Priestley uses the stage details to help set the scene. Just little things that are done tell us about the Birlings e.g. the seating positions, Mr. and Mrs. Birling at each end Eric ‘down stage’ and Sheila and Gerald ‘up stage’. Also the stage directions tell us about the characters which means they can act ‘pleased with themselves’ or ‘portentoius’ or ‘cold’ etc. Because they are in evening dress it tells us this is a special occasion.
At the start of the play you get the impression that Mr. Birling is a very proud man, or ‘Portentous’ as the stage directions say. He is very eager to please Gerald and keeps on about ‘The special occasion’. During this ‘special occasion’ Mr. Birling gives a toast. It isn’t normal for a speech to be given at an engagement, and while he is talking Mr. Birling makes a slight fool of himself. He does this by saying things like ‘Birling and crofts ltd are no longer, competing but working together for lower costs and higher prices!’ This is of course important because it is the reason he fired Eva- because she wanted a raise. He also talks about all the ‘silly talk around these days’ and that ‘the Germans don’t want war’ because there’s ‘everything to loose and nothing to gain’ This of course is preposterous and shows how much Mr. Birling knows about what’s going on in the world. He interests the audience because they can see how silly some of the things he says are and they want to see him make a fool of himself.
Mrs. Birling is very cold and acts above the rest of her family. She is forever telling Mr. Birling off for certain things that he says. In fact most sentences Mrs. Birling say in this act are comments on the language that the others use. She is a very dramatic character because its not normal for a wife to tell her husband how to talk and this keeps you aware of the social content of the play.
Gerald is ‘an easy, well bread man about town’ he is very pleased with himself for engaging Sheila to be his wife, and he generally seems a very innocent character with no mystery surrounding him- save the incident ‘last summer’ when he didn’t see Sheila for two months because he was ‘ busy at the works.’ He keeps the audiences attention because they are all itching to know what he was doing in that time, because it is so obvious that he wasn’t always at the works.
Sheila is very excited in being engaged to marry Gerald. She is very playful- especially towards Gerald and particularly when they are having their little debate ‘ accept for that time all last summer when you hardly came near me!’ There’s a lot that Sheila is hiding – as we find out later. Eric mentions her temper, which is her downfall.
Eric has lots of mystery surrounding him because we don’t learn much about him from the text. The stage directions describe him as ‘not quite at ease’ ad ‘ half shy, half assertive’. He doesn’t say much, but what he does say seems really silly and even rude, so you get the impression that he is a very immature adult. At the beginning of the play it is hard to imagine how he is involved but there are clues, for example, how easy he is when pouring drink for himself- it shows he could have a drinking problem, linking him with Eva's suicide.
The characters are quite interesting when you study them because; like with Eric, we don’t know much about them. Some of the things said tell us how much we don’t know about them, or what we don’t learn form their appearance. Gerald, Sheila and Eric are the more interesting characters because they are the more mysterious characters.
Mr. and Mrs. Birling in particular are very typical of the period. Mr. Birling is a prosperous businessman and Mrs. Birling doesn’t work so she spends her time doing leisure activities like shopping.
The play, being set in the dining room makes it more interesting for us to watch, because you can concentrate on what’s going on in the play, rather than having new surroundings every act or scene to look at.
Priestley doesn’t keep all his characters on stage all the time to create dramatic interest, so, that we have to keep up with the play and so the characters aren’t left hanging around on stage when they are clearly not needed. Even though they exit and enter it is always for a reason; ‘mummy sent me along to see why you hadn’t come along to the drawing room’
Tension in the play is created with a delay from when the doorbell rings to when the inspector arrives, during this time there’s quite a lot of discussion as to why he has come. ‘ I’m still on the bench. It maybe something to do with a warrant’. Most of the talk is very light and no one suspects anything bad to happen, until the inspector comes in and says to them why he’s there.
When the inspector enters Mr. Birling had just finished talking about how there’s all this talk about looking after everyone else as well as yourself, and how he thinks that ‘a man has to mind his own business and look after himself…’ This is really ironic because this is the exact opposite of the socialist message that priestly is trying to get across.
