Abstract

This paper presents a detailed analysis of Stoppard's "Hapgood," in order present two related arguments. First, due to the modal differences between science and human conduct, the play must relegate science to a secondary role, in spite of the apparent primacy of science as the engine of the play's theme and plot. Second, while the drama hinges on its presentation of a fictive world very much patterned after the world of human conduct, drawing on love, friendship, patriotism, and more, it neither reduces moral questions to scientific ones nor does it straightforwardly present any moral message at all, but instead gives us occasion for taking aesthetic delight, which, like science, is amoral, but unlike science, draws upon our understanding of human beings as free.