The Browning Version

by Terence Rattigan

Ill health is forcing Andrew to retire from teaching. His wife despises him for his failures and finds consolation with Frank, a younger teacher. She openly taunts Andrew while Frank watches with disgust and shame. The wife knows she has lost Frank - but even more bitter is the realization he's now Andrew's best friend.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Fiction, Theatre, Classics, British Literature, School

74 pages, Paperback

First published September 8, 1948

About the author

Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan, CBE was a British dramatist. He was one of England's most popular mid twentieth century dramatists. His plays are typically set in an upper-middle-class background. He is known for such works as The Winslow Boy (1946), The Browning Version (1948), The Deep Blue Sea (1952) and Separate Tables (1954), among many others.

A troubled homosexual, who saw himself as an outsider, his plays "confronted issues of sexual frustration, failed relationships and adultery", and a world of repression and reticence.

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't recall reading this play and certainly never saw it or one of its film adaptations, but enjoyed this morning listening to an LA Theater Works production of it while out on a run, so will now check it out of the library. I am an older teacher, so could connect to it a bit more easily now than ever; a story of an aging classics teacher who is retiring because of ill health. His wife has had many affairs and attacks him unmercifully throughout.

Andrew, also known as Crock, is conservative, prides himself on his lack of emotional response to the world, though his favorite play was Agamemnon, a play he once wrote an adaptation to--in rhymed couplets--when he was a boy. This he reveals to a student who he thinks is taking poetic liberties as he translates it to Crock from the Greek. Most boys make fun of the severely repressed Crock, including this student, but the student gives him a gift of the "Browning" version of the play with a complimentary inscription at retirement. This moves Crock in a way that also move us.

Ratigan was gay, growing up in a time when he had to live with this secret much of his life, so it would seem he sees himself in Crock, though I also heard in an interview with his biographer after the production that he saw himself in the boy, having had a classics teacher like Crock. Either way, I recommend the play, which I listened to free on Hoopla.

[Yngvild · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although The Browning Version is a classic on stage and film, partly because the main roles are so attractive to the best actors, it is worth reading, because you see different aspects of the play on page. For example, although Terence Rattigan’s retiring schoolmaster is almost always played on stage as an older man, perhaps in his fifties, the chronology given in the play makes him somewhere from late thirties to early forties. The idea that a relatively young man can be so downtrodden, both professionally and personally, has poignancy quite different from that of the more common caricature of an elderly failure.

The core of the play is a standard love-triangle, where the cuckolded husband has his consolation prize of the love of one of his pupils snatched from him by his spiteful wife. (All wives in 20th century literature are spiteful.) She turns the boy’s parting gift of a copy of the Agamemnon as translated by Robert Browning into a poisoned chalice.

The lines from the play that everybody quotes come when the schoolmaster briefly meets his young replacement.

GILBERT. The headmaster said you ruled them with a rod of iron. He called you “the Himmler of the lower fifth.”

ANDREW. Did he? “The Himmler of the lower fifth.” I think he exaggerated. I hope he exaggerated. “The Himmler of the lower fifth.”

GILBERT. (puzzled) He only meant you kept the most wonderful discipline.
--The Browning Version, Terence Rattigan (1948)

Some modern directors replace the word “Himmler” with “Hitler”, presumably because they do not trust the audience to know who Heinrich Himmler was, and even though the modification makes complete nonsense of the play. Himmler was as far from the raving maniac that Hitler was as is possible; he was a humourless, vacillating personality who hid his insecurities behind a façade of manic hard work and attention to detail.

Britain produced a slew of brilliant playwrights during the 19th century, starting with “genteel” authors like Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan and going on to the “angry young men” of the post WWII years. Rattigan was one of the most interesting, because although he was an Old Harrovian with all that implies about being a member of the upper classes, his politics were firmly leftwing and that does come through in his plays, but subtly.

Terence Rattigan was (and is) not popular amongst the professional critics, but he remains hugely popular with audiences and actors. The Browning Version is a regular offering at regional playhouses.

[sayana · Rating 5 out of 5]

good morning i am crying 👍👍

[Jazzy Lemon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A kind schoolmaster deals with troubles at home and at school.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty high-brow, but if you know Aeschylus' Agamemnon backwards and forwards you will thoroughly enjoy this book. The two film versions are excellent. One stars Michael Redgravev (1951) and is black and white, the other is much more recent (1994) and boasts magnificent performances by Albert Finney and Greta Scacchi. Rattigan wrote the screenplay for the 1951 film and his classical knowledge contributes to plays on the Greek original. If you're feeling adventurous, take a stab at the modern Clytemnestra and see her kill her husband with a word.

