| Title | : | An Inspector Calls and Other Plays |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 014118535X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780141185354 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 304 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1947 |
An Inspector Calls and Other Plays Reviews
-
Time is an entity writers, thinkers and scientists have struggled with ever since... well, the beginning of time! (Sorry for the bad pun.) Well, not exactly, but the nature of time has been an indispensable part of creative literature ever since stories began to be told. In Indian mythology, time is cyclic, with past, present and future recurring ad infinitum whereas in the Occident "time's arrow" - its apparently unidimensional movement in the forward direction - is an absolute concept with an "end of days" fast approaching. As science progressed, time's apparent rigidity was first destroyed by Einstein by the theory of relativity: with the arrival of quantum theory, it became a very fluid concept. (According to Stephen Hawking, time is spherical, but wrap my head around that concept I need to go back and read his book once again.)
In the present collection of four plays by J. B. Priestly, time takes centre stage in three: in three different ways. The title play, Time and the Conways, uses the possibilities of the stage to mishmash time: in the second one (I Have Been Here Before), the possibilities of static or cyclic time are explored in a narrative which borders on fantasy. In the last play, The Linden Tree, the effect of the passage of time on human beings and families is explored in a conventional manner, making it the most "ordinary" of the lot. An Inspector Calls, the most powerful play among the lot (in my opinion) does not play with time but with possibilities.
Time and the Conways
The Conways are prosperous family comprising the charming but shallow Mrs. Conway, her sons happy-go-lucky son Robin and quiet and perceptive Alan; daughters Hazel (pretty and rather silly), Madge (serious and political), Kay (creative and sensitive) and Carol(an exhilarating free spirit). We meet them at Kay's twenty-first birthday party as the family are playing a game of dumb charades. It is 1919 and the first world-war is ending: Robin, who has been away in the army is due to arrive. There is also Joan Helford who is in love with Robin, Gerald Thornton who is a young man who is a friend of the the family and Ernest Beevers, Gerald's friend, who is enamoured of Hazel who can't stand his sight.
This could be any drawing room comedy of the fifties: pleasant and mediocre. But Priestly expertly wrong-foots us by breaking the scene in-between and taking nineteen years forward in time in the second act. It's once again Kay's birthday party, this time the fortieth, but the occasion is far from pleasant: the Conways have lost their wealth, relationships have formed and broken down, and most of the family (except Alan) have become disillusioned and embittered. The euphoria of the roaring twenties have given way to the despondency of the forties, and a second war is looming on the horizon.
This itself would have provided a stunningly good play: but the playwright tricks us yet again! In the third act, we go back to where we have left off in the first act - but now, each and every line becomes loaded as we see the shambles of the second act being foreshadowed: and we realise how little events leave long shadows on the path of time. But according to Alan, the trouble is due to how we view ourselves.Alan: ...You know, I believe half our trouble now is because we think that Time's ticking our lives away. That's why we snatch and grab and hurt each other.
Kay: As if we were all in a panic on a sinking ship.
Alan: Yes, like that.
Kay: [smiling at him] But you don't do these things - bless you!
Alan: I think it's easier not to - if you take a long view.
Kay: As if we're - immortal beings?
Alan: Yes, and in for a tremendous adventure.
I Have Been Here Before
Literally, this is the feeling of deja vu: where you know that you have never been in a place or situation before, but still it all seems all too familiar. Reincarnation and cyclic time all have been used as explanations for this phenomenon which modern science sees as an anomaly of memory. In the hands of a gifted writer, it makes for the premise of an intriguing play.
The concept of seemingly insignificant events of the present which can have lasting impact on one's life examined in the previous play is used here too, but with the question asked: if we knew what could happen, can we change it? Or in another sense, can we go back and change the past?
