There is interesting detail on the number of times classical texts, in Greek or Latin, have been translated with errors altering meaning and Housman is keen on going back as far as he can to the original to achieve better and revealing accuracy.  Researching this play was over several years for Stoppard, and we marvel at his dedication and attention to detail.  Is it significant that Stoppard himself never went to university in view of how academic and intellectual his plays are?  Is he proving something to himself?

There are definitely two sides to Housman, one is the poetry like A Shropshire Lad  that he is known for and the other his career as a Greek and later Latin Scholar, teaching at University College London and then at Cambridge as a professor.  There are discussions about Aestheticism, a movement valuing beauty, one of the proponents of which was Oscar Wilde (Dickie Beau), who would have been at Oxford at the same time as Housman. There is a discussion between Wilde and Housman in the play which is imagined. The choice for aesthetics was beauty over morality, honesty and things ethical.