[Carey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heart-rending stuff and brilliant

[David Beeson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Browning Version is Terence Rattigan’s beautiful 1948 play about a man passing beyond defeat to renewed resistance.

Crocker-Harris or ‘the Crock’ as he is known, not necessarily affectionately, to many both amongst the staff and among the pupils of the school where he is about to end an eighteen-year career due to ill health, is gradually revealed to have been defeated at every level.

His valuable and highly competent contribution to the life of the school is casually exploited but not respected – or even recognised. Among staff and pupils alike he is seen as both a figure of fun and as an authoritarian to be feared. His wife doesn’t even disguise her contempt for him, and is in any case betraying him with a man who is the only one of his colleagues presented to us as, perhaps, a friend.

Rattigan takes us down a terrible descent as we discover each of these humiliations and injuries in turn. But then, at the bottom of the slope, Crocker-Harris turns and Rattigan shows us something else. The Crock isn’t a broken man, and indeed he can draw not only on internal strength but on an affection and loyalty from others of which he was unaware (though the audience less so, if it picks up an early hint).

The play ends exactly as it should, with no attempt to tie up all the loose ends. Instead it hints at a future less bleak than we might have suspected. And, above all, with a small gesture that somehow resonates far more loudly than anything far greater might have done, in which Crocker-Harris reasserts himself and his humanity. A delicate, pastel-shaded ending entirely in harmony with the tone of understated expression of the whole play, all the more powerful for relying heavily on implication.

The Audible version is well performed and a joy to listen to. It is also followed by an interview with one of the authors of a Rattigan biography which provides some beguiling insights into his work and his attitude. We even learn why the play is so short: Rattigan felt the theatre needed some short plays which could dispense with an interval, so as to maintain intensity and keep the audience concentrating on the play’s themes.

Both for the play itself and for this performance of it, listening to this version is an uplifting and powerful experience.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This play cemented Terence Rattigan’s reputation as a serious, mature playwright. It is viewed as one of his best works, and one of the best one-acts ever written. First performed at the Phoenix Theatre, London, England, on September 8, 1948, The Browning Version was coupled with another one-act by Rattigan entitled Harlequinade under the umbrella name, Playbill. This show ran for 245 performances, and Rattigan received the Ellen Terry Award for The Browning Version, his second. (The first was won two years earlier for The Winslow Boy.)
The Browning Version concerns the life of Andrew Crocker-Harris, a classics schoolmaster at a British public school. Andrew is disliked by his unfaithful wife Millie, his colleagues, and his students. Rattigan based the character and the story of The Browning Version on a classics master he had at school as a student. Though only a one-act play, The Browning Version is a well-crafted and complete psychological study, indicative of his future direction as a playwright.

[Jared Colley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful play by a British writer who is practically forgotten about. This is a play about regret, disappointment, redemption, and hope. It is the story of a school teacher who, late in life, is being "let go" and replaced in the school's Classics department. To the students, he is known as "the Hitler of the lower 5th"; to his wife, he is "a wimp"; and to the school administration, he is seen as replaceable. To himself, he is a disappointment and failure, and this is the story of his coming to terms with that. He feels that he has betrayed his calling as teacher and husband, but the story does not end in absolute bleakness. This is a wonderful drama - kind of a Dead Poets Society where the drama is much more subtle and real. If you cannot, find this play in print, look for the more recent film adaptation; it too is an invaluable piece of art.

[Paul Servini · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has long been one of my favourites so I was delighted when the BBC revived it as part of their Rattigan season to mark the 100th anniversary of the author's birth. Wonderfully bitter-sweet as many of Rattigan's plays are.

[Jeff Yoak · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredibly powerful and moving short play that hit way, way too close to home.

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Browning: A fearful, repressed, dejected man. Does he find moral strength, face truth, change? Harlequinade: Decent comedy on theatre.

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bettie's Books

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Browning Version is an artful allusion, a pathos-laden schoolteacher tale, and a reminder that the classics still, to this day, provides an excellent dramatic backdrop for intense stories of subtle heartbreak, wherein a few sharply placed words can break a man forever.

