revealed.' The letter was written from the family seat,
Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire. A long day's ride to the north-west lay Sidley Park, the estate of the Coverlys- a far grander family, raised by Charles II to the
Earldom of Croom . . .'
(Hannah enters briskly, a piece of paper in her hand.)
Hannah: Bernard . . .! Val. . .
Bernard: Do you mind?
(Hannah puts her piece of paper down in front of Valentine.)
Chloe: (Angrily) Hannah!
Hannah: What?
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Chloe: She's so rude!
Hannah: (Taken aback) What? Am I?
Valentine: Bernard's reading us his lecture.
Hannah: Yes, I know. (Then recollecting herself.) Yes -yes -that was rude. I'm sorry, Bernard.
Valentine: (With the piece of paper) What is this?
Hannah: (To Bernard) Spot on- the India Office Library. (To Valentine) Peacock's
letter in holograph, I got a copy sent -
Chloe: Hannah! Shut up!
Hannah: (Sitting down) Yes, sorry.
Bernard: It's all right, I'll read it to myself.
Chloe: No.
(Hannah reaches for the Peacock letter and takes it back.)
Hannah: Go on, Bernard. Have I missed anything? Sorry. (Bernard stares at her
balefully but then continues to read.)
Bernard: The Byrons of Newstead in 1809 comprised an eccentric widow and her
undistinguished son, the "lame brat", who until the age often when he came into the
title, had been carted about the country from lodging to lodging by his vulgar hectoring monster of a mother -' (Hannah's hand has gone up) - overruled - 'and
who four months past his twenty-first birthday was master of nothing but his debts
and his genius. Between the Byrons and the Coverlys there was no social equality
and none to be expected. The connection, undisclosed to posterity until now, was
with Septimus Hodge, Byron's friend at Harrow and Trinity College-' (Hannah's
hand goes up again) - sustained - (He makes an instant correction with a silver
pencil.) 'Byron's contemporary at Harrow and Trinity College, and now tutor in
residence to the Croom daughter, Thomasina Coverly. Byron's letters tell us where
he was on April 8th and on April 12th. He was at Newstead. But on the 10th he was
at Sidley Park, as attested by the game book preserved there: "April 10th 1809-
forenoon. High cloud, dry, and sun between times, wind southeasterly. Self-
Augustus - Lord Byron. Fourteen pigeon, one hare (Lord B.)." But, as we know
now, the drama of life and death at Sidley Park was not about pigeons but about sex
and literature.'
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Valentine: Unless you were the pigeon.
Bernard: I don't have to do this. I'm paying you a compliment.
Chloe: Ignore him, Bernard - go on, get to the duel.
Bernard: Hannah's not even paying attention.
Hannah: Yes I am, it's all going in. I often work with the radio on.
Bernard: Oh thanks!
Hannah: Is there much more?
Chloe: Hannah!
Hannah: No, it's fascinating. I just wondered how much more there was. I need to
ask Valentine about this (letter) - sorry, Bernard, go on, this will keep.
Valentine: Yes - sorry, Bernard.
Chloe: Please, Bernard!
Bernard: Where was I?
Valentine: Pigeons.
Chloe: Sex.
Hannah: Literature.
Bernard: Life and death. Right. 'Nothing could be more eloquent of that than the
three documents I have quoted: the terse demand to settle a matter in private; the
desperate scribble of "my husband has sent for pistols"; and on April i ith, the gauntlet thrown down by the aggrieved
and cuckolded author Ezra Chater. The
covers have not survived. What is certain is that all three letters were in Byron's
possession when his books were sold in 1816 -preserved in the pages of "The
Couch of Eros" which seven years earlier at Sidley Park Byron had borrowed from
Septimus Hodge.'
Hannah: Borrowed?
Bernard: I will be taking questions at the end. Constructive comments will be
welcome. Which is indeed my reason for trying out in the provinces before my
London opening under the auspices of the Byron Society prior to publication. By
the way, Valentine, do you want a credit? - 'the game book recently discovered
by.'?
Valentine: It was never lost, Bernard.
Bernard: 'As recently pointed out by.' I don't normally like
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giving credit where it's due, but with scholarly articles as with divorce, there is a
certain cachet in citing a member of the aristocracy. I'll pop it in ad lib for the
lecture, and give you a mention in the press release. How's that?
Valentine: Very kind.
Hannah: Press release? What happened to the Journal of English Studies?
Bernard: That comes later with the apparatus, and in the recognized tone - very dry,
very modest, absolutely gloat-free, and yet unmistakably 'Eat your heart out, you
dozy bastards'. But first, it's 'Media Don, book early to avoid disappointment'.
Where was I?
Valentine: Game book.
Chloe: Eros.
Hannah: Borrowed.
Bernard: Right.' - borrowed from Septimus Hodge. Is it conceivable that the letters
were already in the book when Byron borrowed it?'
Valentine: Yes.
Chloe: Shut up, Val.
Valentine: Well, it's conceivable.
Bernard: 'Is it likely that Hodge would have lent Byron the book without first
removing the three private letters?'
Valentine: Look, sorry -I only meant, Byron could have borrowed the book without
asking.
Hannah: That's true.
Bernard: Then why wouldn't Hodge get them back?
Hannah: I don't know, I wasn't there.
Bernard: That's right, you bloody weren't.
Chloe: Go on, Bernard.
Bernard: 'It is the third document, the challenge itself, that convinces. Chater "as a man and a poet", points the finger at his "slanderer in the press". Neither as a man nor a poet did Ezra Chater cut such a figure as to be habitually slandered or even
mentioned in the press. It is surely indisputable that the slander was the review of