Doctor Gortler, a displaced German scientist, arrives at the Double Bull Inn run by Sam Shipley and his widowed daughter Sally Pratt in Grindle Moor, North Yorkshire. Apparently, he seems to know that the industrialist Ormund and his wife Janet are due to arrive there - and also about the drama to be played out between them and Oliver Farrant, a schoolmaster teaching at one of the Ormund schools. As the events play out in their inevitability, Dr. Gottler acts as a sort of deus ex machina to resolve them.
If one leaves aside the fantasy/ science fiction premise, this play is rather insipid to read. But one can easily appreciate the power it would have had on stage when it was staged in 1937.Dr. Gortler: You say that you have been happy here?
Sam: Yes, I can't grumble at all. I have never made much out o' this place, but I've had all I want. I'd ask for naught better - If I had my time over again.
Dr. Gortler: [interested] Do you often say that?
Sam: Say what?
Dr. Gortler: [slowly] If you had your time over again.
An Inspector Calls
Undoubtedly the best among the lot. See my review
here.
The Linden Tree
This is the most straightforward play among the lot, describing a situation similar to the one in Time and the Conways, but with a much nicer family, and relatively a more pleasant resolution.
Professor Robert Linden is a history professor at the university in the provincial town of Burmanley. The new vice-chancellor wants to retire him - the play opens on the day of his sixty-fifth birthday, the official retirement age - and the professor's wife also agrees: she wants out! Linden's wheeler-dealer son Rex has managed to buy a county estate, and she wants to move there to spend their declining years in peace. His daughters, the serious Dr. Jean and the social climber Marion (married to a French aristocrat), agree - only his youngest daughter, Dinah, is with the Professor who plans to fight tooth and nail to stick on.
Dr. Jean here is a rehash of Madge in the first play, and Dinah is Carol. Marion is a more aggressive Hazel and we can find shades of Robin in Rex. For this reason, reading the plays in succession, it felt repetitive to me - maybe it's different on stage, however.
Again, time makes its entrance here in the form of history, on which Professor Linden has his own refreshingly different views.'History, to be worthy of the name, should bring us a stereoscopic view of man's life. Without that extra dimension, strangely poignant as well as vivid, it is flat and because it is flat, it is false. There are two patterns, endlessly being superimposed on one another. The first pattern is that of man reproducing himself, finding food and shelter, tilling the land, building cities, crossing the seas. It is the picture we understand now with ease, perhaps too easily. For the other pattern is still there, waiting to be interpreted. It is the record of man as a spiritual creature, with a whole world of unknown continents and strange seas, gardens of Paradise and cities lit with hell-fire, within the depths of his own soul. History that ignores the god and the altar is as false as history that could forget the sword and the wheel...'
Thankfully, we have the artists and writers to record the second pattern. -
I loved An Inspector Calls, especially the line "if man will not learn his lesson he will be taught in fire blood and anguish". The whole play has such a powerful message.
-
it's just 1912 eastenders innit
-
Studies at school. Loved the mystery and the themes. Still has me wondering ...
5/5 -
im behind on my goodreads goal, so idc that i only read this cause of gcses
-
'I found a 1978 Penguin edition.
Four plays:
Time and the Conways
I Have Been Here Before
An Inspector Calls
The Linden Tree
Back cover synopsis
'Time and the Conways', a brilliantly successful experiment, shows us the same family in 1919 and 1937; the third and final act returns to the happy family party of 1919 to shed a bitter, ironical light on the youthful hopes of the characters.
'I Have Been Here Before', another 'time' play, is based on a theory of Time and Human Life as a recurring cycle. During a weekend in the Yorkshire dales, Dr Görtler, a mysterious refugee, tries to save a rich couple and a young schoolmaster from a tragic course of action.
'The Linden Tree', a Chekhov-like study of family relationships, finds the Lindens divided : Professor Linden at sixty-five could retire but is dedicated to teaching at a run-down provincial university. But his wife and rich son Rex have other ideas. . .