Andrew Crocker-Harris, the main character known by his students as “the Crock,” is a typical Latin schoolmaster of yesteryear. Also called “the Himmler of lower fifth,” Crocker-Harris is famous for his “most wonderful discipline” and dry, self-serious humor marked by puns on Latin words. His wife, Millie, has been interpreted by audiences and critics as both villainous and pitiful; modeled loosely after the murderous Clytemnestra of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, Millie seems to demand our sympathy and condemnation in equal measure. Like Clytemnestra, she has an extramarital lover, and her affectionless affair with a virile science-teacher named Frank is at first repellant. After one meets the Crock, however, one starts to understand her marital predicament. Crocker-Harris, who once seemed destined for renowned achievements in classical scholarship, now describes himself as a hard-hearted “corpse” of a person. He is a has-been, an academic failure, and he has just been forced to leave his job on account of a serious heart condition.

The one-act play takes place in one room in the Crocker-Harris’s on-campus apartment. A schoolboy named Taplow, a student in the Crock’s Greek class, has come to the apartment to make up for missed work. He desperately wants to pass Greek, an uncertain prospect for any of Crocker-Harris’s pupils. Yet despite his master’s authoritarian demeanor, Taplow feels a certain affection for his Greek instructor. He pities the man, somehow clued into his demise as a classical scholar. The climax of the play arrives when Taplow, either because he sincerely wants to show that someone cares about the Crock or because he wants to curry favor with his teacher, presents Crocker-Harris with a copy of the famous “Browning Version,” a “verse translation of the Agamemnon, sir,” Taplow sheepishly tells his master. “It’s not much good. I’ve been reading it in the Chapel gardens.”

Despite his poor estimation of the now-archaic 1877 translation, Taplow inscribes inside the book a line in Greek from Aeschylus’s play that moves Crocker-Harris to tears: τὸν κρατοῦντα μαλθακῶς θεὸς πρόσωθεν εὐμενῶς προσδέρκεται, or as Andrew translates it, “God from afar looks graciously upon a gentle master.” Fully aware that he has not been εὐμενής whatsoever, the Crock breaks down, even for just a moment. His redemption seems to have arrived.

Of course, since the Agamemnon informs much of the play, there can be no redemption for Crocker-Harris. Millie, aware that Taplow imitated his master’s classroom idiosyncrasies earlier that day in front of Frank, calls Taplow an “artful little beast” and “the Browning Version” gift “a few bob’s worth of appeasement.” The most Crocker-Harris can muster in response is, “I see,” so obviously crushed by this pitiless news. And thus, on all accounts, the schoolmaster has failed: as a husband, as a teacher, and as a positive force in his students’ lives. A “sickness of the soul” had done him in years ago, he tells Frank; “the Himmler of the lower fifth,” he admits, may well become his epitaph.

The Browning Version questions a fundamental approach to classical studies, one in which students—to use Crocker-Harris’s own words—do not collaborate with ancient authors, but rather construe Greek or Latin as literally and as accurately as possible. While, as Mary Beard points out in her own interpretation of the play, most classicists today “are on the side of the collaborators” insofar as we much prefer to converse with ancient voices rather than merely replicate their words, there is much to be said for Crocker-Harris’s pedantry. Yes, we want to convey to our students the beauty of Latin literature, its symbols, metaphors, themes, and lyricism. Yes, we want them to participate in a conversation about Latin literature that started at least as early as the second century CE. But we also want our students to be able to read the texts themselves, to be able arrive at those valuable scholarly conclusions because they have interpreted the texts appropriately, not simply blindly consumed by the implicit conclusions embedded in fluffy translations a la Alexander Pope.

Why? Because moments like the one in which Crocker-Harris reads the Greek inscription from Taplow, when he realizes that he has, quite unlike the master described in the text, been a cruel and merciless instructor, will never materialize if we do not actually know the Greek. Even beyond this, that pivotal climax in The Browning Version is additionally less profound if Crocker-Harris—or the reader, for that matter—had not known, from his familiarity with the Agamemnon, that Aeschylus’s words refer not to a schoolmaster, but a military conqueror, one whom Homer describes as fundamentally hard-hearted. These interpretative layers and this sort of emotional nuance require the scholarly acumen Crocker-Harris demonstrates and tries to impart to his students, however flawed his pedagogical approach may be.

