MORE on How to Analyse Form Part 2 of 2

Continuing from Part 1, this video completes our comprehensive breakdown of dramatic form and stagecraft in An Inspector Calls. If you want to stand out to examiners, integrating these high-level dramatic concepts into your paragraphs is one of the most effective ways to demonstrate perceptive critical understanding.

In Part 2, we delve into how Priestley utilizes dramatic foils, strategic entrances and exits, and key props to drive tension and reveal character flaws. We’ll also examine the effect of the play’s real-time structure and analyze how Priestley blends elements of different theatrical traditions - including the Crime Play, the Morality Play, and the Well-Made Play - to deliver his final message.

Note: Make sure to watch Part 1 if you haven't already!

Timestamp
0:00 Foil
0:32 The Inspector's dramatic monologue and dramatic irony
6:20 Entrances and exits
12:45 Props
14:55 Real time
15:59 Crime play
19:19 Morality play
22:07 Well Made play

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There are also resources to help you in the Study Materials section:

An Inspector Calls Vocabulary Bank

The words in this vocabulary bank will help you to develop a more sophisticated and high level understanding of the key ideas and concepts in 'An Inspector Calls'.

As well as providing a range of words, their definitions and an example sentence, this book also suggests a number of activities that you can use to revise and put the vocabulary into practice.

Bonus - it's completely free!

An Inspector Calls AQA GCSE Model Answers (Coming soon!)

This resource will have model answers for multiple years of AQA past papers, giving you the ability to see what high grade essays look like for a range of essay questions.

An Inspector Calls Edexcel IGCSE Model Answers (Coming soon!)

This resource will have model answers for multiple years of Edexcel past papers, giving you the ability to see what high grade essays look like for a range of essay questions.

An Inspector Calls Flipped Learning (Coming soon!)

This resource is designed for teachers and students: it is a workbook designed to be completed alongside all of my An Inspector Calls videos. It is essentially a structured way for you to take notes and ensure that you are squeezing every ounce of advice my videos have to offer.

I fully intend to add more videos and study materials on this play. If there's something in particular you're looking for, then register and get in touch to let me know what would help you.

Lesson Transcript:

Now, as I mentioned before, Mr. Birling and the Inspector are foils to one another. Foil is a literary device; it is a technique, and it means that two characters are essentially like polar opposites, and they're designed to sort of clash against each other. Kind of like protagonist and antagonist, except it's not just that, you know, protagonists and antagonists can clash but possibly be quite similar—foils are opposites. And of course, Mr. Birling is capitalism and individualism; the Inspector is socialism, collectivism. And their dramatic monologues also completely differ.

So, the Inspector's dramatic monologue happens right before he leaves at the end of his investigation. So structurally, since Mr. Birling's monologue, the play has moved on a great deal. And the difference with the Inspector's monologue—and again, I'm not going to do language analysis right now because I've already done that in my video about the Inspector—but in terms of analyzing the dramatic monologue as a device, it really fits with the purpose of the Inspector as a dramatic device. He is here to teach us a lesson: that's his existence in the play. He is here to make the audience and the Birlings realize the mistakes of the past, realize the importance for change, and make us want to go and, you know, be the change we want to see in the world.

And so this dramatic monologue, coming at the end of his investigation, essentially serves as a really powerful summary of all the key ideas that he wants to get across. So he manages to get across his point about the fact that, you know, this is not over. Essentially what he does—you know how I was saying that the family are a microcosm? The Inspector, aka Priestley, is reminding us: this isn't a microcosm, this is real life, this is huge. This isn't just the Birlings and Eva; this is the entire working class and their experience, who are like 80% of Britain. It reminds us about the ramifications for all of this: the real-world consequences for the real people out there, and the fact that there are many of them.

It also talks about essentially the importance of community, of social responsibility, because he points out how interdependent we are on one another—the fact that the happiness, the suffering of each other relies on the others as well. That idea of: we need to be socially responsible, we do not live alone, we need to look out for one another, we need to support one another.