'An Inspector Calls', written inside a week in 1944, has become world-wide one of the most performed of all modern plays. Inspector Goole, investigating a girl's death, calls on the Birlings. Tension builds as he dissects the hidden vices and confusions behind the façade of this outwardly virtuous Edwardian household. -
An Inspector Calls is great! As an IGCSE English teacher the text has excellent bits for analysis while maintaining a story that is accessible and interesting for G9 and G10 students. The students absolutely loved the play and many listed it as a favorite part of the course. At the ending the students were shouting out loud (I'm not joking) at the plot twists.
Highly recommended as a text for study.
The other plays didn't move me as much and are the reason for the four star review. When ordering this book for next year I will just order An Inspector Calls as a stand alone play. -
"We don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you the time will soon come when, if men do not learn that lesson, then they will be taught in fire and blood and anguish".
-
I don’t really know how I evaded reading this throughout my whole school career but I’m glad I’ve finally had to read it.
I hate that they called him goole, whole star docked for that, rest of it was calm -
There are four plays in this book and the first three of them are superb. The fourth is good but to be honest I also found it a bit boring. Why? For the simple reason that the first three have metaphysical, supernatural, moral, social and paradoxical elements. The fourth only has the moral and social input. But let's not be too harsh on 'The Linden Tree'. Certainly the characters in the play are very engaging and the ending is excellent, namely the hint of the resurgence of the spirit of a great professor who has almost, but not quite, been crushed by circumstances outside his control.
As for the first three plays... 'Time and the Conways' has a structural layout that really amplifies its poignancy in a manner that is remarkable. It's a masterpiece. 'I Have Been Here Before' seamlessly incorporates a playfully serious hypothesis about the nature of Time into the action. It is about Eternal Recurrence and how to break out of the (illusory) closed cycle of endless repetition of a life. It is about the multiverse, before 'multiverse' was a common word. I was hugely impressed by both these plays. They are unusual, acute and highly original.
'An Inspector Calls' is a work of genius. No wonder it is Priestley's most famous play. Despite its strong didactic flavour (the character of the inspector acts almost like a lecturer in an ethics class) the magnificent driving idea behind the work -- that we are all connected in such a way that none of us can evade our responsibility for the real suffering caused by interfering selfishly with the chains of causation -- is allowed to dominate and power the evolution of the play in a sublime and devastating manner. The pacing is perfect. As a bonus, the ending is one of the best endings I have ever read in any play. -
I recently re-read this again, as I studied it many, many years ago for GCSE English. The BBC adapted it recently, and I thought it was a fantastic version of the play. One of my favourites. Priestley manages to capture the moral complexity of our everyday lives and just goes to show how our behaviour could affect others.
-
Really enjoyed these time plays - there were lines dotted throughout all 4 plays that really makes the reader reflect and think about the bigger questions in life! Not my usual type of plays to read but really enjoyed them!
-
english lit trauma.
-
We like to drink with Eva cause Eva is our mate
-
J.B.Priestley's fine plays, written & produced for the theatres of the English-speaking world, either side of the Second World War, reflected the parlous state of mind that he found in many of his family, friends & professional acquaintances, partly the effect of the horrific Great War with its disturbing, emotional & social aftermath. The domestic settings of many of his best plays are banal & middle-class, but Priestley had a wonderful talent for angry dialogues that delved deeply into smug assumptions about the class-conscious world of England in those years of economic purgatory & political confusion.
These four plays all have a dramatic undercurrent of mild panic & hysteria, the most celebrated 'An Inspector Calls' still resonates with its sinister element of retribution & absolution of human weaknesses, be they venal, social, sexual or psychological!
Reading plays without having seen them performed live, is not always a pleasure, but Priestley manages to pull-off that trick, with some outstandingly clever exchanges between complex characters who break that fourth wall and have you wanting to join in and add your two penno'th, as he might well have said himself! -
These four plays, especially An Inspector Calls, make significant contributions to the 20th-century literature of time.