As a Latin teacher myself, I by no means seek to emulate Crocker-Harris, and I readily condemn the more traditional approaches to Latin pedagogy favored by mid-twentieth century schoolteachers. Nevertheless, I believe that at least some of us should learn Latin and Greek, and for those of us to choose to do so, we should learn it well. Mary Beard, I think, is quite right when she writes that “the overall strength of the classics is not to be measured by exactly how many young people know Latin and Greek from high school or university. It is better measured by asking how many believe that there should be people in the world who do know Latin and Greek, how many people think that there is an expertise in that worth taking seriously.” And so, in the Latin classroom, my task is twofold: I first need to convince my students, hopefully already sympathetic to my case, that we need folks in our world who can read and interpret ancient texts. To do that, I need to make the ancient Mediterranean world come alive in all its color and diversity. And second, for those up to the challenge of learning an ancient language, I need to teach Latin in such a way that my students can ultimately read it, and read it well. Most importantly, with respect to both responsibilities, I must be εὐμενής at all times, a collaborator not only with Virgil and Caesar, but also alongside my eager pupils.

[Ana Martínez Bautista · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una obra ligera, de un solo acto. Se lee rápido, pero no aporta gran cosa, en mi opinión. Los personajes no están muy bien perfilados (especialmente el de la mujer) y la historia no me ha generado interés. Aun así, es posible extraer alguna idea más sugestiva y supongo que la obra mejoraría al llevarse a escena.

[Junie · Rating 3 out of 5]

took a break from war and peace to read this last night, a welcome respite but I think it really needs to be performed to be enjoyed

[Lilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

not what i expected but incredibly moving none the less

[Manuel Alfonseca · Rating 3 out of 5]

ENGLISH: This is the third time I have watched this play, in a BBC collection of plays by Rattigan. This play reminds me of The Linden Tree by J.B. Priestley, which has to do with a teacher nearing his retirement, and his wife that does not love that kind of life. However, there are important differences. In this case, the wife is unfaithful, though not deceitful, and she actually hates her husband and tries to demean him in his own eyes.

ESPAÑOL: He visto por tercera vez esta obra de Rattigan, en una colección de obras de este autor de la BBC. Esta obra me recuerda The Linden Tree de J.B. Priestley, que trata sobre un maestro que se acerca a su jubilación y su esposa a la que no le gusta ese tipo de vida. Sin embargo, hay diferencias importantes. En este caso, la esposa es infiel, aunque no le engaña, y de hecho odia a su marido y trata de degradarlo ante sí mismo.

[Karen S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Also 'veddy British' like The Winslow Boy, but I liked this play much better! It concerns the relationship between a young student and a teacher (not well-liked by the other boys), and that between the teacher and his wife (rocky, but superficially proper). Rich, subtle, moving. I read the play before seeing the film (before I even knew a film had been made), and found the film 'opened' out the action: you see the boys interacting, the faculty and boys, and the faculty among themselves. It was directed by (fast-paced dialog, frequently-foul-mouthed) David Mamet, who did a lovely, complicated, subtle job. Four stars to the film, too.

[Aditi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two, short very well written plays that get their subtle messages across. While reading these plays, a lot isn't said overtly in the dialogue but hinted in the gestures, emotions of the characters, and even how they interact with common props. Very unlike many contemporary plays and this in itself adds a flavor to the story. The Browning Version is moving, blunt and yet delicate, where as the Harlequinade is comical, yet sad. Highly recommended for anyone who loves reading plays.

[AJW · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the 1994 film with Albert Finney and wanted to read the original play that it was based on. The play is shorter and more condensed than the film, set in one room and performed in one act. I can see now that the 1994 film took quite a few liberties with the play, but in a good way, drawing out the emotional undercurrents of the characters. Rattigan uses the “show, don’t tell” method and in a subtle realistic way. I was moved reading this play as I was watching the film.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very poignant

[Diya (Melancholic Blithe)⚡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Browning Version was a really very interesting play. I caught hold of this play because a part of it was in our course and after reading that part I wasn't quite satisfied. I mean I didn't understand the purpose of writing it and when I got to know it was somewhat based on Agamemnon.. My curiosity only grew. So I was searching for this book for a few days and only yesterday was my pleasure to have it.

I must assure all the readers that this play may seem short in reading but it holds immense meaning behind it. Not only meaning but also different sentiments, needs and thoughts that a person encounters in his life. I like the character of Andrew and Frank a lot.

I liked Andrew because there was a very meaningful side to him, the fact that his heart was already broken and still people made an attempt to cure it using mere medicines, the fact that how all students and teachers misinterpreted him - his thoughts, his actions, his feelings, how he was always suspected of being a human without soul and how he didn't appreciate people liking him. And despite of all the allegations, he never complained, he never showed his inner feelings to anyone, he was very careful to not break in front of anyone and this explains why he didn't like being liked because he thought no one was capable to love him. He accepted all the criticism, all the blames, all the hatred and ultimately this converted into a heart disease which was much severe than what people saw.

