Peter Mark Roget Character Analysis

Susannah: Maria, show a little faith, your father would never conduct an experiment unless he was quite sure of the outcome, isn’t that so?

Fenwick: You haven’t quite grasped the subtlety of the word ‘experiment’, Susannah –

But does an idyll have its basis in reality?

Harriet: Primarily because you’re playing a sheep. And besides, some people are not meant to say anything of consequence. As in life, so in a play. Certain rules must be obeyed. And one of them is you stick to your own lines. You can’t swap them round as it takes your fancy. Think of the chaos. Think of the audience.

Fenwick: By the end of the nineteenth century everyone will understand how the world works. By the end of the following century, if you can imagine that far, every man or woman in the street will understand more than we can ever dream of. Electricity, the stars, the composition of the blood, complexities beyond our imagination, will be as easily understood as the alphabet. Magic and superstition won’t come into it. And it stands to reason, any citizen with the facts at his disposal could not tolerate a monarchical system unless he was mentally impaired or wilfully resistant to reality.

Roget: Does good science require a warm heart?

Fenwick: I like to think so, Roget. In fact I suspect pure objectivity is an arrogant fallacy. When we conduct an experiment we bring to bear on it all our human frailties, and all our prejudices, much as we might wish it to be otherwise. I like to think that good science requires us to utilise every aspect of ourselves in pursuit of truth. And sometimes the heart comes into it.

Harriet: The future’s ours, these chimneys belch out hope,
These furnaces forge dreams as well as wealth.
Great minds conspire to cast an Eden here
From Iron, and steam bends nature to our will –

Armstrong: What difference does it make if they’re dead? The dead are just meat. But meat that tells a story. Every time I slice open a body, I feel as if I’m discovering America.

Armstrong: Digging up corpses is necessary if we’re to totter out of the Dark Ages. You can dissect a stolen body with moral qualms or with none at all and it won’t make a blind bit of difference to what you discover. Discovery is neutral. Ethics should be left to philosophers and priests. I’ve never had a moral qualm in my life, and it would be death to science if I did. That’s why I’ll be remembered as a great physician, Roget, and you’ll be forgotten as a man who made lists.

Armstrong: I make sure she takes them off, that’s the whole point because then I get to examine her beautiful back in all its delicious, twisted glory, and frankly that’s all I’m interested in. D’you know the first time I saw it I got an erection?

Roget: You find it arousing?

Armstrong: In the same way that I find electricity exciting, or the isolation of oxygen, or the dissection of a human heart.

Armstrong: Well, how was I to know? It’s not my fault, I didn’t know she was …

Roget: What?

Armstrong: Unstable. I didn’t know. Don’t say anything, eh?

Silence.

I mean, we don’t know for a fact that it was me who drove her to it, do we? It could have been anything.

Roget: Of course it was you.

Armstrong: Where’s the evidence?

Fenwick: Here’s to whatever lies ahead … here’s to uncharted lands … here’s to a future we dream about but cannot know … here’s to the new century.

Susannah: Maria, show a little faith, your father would never conduct an experiment unless he was quite sure of the outcome, isn’t that so?

Fenwick: You haven’t quite grasped the subtlety of the word ‘experiment’, Susannah –

But does an idyll have its basis in reality?

Harriet: Primarily because you’re playing a sheep. And besides, some people are not meant to say anything of consequence. As in life, so in a play. Certain rules must be obeyed. And one of them is you stick to your own lines. You can’t swap them round as it takes your fancy. Think of the chaos. Think of the audience.

Fenwick: By the end of the nineteenth century everyone will understand how the world works. By the end of the following century, if you can imagine that far, every man or woman in the street will understand more than we can ever dream of. Electricity, the stars, the composition of the blood, complexities beyond our imagination, will be as easily understood as the alphabet. Magic and superstition won’t come into it. And it stands to reason, any citizen with the facts at his disposal could not tolerate a monarchical system unless he was mentally impaired or wilfully resistant to reality.

Roget: Does good science require a warm heart?

Fenwick: I like to think so, Roget. In fact I suspect pure objectivity is an arrogant fallacy. When we conduct an experiment we bring to bear on it all our human frailties, and all our prejudices, much as we might wish it to be otherwise. I like to think that good science requires us to utilise every aspect of ourselves in pursuit of truth. And sometimes the heart comes into it.

Harriet: The future’s ours, these chimneys belch out hope,
These furnaces forge dreams as well as wealth.
Great minds conspire to cast an Eden here
From Iron, and steam bends nature to our will –

Armstrong: What difference does it make if they’re dead? The dead are just meat. But meat that tells a story. Every time I slice open a body, I feel as if I’m discovering America.

Armstrong: Digging up corpses is necessary if we’re to totter out of the Dark Ages. You can dissect a stolen body with moral qualms or with none at all and it won’t make a blind bit of difference to what you discover. Discovery is neutral. Ethics should be left to philosophers and priests. I’ve never had a moral qualm in my life, and it would be death to science if I did. That’s why I’ll be remembered as a great physician, Roget, and you’ll be forgotten as a man who made lists.

Armstrong: I make sure she takes them off, that’s the whole point because then I get to examine her beautiful back in all its delicious, twisted glory, and frankly that’s all I’m interested in. D’you know the first time I saw it I got an erection?

Roget: You find it arousing?

Armstrong: In the same way that I find electricity exciting, or the isolation of oxygen, or the dissection of a human heart.

Armstrong: Well, how was I to know? It’s not my fault, I didn’t know she was …

Roget: What?

Armstrong: Unstable. I didn’t know. Don’t say anything, eh?

Silence.

I mean, we don’t know for a fact that it was me who drove her to it, do we? It could have been anything.

Roget: Of course it was you.

Armstrong: Where’s the evidence?

Fenwick: Here’s to whatever lies ahead … here’s to uncharted lands … here’s to a future we dream about but cannot know … here’s to the new century.