Time and the Conways (first performed 1937): The first act takes place on a birthday night in 1919 and introduces us to the many members of the Conway family, two of whom have just come home from the war, plus a few others. The second act jumps forward 18 years, to the same character’s birthday. In Act III we return to 1919, see the remainder of the evening, and learn everyone’s hopes. The structure is the main interest; Act III is ironic because we now know that possibilities won’t be fulfilled, hopes will be dashed. Only one character, who never sought for much and never achieves much, is reasonably content throughout. He quotes Blake—“Man was made for Joy & Woe / And when this we rightly know / Thro the World we safely go”—and the point of the play seems to be that none of us knows where we’re headed, but our attitude matters. Not as slender as it may sound; Viktor Frankl later drew a similar lesson from the death camps. Side note: In Act III, one of the characters has intimations of the future, as if she has glimpsed what’s to come. I’d think this was a new thing when Priestley wrote the play, and it’s surprising even now, when we encounter it in such places as the TV drama Game of Thrones (it provides the origin of Hodor’s nickname) or the film Arrival.
I Have Been Here Before (1937): Its idea, derived from a “free use” of P. D. Ouspensky, is that humans live a succession of lives, which are likely to be similar but not necessarily identical; that ordinarily we remain unconscious of these lives, though one can sometimes access memories of them; and that, regardless of those memories, the course of one’s life is subject to “feelings, imagination, and will”—in short, that you can change the course you’re on, or even the course someone else is on. The play is both fatalistic (we keep making the same mistakes because we don’t know enough ahead of time to avoid them) and optimistic (with effort and perhaps luck, we can know); it could’ve been popular in the 60s. The idea is slowly revealed and elaborated in great detail among six characters over the course of three days at a country inn. It becomes clear only gradually that the stakes are high, with marriage and happiness and careers and a business empire and one person’s life on the table. The play may leave you going “Hmm,” but the fantasy element may remind us that the metaphysical, what-if inclination of much recent art and entertainment isn’t as new as we might think.
An Inspector Calls (1946): The only play in this volume that may be familiar to American and British playgoers; a National Theatre production happens to be
running now on the West End in London. It’s not strictly a murder mystery, yet the offstage suicide from which its plot springs might just as well have been a murder. The play isn’t merely a period piece either, though it’s set in spring 1912, shortly before the sailing of Titanic, which is mentioned as imminent, and (we know) not long before another calamity, that of the First World War. The action is straightforward. The police inspector of the title (whose name, Goole, is a homonym for “ghoul”) probes relentlessly into the seemingly innocuous affairs of a single family and proves his case. In exposing the past and revealing moral failings, he’s like the personification of Ibsen’s dramatic principles; the interconnections he uncovers are similar to what Priestley had established through other means in I Have Been Here Before.
In the inspector’s final, monitory speech, he makes explicit a broader charge: “We don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when, if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish.” The phrasing may sound old-fashioned, but the point is not; given that, in the modern period, we’re prone to expecting an apocalypse any day now, Priestley’s play, and his suggestion that if it comes the guilty party will not be them but us, is quite timely. There’s a thrilling, metaphysical secret in the play as well, in which the near future proves capable of affecting the present—a case of reverse causation. (James Gleick could’ve included this play in
his recent survey of varieties of time travel.)
The Linden Tree (1947): Light on plot, rich in thematic explorations of time. Like Time and the Conways, this one begins on a birthday; Professor Linden, nominally the head of this two-generation family, teaches history; he’s turning 65 and is being pressed to retire; time (the birthday) has brought the family together from other cities in two countries, but time (its passage over years) has spread them apart; how the characters see things depends in part on their age; Elgar’s cello concerto is discussed twice, for its evocation of times past; etc. All these plays take place in the provinces, away from the big cities, and in The Linden Tree one glimpses the urbanization that would mark the second half of the 20th century: two characters have already moved to London, and by the final curtain a third has joined them. But the professor stays put, persisting in the face of opposition and privation, because there’s still work for him to do. This ending is Candide-like; Burmanley has little in common with a garden (most of the other characters find it drab, dismal, even “hateful”), but for him there’s something to be cultivated there. -
I read this play at school. It was a part of my course and might I add, the best part.