And he also then has, again, some dramatic irony, except this time the dramatic irony is correct. So the dramatic irony is that if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and—that's supposed to be blood—and anguish. (Oh, sorry, so many typos in this little extract: that's supposed to be "will" and that's supposed to be "blood.") This is obviously dramatic irony for World War I. So it's got all the different kinds of destruction that war causes:

• You've got the fire, representing like the destruction of homes and buildings;

• You've got the blood, with the destruction of people, with how they were harmed and the violence;

• And you've got the anguish: the mental destruction, the damage to mental health as well.

And that's literally the last thing he finishes on: like, "they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. Good night." And so it ends on such a powerful final image that is designed to really stick with our audience.

But the key thing again, coming back to the structure of the play, is that this is not where the play ends. You see, if the Inspector represents not just all the other things I've talked about—of socialism and collectivism and all that kind of stuff—he also symbolizes legal responsibility. Because he's a police inspector, he is the legal consequence for doing something illegal. But he also, over the course of his investigation, comes to represent moral responsibility as well. The Inspector's investigation is never like, "Oh, you broke such-and-such act of 1862"—he doesn't care about that. He cares about: this person needed support, you weren't there for them. That's what his interrogation really focuses on: the moral responsibility that we have for each other, the social responsibility that we have for each other.

Nevertheless, for the Birling family, the only reason they allow his interrogation to go ahead, the only reason he has any power and status in that family, is because of his legal position as an inspector. So when he leaves, you get an opportunity to see how the Birlings will behave once that legal responsibility is sort of taken back a bit. Once they're alone, do they change still, or do they go back even worse? Once we find out he's not even real, he's not even an inspector, how do they behave?

So structurally, it's so brilliant. Because if the play had just ended there, yes, Priestley would have gotten his message across, but not all of his message. Because his message isn't just that we need to change; his message is: here are the blockades to us changing. And the blockades to us changing are those stubborn older-generation capitalists and individualists who will not learn: the Birlings, the Mr. and Mrs. Birling, the Gerald, who do not experience anagnorisis, compared to the Sheila and Eric who do change, who do learn.

So structurally, the Inspector's exit—that is another dramatic device. Entrances and exits: who's on stage, who's not—that is another dramatic device you're going to be able to analyze. Not just this dramatic monologue and how much it contrasts with Mr. Birling's at their different points in the play, but also the fact that after this he leaves, and why he leaves, and how essential it is that we see how the Birlings behave after he leaves. And again, check out my video on the ending of the play if you want more detail on analyzing the way that they behave when he leaves.

Another great dramatic device, like what I was talking about, is the entrances and exits of different characters. So as well as the exit of the Inspector that I've just talked about, there are a couple of others that I think are worthy of mentioning, and I'm literally just going to make a list of the different ones and explain why I think they're important:

The entrance of the Inspector is so important—I'm running through the chronology of the play, by the way, so I'm going to go through them sort of in the order that they happen. The entrance of the Inspector is so important because of the way that it happens: it happens in a stage direction where we're told about a doorbell ringing, and it interrupts Mr. Birling. The doorbell interrupting Mr. Birling is, again, a pretty unsubtle symbol of what the Inspector is going to do in this play: that lighting gets brighter and harder; the doorbell interrupts Mr. Birling when he's in the middle of talking about how a man has to look after himself and his family. And so the entrance of the Inspector and the way that it happens, with that doorbell interrupting Mr. Birling, is essentially a giant metaphor for the role he's going to play: how he is going to conflict and clash with Mr. Birling as the play keeps going.

There's actually another one before this that I've just thought of that actually isn't an entrance or an exit, but it's the way the play begins: in medias res. So in medias res is fancy Latin that just means in the middle of action, right? So the play begins where they're already all on stage, they're all at dinner, it's in the middle of things. They don't enter; it's in the middle. And that beginning the play—so this comes before this—that beginning the play in medias res is actually, when you think about it, so important in creating that feeling of this being the fourth-wall reality of Britain. It's like: yeah, this was in the middle of all happening, this is just day-to-day life, this is ordinary life, and you just happen to be popping in to have a little look at it. So that in medias res beginning is really important, as is followed by the entrance of the Inspector.