The Birlings disagree about this because they are very individual. I don’t think that the Birlings like the idea of having to look after all the poorest people in their society, ‘a man has to look after himself-’, they are just here for one singular purpose. This is very typical of the time and slowly it has got better, but the Birlings are a very good example of this.
Priestley has strong socialist views on the way he looks at life. As he has been through two world wars this is hardly surprising. Priestly as like many others in 1945 were afraid of another world war, so to try and prevent it they used plays and other such things to get their message across.
Priestley uses the inspector as his way of communicating with the audience and the Birlings. He is an interesting character because you don’t know much about him. He just ‘appears’ and then when he’s done questioning the Birlings he ‘disappears’. An inspector is always interesting in a whodunit play because they are always very clever in their ways of detecting things. They always keep their methods secret until the end when everything comes out. When it does it is ever so obvious you are amazed that you didn’t see it before! This makes the play dramatic because it builds up tension and creates an atmosphere.
The stage directions tell us that the inspector ‘need not be a big man’ this tells us that the inspector is a very powerful character, because he doesn’t need to use his height as his power. This would make the audience attentive because if the inspector wasn’t a tall man, then they would like to see how he controlled them.
There is a lot of Mystery surrounding the inspector and it’s shown in the way he speaks. As he not a chatty person and doesn’t drift of the subject that he’s discussing. This makes it hard to learn much about his background. The methods of the inspector made him a dramatically effective character because he is so secretive and doesn’t give anything away. When Gerald and Eric say; ‘any particular reason that I shouldn’t see this girls photograph, inspector?’ and the inspector replies ‘it’s the way I like to work.’ He wont be intimidated by other characters no matter where they are placed socially. This makes him seem in control and the most powerful character on stage.
He is a very strange character because he looks at the other characters before speaking to them, perhaps to study their manner in which they express their emotions to see the way that they react to what’s going on around them. This may be why he shocks the audience and characters with the news of Eva’s death and the gruesome way that she died.
He is very focused on the job that he is doing. For example when he is trying to get a confession out of Mr. Birling, Mr. Birling kept straying off the subject and trying to distract the inspector, but the inspector wouldn’t be distracted.
Tension and excitement is created by the way the characters respond to the inspector. E.g. Mr. Birling is reluctant to say anything on the subject because he thinks that what he has done to Eva is completely irrelevant. He feels that he was right to sack her for asking for a pay rise then going on strike because she didn’t get it. He thinks that it was an example for the other employees, to show them what would happen if they attempted anything of the sought. This creates Tension in the sense that Mr. Birling is afraid of giving anything away that might convict him of murder. He doesn’t want to be blamed for this because he’s a very important person in the community. He tries to cover this up by when the inspector says’ Do you remember Eva smith?’ Mr. Birling replies ‘no, I seem to recall having heard the name-Eva Smith- somewhere, but it doesn’t convey anything to me, And I don’t see where I come into all this’. Here Mr. Birling is denying anything he may have done. This is dramatically effective because as soon as he sees the photograph, his memory is jogged, but he is still very reluctant. This makes the audience respond because its very frustrating that Mr. Birling doesn’t want to admit to anything.
When the inspector questions Sheila we can tell that she has no idea what part she has to play until she sees the photograph and ‘comes clean’. She admits that she had Eva sacked from Milwards because in effect Eva was too pretty and She was in a ‘foul temper’ and had to take it out on someone.
The drama in Sheila’s story is created by the way Sheila reacts to the inspector. ‘Did it make much difference to her?’ and when the inspector answers ‘yes’ then she feels very miserable and down heartened, like the whole weight of the word is on her shoulders. She replies ‘so i'm really responsible?’ and although the inspector says ‘no not entirely’ she feels full of regret. It creates a very big mood change in the play, from celebratory to distress. This may help shape the audiences responses to the play and create excitement in the play because; as soon as Sheila has confessed then she tries to persuade the other characters to confess. ‘Why you fool he knows, of course he knows. And I hate to think how much he knows that we don’t know yet. You’ll see. You’ll see.’ By this she means that there’s no point in hiding anything because the inspector will get it out of him anyway.