I won't say I really liked frank but it was more like I quite appreciated his character in the end. His character, I felt, was quite a confused one. I mean when he was talking with Taplow about Crocker Harris, it seemed that he was rather a scornful man - a man who was hooking up with his wife and was not even ashamed of it. But as the story continues, we get to see that he wasn't shamefully making fun of Crocker Harris, rather he wanted to know what he was like. We get this impression even when he talks to Millie. From the beginning he was unsure of their affair but he didn't make an attempt to end it before or rather he did but it was overlooked by Millie. But in the end he realises that what he did and would continue to do was inhuman especially when he got to know that Millie had from the starting told Harris that they were in a relationship. In the end, Frank tries to persuade Andrew to leave Millie but fails and so he tried to make Harris realize that there's more to him that he is not realising.

After all what aroused my interest in this play was the fact that though in the the starting Andrew was portrayed to be a man without soul, in the end we get to know that he was very much a human with soul and despite being disliked and losing interest in life, he was able to find his life back and attempted to start it from a scratch. Second was the fact that Frank was portrayed to be one that eventually everyone should hate but it instead turned out to be the one that I 'frankly' liked.

So yeah 'The Browning Version' is worth reading as it will compel you to think a loooottttttt and along with that, it will introduce you to a new perspective to see various aspects of life! I really really loved it 😍😍. No doubt that everything that I wrote doesn't not summarise what all is there in this short play - more than you would have believed. It respects friendship, a student - teacher relationship, trust, heartbreak, deceit and eccentricity for the characters portrayed in this play were no less than a mystery for all readers.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a fact that a teacher who finds fault with the work of his pupils becomes an object of fear for them. It is but usual for teenagers to have an aversion to their teachers who do not allow them freedom.

These teachers do their job sincerely and expect the same from the students. They do not tolerate the casual attitude of their students. It is also a fact that such teachers leave a permanent impact on the impressionable minds of the pupils.

When these pupils grow up and enter into the real phase of their life, they silently worship them. They become their idols.

Unfeeling and inconsiderate teachers are mimicked and laughed at but this is a passing phase and very soon the sun of wisdom dawns and the students soon realise the real worth of the teachers they have criticised. Hard taskmasters are in reality the real well-wishers of their students.

Shallow admiration and esteem soon dry away and when students mature they understand the distinction between right and wrong. Consequently, students should not form opinions in favour or against their teachers in a hurry.

Mr. Crocker Harris is a middle aged school master -- a teacher in the traditional mould.

He is a strict man who is more feared than respected. He follows rules and regulations with all sincerity. He teaches the lower fifth class. The result is to be officially announced the next day. But Mr. Crocker Harris is different from all other teachers.

Other teachers may leak out the result but Mr. Harris will never do such a thing. Harris has a wonderful hold over his students. Students seem to be scared to death of him.

Taplow a student of lower fifth standard, missed a day last week when he was ill. But Mr. Crocker Harris is unrelenting. He punishes Taplow. He gives extra work, to Taplow and that too on the last day of school. Taplow is worried about his fate. He asks Mr. Crocker if he will get his remove.

Mr. Crocker is evasive as usual. It is very difficult to extract any information from him.

Inspite of everything, Mr. Crocker is not a sadist. He is worse than that. He is totally without feeling and frightening. He lacks spontaneous human feelings. He hates flattery. He is shrivelled up inside like a nut. Inspite of all these limitations and weaknesses, students like. Taplow can't help liking him.

Mr. Crocker Harris seems to hate people in order to make them like him. The description of the teacher is damaging. It reflects upon the discouraging quality of teachers.

His comments are shocking because they are very close to reality. He imitates the voice of Mr. Crocker-Harris. He calls the man almost inhuman. He is mortally afraid of his teacher.

His promotion depends on the whim or goodwill of his teacher. But he opens up when the other science teacher encourages him to do so. He hates the Greek play because he does not like the teacher’s method of teaching.

This play highlights the general attitude of a teenaged student towards his teacher.

[Vishy · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading 'The Winslow Boy', I thought I'll read one more play by Terence Rattigan. I picked up this one. This book has two one-act plays, 'The Browning Version' and 'Harlequinade'.