Some more really important entrances and exits that I'm not going to look at in detail for all of them, because there's just way too many and this video would go on too long, but: keep paying attention to the interrogation order, okay? So keep paying attention to who leaves, who stays for the different sections of the interrogation. Because who leaves and who stays during the investigation essentially affects what information the audience has at different points:

• When Eric goes, we have all that stuff about Eva becoming pregnant and what Mrs. Birling did to her, and it's when he reappears that we're suddenly like, "You are the father!" And, of course, we have that dramatic irony where we as the audience figure out Eric is the father, along with Sheila, way before Mrs. Birling cottons on. But if Eric had been there, the way that information would have come out would have been incredibly different: if he had been there, he would have been able to interject a lot faster.

• Similarly, Gerald disappears for a whole host of time, and the bits that he misses are really important. Because then, when they all come back together later, it's almost like they are piecing together information, too: they're conducting their own little investigation trying to figure out who this man is.

So it's always worth paying attention to that just from a general standpoint of: it impacts what information the characters get and when. So you can always raise that question of: why is Priestley limiting that information to these specific characters or these specific characters? Why did he not want Mr. Birling there during this conversation, or why does he not want Gerald there during this conversation?

Similarly, it impacts the information the audience has. We are piecing together a picture of a person's life, of Eva's life, and so J.B. Priestley can't sort of give it all to us in a giant wave; he reveals it in a steady order. And by and large, that order is chronological, but there are elements of information that only truly come to light at different points because of the different characters that are or are not there. So as I said, this one is one that I'm talking about quite generally, because there are just way too many different specific examples for me to give, but that's just something I want you to have in your mind whenever you're looking at the play: who's there, who's not, why are those people actually there and those people actually not?

There's just one specific example of who's there and who's not that I do want to talk about, because it is really important, and again, you've probably figured out where I'm going with this: it's Eva. It's the fact that she is never there. She's—well, she's already dead! And her being entirely off-stage, her never existing as a physical character on stage, is in part an incredibly important symbol of her mistreatment, her powerlessness, the fact that she doesn't have any voice or control over the narrative of her life. And therefore, it has to be told via the people with power: her life is literally told to us by the people in power—the upper-class men who slept with her, the middle-class men who employed her, the Inspector who's collected pieces of information via his interrogation, the women who have rejected her or gotten her fired, or whatever. Her life is told via those in power; that is in itself a pretty powerful message about the powerlessness of the working class. So Eva not being a character at all in this play is an incredibly important dramatic device to talk about if you've got a question about this character, or also it could really work for if you've got a question about the working class, too.

The entrances and exits or the lack of characters being on stage is all about controlling information, right? That's what Priestley is doing: it's how he controls what information we get, when. So Eva never being on stage, never being able to tell us about her life, is a really essential part of that, because it means we only are able to piece together certain parts at certain times from certain people.

But another essential part of that is essentially partly character and partly prop: and it is the Inspector and his photographs. Those photographs are, when you think about it, so freaking important! Can you imagine how different the play would be if all the characters saw the same photograph, or if the audience saw the photograph? How much would that change the plot?

So much of the plot hinges on not just Priestley, but the Inspector controlling the information people have got. And a key way he controls that information is with those photographs. So the Inspector as a dramatic device is key in driving the plot of the play, controlling the narrative, controlling what happens when. And yes, a key way that he does that is through his interrogation, but the other key way that he does that is through his photographs: it's his "one line of inquiry, one person at a time" rule, and it's his photographs.