When the inspector moves onto Gerald he creates more tension by calmly saying ‘–so first she changed her name to Daisy Renton’ Just by Gerald’s reaction (‘What!’) you could tell that he knows something, because he makes it so obvious that he’s hiding something. Its almost as if the inspector knew what Gerald would do, but just to let the audience and the other characters know he slipped in that her name then became Daisy Renton. Gerald, to calm himself pours another drink, but it doesn’t help because Sheila sees his reaction and immediately suspects something. This makes it dramatically effective because it is exciting and interesting to know what Gerald has done, whether it was for Eva /Daisys benefit or not. The part that makes it effective is that the way he ‘gave himself away, as soon as she mentions her other name’ Then Sheila's makes him try and confess to all his sins.
The beginning of this act was particularly effective in the national theater production because the inspector came down through the audience and stood outside the Birling household. This was dramatically effective because it gave and atmosphere and made you think why is he there? What does he want? In this play you could hear the Birlings conversation but weren’t forced to listen to it. It was just a background noise. You mainly concentrated on the inspector and what he was doing, because he was interacting with the children that were running around on stage.
This made a good introduction because it began the play i.e. you weren’t just coming into the family dinner when the curtain opened; it gave the audience something to concentrate on and gave them something to remember.
The end is very dramatically effective because when Sheila and Gerald are on their own she tells him that there’s no point in hiding the fact that he’s done something because the inspector already ‘knows’. Tension is created by the way Sheila is so inquisitive and when Gerald doesn’t reply but looks at her guiltily. Then when he apologizes to her she is almost disgusted with him. Sheila gets rather hysterical at that point because she cant believe what Gerald had done to her- Let alone Daisy Renton or Eva Smith.
The end of the act is very dramatic because Sheila and Gerald have just had a huge argument in which Sheila is triumphant and where Gerald is ‘crushed’ then the door slowly opens and the inspector is standing there and simply says ‘Well’ as if to ask have you come to a conclusion, are you going to tell your story to me or are am I going to have to force it out of you?
The play has three time zones to it: - 1912 when the play was set- before the Titanic sank and the first world war, 1945 when the play was written and 2002 when we are watching/reading it.
The three unities add to the whole effect of the play. By using time place and action Priestley has shown that a certain amount of time has passed in the play and the same amount of time has passed in real life. Instead of changing rooms or scenery it is in the same place, and each act picks up where the last one left off. The plot also stays the same throughout too. So for example we aren’t in the middle of the Atlantic on the Titanic at the beginning of act two! Basically there’s one plot, one place and the same length of time passing in the play as in the theater.
I personally thought that the beginning of act one dragged on when reading. For me the play didn’t really begin until the inspector arrived. It is quite good having the long speeches etc, in the play to begin with because some of the things said are quite important- Sheila’s temper for one. I thought that it was a good first act but I felt out of place because this was set 90 yrs ago! The play was more exciting when the inspector came in because; in the national theater production he was dressed in clothes from the 1950’s so I wasn’t the only outsider. I thought it was good the way that the characters were so unaware of what was going on until they were told. The play made me think of how different life was in 1912. Today we don’t have ‘social status’ and no one is a higher ‘class’ to anyone else. We all mix with everyone.
In 1912, they thought that poor people were lazy and couldn’t be bothered to work, so they were treated like dirt. Today it’s not like that at all.
Priestley's Socialist message isn’t clear at the end of act one but at the end of the play it’s very clear. It shows us that people in 1912 were saying things like ‘well a man has got to make his own way, got to look after himself- and his family too-’ People were still much the same in 1945 but they were starting to see that, if they were to prevent another war, then they needed to look after everyone else as well an themselves. Today things are different. People do think about others but not before themselves, so it’s still not perfect. We still have a long way to go.
Priestly play was a good start to persuading people to change, but it takes a long time. All we have to remember is to treat others, as we would like to be treated ourselves.
