Tom Stoppard's play primarily concerns Thomasina Croom, a brilliant 13-year-old who is searching for the proof to Fermat's theorem, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and the rudiments of what we now know as chaos theory. All the while, her mother is pursuing Lord Byron, a guest at their estate, while her tutor is pursuing the wife of another visiting poet. While there are many comic moments throughout, and Stoppard's nearly Shakespearean love of puns is quite in evidence, the play verges on tragedy.