The story told in 'The Browning Version' goes like this. It is the last day at school for a teacher. He has been at that school for many years but he's now leaving because of a health condition. He is an accomplished classics scholar, but he is not popular with the students. They find him boring. How much ever he tries sharing his love for Ancient Greek literature with them, it doesn't work. So it is the evening of the last day. The last classes are over. And then one thing after another starts happening, and one humiliation after another is piled up on our teacher, some to his face, some behind his back. There is an old saying that nice guys finish last. Our teacher is that exact nice guy who finishes last. The play turns darker as the story proceeds, but it takes an interesting turn towards the end, as there are some surprising revelations, and even some beautiful moments. I can't tell you more. You've to read the play to find out what happened.

Terence Rattigan once said that if 'The Browning Version' was his passport to heaven, 'The Winslow Boy' was the leather wallet which contained it. I now know why. They are two of his finest plays.

I loved reading 'The Browning Version'. It was very different from 'The Winslow Boy', a bit more dark, but beautiful in its own way.

I want to share some of my favourite passages from the play, and there are some beautiful, powerful ones towards the end, but they are filled with spoilers and so I won't put them here. Hope you read the play and enjoy those revelations yourself.

The second play in the book, 'Harlequinade', the less said about this the better. When I love a book by a writer, I am always worried when I pick another book by that writer. What happens if this new one is not good? What happens if it is disappointing? And the more hits we read, that apprehension just keeps looming larger, and we know that a flop is around the corner. No one can create one hit after another. Somewhere they are going to slip. And this is what happened in 'Harlequinade'. Till halfway through the play it was underwhelming and disappointing. Then Terence Rattigan decides to wake up and introduces a twist in the tale, and suddenly we also wake up and try to see where that twist leads us, but after a while, the play slips back into underwhelming territory, and even that major surprise and revelation is not enough to save the play. It was underwhelming and disappointing. After reading two exceptional plays, I was disappointed that the third one was a flop.

But a hit rate of two out of three is exceptional and I'll take that. I'll regard 'Harlequinade' as an exception and will continue to explore Terence Rattigan's work.

Have you read 'The Browning Version'? What to you think about it? What about 'Harlequinade'?

[Allan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely some good writing and moving scenes. Nice nod to Agamemnon in a play about a man who’s wife is killing him spiritually what with her torrid affairs with his co-worker(s) and brutal honesty about what his students think of him. Except it conveniently elides why Agamemnon was killed by his wife: he murdered their daughter. It’s quite possible that I missed that parallel that humanizes the wife character, but quite honestly it’s hard to overlook how this play sets up one female character in the entire piece and she’s just a basic Lilith/Eve/whore construct that exists to torment the beleaguered school teacher.

What’s astounding is the relationship at the core of this drama is not between husband and wife but between male coworkers. I want to respect the queer impulse to put their relationship at the center of the play, but it’s a cliche at this point for a gay playwright to lay a male protagonist’s unhappiness at the feet of a female character. Where’s the solidarity girlfriend? There’s something striking about the depiction of the marriage that is complicated and compelling, but it also just feels so predictably misogynistic. But again: good lines for actors to play

[W.S. Luk · Rating 4 out of 5]

"...I am of opinion that occasionally an anti-climax can be surprisingly effective."

This one-act play about the retirement of an embittered classics teacher is spare and icy, with Rattigan accomplishing the always-challenging task of turning a deliberately stoic, unemotional character into a figure deserving of pathos. The claustrophobic setting of this drama, and the limited actions that its protagonist is capable of taking, make for an understated narrative about personal decline and lost potential, but also transforms the Crock's request to make a farewell speech into a final gesture of defiance against the dying of the light. And while the Crock's status as a classics teacher is largely peripheral to the plot, I was intrigued by how the play's recurring references to Agamemnon serve to contrast its protagonist against a much more awe-inspiring man undone by an adulterous wife, with this play perhaps serving as "a very free translation" (in the Crock's words) of Aeschylus' narrative.

[Caitlin Heston · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Occasionally an anti-climax can be surprisingly effective” is now one of my favorite lines of all time.

So much goodness in this little one-act play. I was unfamiliar with Terence Rattigan before, and I’m so happy I picked this play of his up. I definitely think I will be reading more of his work in the future.

[Ada Alozie · Rating 4 out of 5]

1. A husband who knows his wife has affairs because she tells him
2. Someone who reads Robert Browning
3. A character moving out to another city
4. A character who doesn’t get their pension
5. A character who’s a living corpse
6. A character gifting a novel/translation to another character
7. A character who goes to pick up drugs from a pharmacist

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had some idea this had something to do with spies for some reason. Completely wrong and delightfully so. A wonderful story about a school teacher who is a bit harsh and his students and his cheating wife and how a tiny act of kindness can make a huge difference. Really pleasant play.