Time and the Conways and Other Plays (I Have Been Here Before, An Inspector Calls, The Linden Tree)

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Time and the Conways and Other Plays (I Have Been Here Before, An Inspector Calls, The Linden Tree)

Time and the Conways and Other Plays (I Have Been Here Before, An Inspector Calls, The Linden Tree)

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The play works on the level of a universal human tragedy and a powerful portrait of the history of Britain between the Wars. Priestley shows how through a process of complacency and class arrogance, Britain allowed itself to decline and collapse between 1919 and 1937, instead of realizing the availability of immense creative and humanistic potential accessible during the post-war (the Great War) generation. Priestley could clearly see the tide of history leading towards another major European conflict as he has his character Ernest comment in 1937 that they are coming to 'the next war'.

Time and the Conways is one of the Time Plays in which the writer explores the outer reaches of physics and the ideas of J.W.Dunne. In the most simplified form, he believed that, rather than being linear, time, like geography, happens all at once but in different spaces.

Halilton

What is your view of the way these central characters are presented, and the way we share their discovery of what is right? In another way, you might compare Sissy's depiction as the "guardian angel" of the Gradgrinds, with Carol's promise to look after Kay, perhaps fulfilled at the end of Act Two of Time and the Conways.

The play opened on Broadway at the Ritz Theatre on 3 January 1938, and closed on 29 January 1938, and starred Sybil Thorndike. [6] The choices Kay makes, which lead to her discontentedness in Act Two, occur later: we learn of them only from her comments in this act. She differs from most of the others, in that she has a chance of changing things, as Alan explains. Carol has promised (p. 81) that she will never leave Kay, but will look after her wherever she goes. At the end of the play we have a sense of how, in the future Carol will keep her word, as Kay is guided to Alan for help: he will show her that Time is not a "great devil" and it isn't "beating us" (p. 60). We have seen characters (p. 61) "snatch and grab and hurt each other" but Alan urges Kay to "take a long view", as if we are "immortal beings" and "in for a great adventure" (a word Kay earlier used of Alan's secret thoughts (p. 19).

Backstory

Eventually Carol rejoins the party, leaving Kay alone on stage, listening to the singing from the drawing-room; she appears to be staring "not at but into something" as the act ends. In one sense nothing very much has happened in this act, but Priestley has introduced us to his main characters and their situation, in readiness for what is to come. The play works on the level of a universal human tragedy and a powerful portrait of the history of Britain between the Wars. Priestley shows how through a process of complacency and class arrogance, Britain allowed itself to decline and collapse between 1919 and 1937, instead of realizing the availability of immense creative and humanistic potential accessible during the post-war (theGreat War) generation. Priestley could clearly see the tide of history leading towards another major European conflict as he has his character Ernest comment in 1937 that they are coming to ‘the next war’.

Robin suggests playing "Hide and Seek" - he wishes to be alone in the dark with Joan; at first Alan follows her but she insists that he leave her (she hopes Robin will find her). Madge (who quotes Blake's poem popularly known as Jerusalem) and Gerald have a heated debate about politics; though he argues against her, he is genuinely moved by her intelligent and fiery speech: Mrs. Conway sees this, is jealous, and ridicules Madge, and the moment is lost (it is this of which Madge accuses her mother in Act Two). This metaphor is in the titles of the three parts of Hard Times and also applies to Time and the Conways. It is used by Madge in Act Two (p. 57) when she speaks of a seed which was never allowed to grow. The action we see is set in a family living-room (not the formal drawing-room where the guests are assembled). A game of charades is being played, and the six Conway children and their widowed mother appear as they find costume and props, and prepare their lines, before going (off-stage) into the drawing-room to perform the charade. In the course of this act, a number of their guests also appear: in fact the whole cast (save for Carol in Act Two) is on stage at some time in each of the three acts. Although Priestley gives information in the stage directions about the ages of all of the characters, this is not wholly clear to the audience: apart from Carol, all the Conway children are in their twenties, and they seem to have been born about a year apart: Alan is the eldest, then come Madge, Robin, Hazel, Kay and Carol.The other part of Dunne’s theory—that even though we experience time “from one peephole to the next” as Alan puts it, time itself is a “whole landscape” (177) without vector—overlaps with the treatment of time in Top Girls and in Strange Interlude. Time and the Conways doesn’t mix up different moments in time as much as Top Girls does, but by splicing the scene in the present into the middle of the scene in 1919, Priestley is encouraging the audience to look at the events in this play as a landscape rather than a fixed sequence of events (as he presented time in Dangerous Corner.) The audience can see both the ruptures in this landscape, and the smooth, natural flows connecting different moments. Watching Act III, we can see how the over-confidence of the Conways, and Mrs. Conway’s unwillingness to sell any holdings until the economy improves in the post-war boom (which never came for Britain) flows into their demise in Act II. We also see the painful, ugly disjuncture of time with Carol, the youngest Conway who we know to be long dead in Act II, gushing about all her ambitions and desires, all the things she wants to accomplish with her life.



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