I absolutely loved the building up of the suspense, the characters and how each of them had a story, the interconnection of the lives of all the characters, and the message behind it. Stunning work by the play write!
This modern play includes class conflict and differences, the selfishness of individuals, capitalism vs communism, and greed being the root of all problems.
Loved this! 5 stars!
Recommend to all.
(I believe that the best part and the aspect that makes me love this play so much is that despite having a moral at the end, it really is like a book with stage directions. What we think normal and everyday can have such a big impact on others).
:)
Tata -
I bought this collection four years ago because I was intrigued by An Inspector Calls but unfortunately, I was never really interested in the other plays, and thus it stayed on my shelves for years. After all these years I’ve decided to just read An Inspector Calls and acknowledge that I might never read the other plays but in case I change my mind I’m glad that I own this collection. An Inspector Calls is an amazing play and I’m glad I’ve finally read it.
-
Hard to really talk about as I was reading it while teaching it, namely An Inspector Calls but dabbling into some of his other works as well. The main story is an enjoyable one to read and teach though and I think particularly with the incredibly switched on class I had added to the enjoyment of it.
-
Really enjoyable
-
biggest plot twist in history, i love this book.
-
I quite liked it
-
I really like this book :) I would recommend it, in some sense it can change you - into becoming a better person with your actions :) and it has a good ending too.
-
read this for school, honestly don't have much of an opinion on it, probably wont read again for the fun of it because I find scripts are harder to read.
-
I don't think I'll ever forget that the Titanic was "unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable"
-
Being one of those texts whose title I have heard hundreds of times but actually knew little about, I had fairly big expectations for ‘An Inspector Calls’ but I wasn’t disappointed. The dialogue is masterful, as is the building of tension, culminating in the play’s final shocking twist. Sometimes it is nice to read a text that doesn’t answer every question - the mystery that surrounds the eponymous figure makes Priestley’s work even more engaging.
-
It was so enjoyable reading inspector calls again as well as reading some of his other plays which I have never heard of before. Forgot how much I love reading plays....
-
An Inspector Calls and Other Plays contains, as you might have guessed, An Inspector Calls as well as Time and the Conways, I Have Been Here Before, and The Linden Tree. Of the collection, An Inspector Calls stands head and shoulders above the rest but they are all of a high standard.
Time and the Conways and I Have Been Here Before both deal with time, fate and free will, but of the two I definitely enjoyed the latter the most. The former sees us meeting a family amidst some sort of party in which charades are being played, meeting the young people of the family and hearing of their hopes and dreams for the future, before a flash forward shows us what became of those hopes and dreams. I Have Been Here Before sees a random group of people fetching up at an inn for the weekend, but one of the travellers seems to know who’s going to be there and what’s going to happen, and wants to find out if foreknowledge can change fate.
An Inspector Calls is the third play in the book, in which a well-to-do family are called upon by an inspector wishing to understand the suicide of a young, working class woman. As it soon becomes clear that each and every one of the party had their own devastating effects upon the life and chances of the woman, some feel contrite and ashamed whilst others simply clamour to hush up their parts in her death to avoid any societal blame or consequences. Examining the changes going on within society after the war and the idea of community and how our actions affect others, this play was simply superb even before it got twisty.
And finally, we finish with The Linden Tree in which a professor reaching retirement age is gently bullied by his family into changing his life into the one they want for him.
The opening and ending plays would have garnered themselves three star ratings on their own, with I Have Been Here Before getting a four and An Inspector Calls a five, so I’m going to split the difference and call the collection a four.
**Also posted at Cannonball Read 11** -
An Inspector Calls ⭐10 (THIS. WAS. SO. GOOD.)
The Linden Tree ⭐8.5
Time and the Conways ⭐7
I Have Been Here Before ⭐9