So what you're able to analyze there is just—again, there's way too many general moments because it's the entire play, so there's way too many examples for me to be talking about right here—but whenever you're studying the play and, you know, there's a moment with a photograph or there's a moment with the Inspector's "one line of investigation at a time," pay attention to how the narrative is being controlled. With the photograph in particular, of course, it's a key way that Priestley is able to cast doubt on the identity of Eva: is she one person, is she multiple people? You know, did they all actually do something to the same person or not? We don't know, we can't know, because nobody saw the same photographs! Because that's the key thing: if the audience had seen the photographs, the audience would know, but a part of the way Priestley controls that information is the audience doesn't see the photographs either. We are, in some ways—in some ways we have more information than the characters, like thinking about that dramatic irony; in other ways, we are just as clueless as the characters: we have absolutely no idea, because of those photographs and what we can or cannot see, what the Inspector does or does not tell us.

That's a really essential aspect of the dramatic device as well, thinking of the fact that the play occurs sort of real place, real time. So there is never a change in setting or anything like that; it doesn't shift in time. It's just all this sort of continuous, not just chronological, but one consistent moment moving in time. So we as the audience are very much learning and developing and questioning and criticizing as it goes: we are on the journey with them.

Of course, the thing that is different about the Birlings versus our audience in terms of that real-time experience is the worlds that they are living in: the world Mr. Birling is living in in 1912, it's a very different one from 1945. So you could perhaps argue that our audience is learning, changing, progressing, agreeing with the Inspector far faster than the Birlings essentially are.

The use of the interrogation and the photographs are essentially two parts to a much bigger dramatic device going on, and that is the fact that the play is a crime thriller. Now, a crime thriller is just a story that sort of centers around the committing of a crime and figuring out who committed that crime. So in this case, there wasn't really a crime per se, because Eva committed suicide. So arguably, the crime is her against herself. But actually, it's almost like I was saying before about the Inspector: he's not really about legal responsibility, he's about social and moral responsibility, and: who is truly to blame here?

That's what the crime thriller genre allows Priestley to do: it's not a game of whodunnit, but a game of who's responsible—who is most to blame for what's happened to Eva? Is it the person who got her fired, the person who fired her, the person who got her pregnant, the person who denied her help when she was pregnant? And that's the sort of process that the interrogation takes for our audience: we are hearing crime after crime after crime of not necessarily illegal crimes, but, you know, you could say sort of moral crimes—inconsiderate actions, selfish actions, greedy actions, immoral actions that have all had consequences for somebody else. They've been socially irresponsible, morally irresponsible.

And our audience, although they are definitely sort of making their own judgments on who is most to blame, the other thing they care about just as much, and that Priestley gets us to care about, is: how the Birling family react to the accusations against them. Do they, like I was saying before, do they experience anagnorisis? Do they learn from their mistakes or not? And whether or not they learn from their mistakes, how they react during this interrogation has a huge impact on how the audience views them:

• Mr. Birling's just complete and utter denial, Mrs. Birling's just complete and utter denial really taints the way the audience views them, and makes us see them as heartless, cruel, and thus the ideologies, the ways of thinking that they represent, also in that way as well.

• Gerald is a slightly more complicated one, in that at the point that he exits, he appears to—I don't know if you can use the word "have changed," but to have—be reflecting on something, he's learning something perhaps, because he needs time to step outside as he's just truly appreciated that she's died. However, when he then comes back, it very quickly becomes apparent he learned nothing! So he's an almost like twist: you think he might have learned, but he hasn't learned.

So the crime thriller genre is another just so essential dramatic device to Priestley being able to convey his entire criticism of British society. He needs the crime thriller to essentially make the audience judge and jury of who is to blame. We can also think of the Inspector's dramatic monologue at the end almost as like, you know, the closing speech of a lawyer in a case, where he's sort of debating his final thoughts and trying to leave those in the audience's mind before he then leaves.

Another genre that the play fits into is the morality play. Now, I need you—I'm sure you've been listening carefully up to this point anyway, but this one is especially important to listen to, because it seems straightforward and simple, but because of that, students tend to miss the key points and not pay full attention to it: An Inspector Calls is not a morality play.

A morality play is a type of play that existed in the Medieval era, and was all about making characters represent the religious sins in order to teach the audience a religious lesson. That's not what Priestley is doing: this isn't about faith, this isn't about God, this isn't about religion. However, he does use the sort of structure, the concept of the morality play, in order to make a non-religious, to make a social point—a moral and social point, rather than a religious point.

The characters, as well as all the other symbols that we've already talked about, the characters do symbolize different sort of sinful behaviors, but Priestley's point isn't: this is sinful and wrong by religious standards per se. His point is: this is morally wrong in British society:

• So, you know, Mr. Birling is Greed;

• Sheila is Vanity;

• Eric is Lust, and so on and so forth.

And they all represent these different—in particular, I mean, they all have elements of different things, you know: so yes, Sheila is vain, but she also behaves in a selfish way. So they can have more than one sort of sinful behavior to them. But the key point is: it's like we're meant to be learning from a range of different immoral behaviors, and all of their behaviors are slightly different; the ways they have been socially irresponsible and immoral are slightly different.

And that's important because, again, Priestley is trying to point out the range of different ways that we can harm someone. If we think back to the Inspector's dramatic monologue: "what we think and say and do." We see the way that Gerald and Eric think about women and how that affects Eva, or the way that Mrs. Birling thinks about unmarried women and how that affects her behavior; we see about the things that characters say to Eva and how that affects things; and we, of course, hear about things that the characters do to Eva and how that affects things, too. So we see how a range of different immoral actions can affect somebody.

That, I think, is the key takeaway of the morality play: it's not the sort of religious element—he's not using that; he's just using: look at the range of moral issues, and learn from them. That's the other key part he uses: it has—it's a didactic play; it has a lesson, a moral, a message that it wants its audience to take away with it. So it's definitely a crime thriller, and it also is inspired by, influenced by the morality plays of the Middle Ages as well.

The next genre I want to talk about is the well-made play, and this one again, it's like: An Inspector Calls is and isn't a well-made play. For a lot of the play, Priestley makes us think it is a well-made play.

So let me explain what a well-made play is. A well-made play was a type of play that was very popular in the 19th century, so it's a kind of style of play that the audience would be very familiar with. And I'll tell you in a second why that's important.

The basic gist of a well-made play is that they had quite intricate, complex plots that built to sort of great peaks of tension. And of course, An Inspector Calls does that: it is quite intricate with all the different, you know, pieces we get together of Eva's life, and it does build to lots of mini-climaxes, as well as, of course, ending on a cliffhanger climax, too. Well-made plays are also typically focused on events before the play began, and that is true for the entirety of An Inspector Calls: they are always talking about things that aren't happening at the moment necessarily in that dining room, but that they have done to Eva in the past.

So it seems to fit into, for the majority of the play, a well-made play. But then, when it comes to the ending, it's not a well-made play anymore! Well-made plays are supposed to resolve everything: all the different strands, all the different problems are supposed to be brought together and sorted by the play's end. Priestley ends it on a cliffhanger; he doesn't resolve things! So he keeps it a well-made play for like 95% of the play, and then in that last 5%, he breaks convention: he subverts the genre and doesn't follow one of the genre's key rules.

Now, that is really important, so let's think about why. When we think about him first of all following the rules, it's part of that creating of the realistic Britain in an almost meta way: it's like realistic Britain is not just the kind of characters you see on the stage, but it's the kind of play you think you're going to come and see. This is a play like every other play, and it's only in the ending that he's like: no, things are not like that at all.

And in terms of why he disrupts it, there's a couple of reasons:

1. One, yes, is audience reaction: it absolutely would stun our audience when it just ends like that. But why would he want to stun them? Why would he want to leave it on a cliffhanger like that? Again, see my video for the details, but the gist is that it's essential to his key message: his key message is things can't just go on as they have before; things have to change. And if you don't change, something will force you to change. In the case of the Birlings, they didn't change, and so this whole repetition of everything—an inspector coming over to interrogate them—is going to force them to.

2. I also think, though, we never actually see if they do; we never see if there are any repercussions either. And all of that, I think, is on purpose. Because part of Priestley's argument is that, yes, Britain between 1912 and 1945 has made some great progress, things have gotten better in a lot of ways—NHS (which hasn't technically been created yet, but, you know, it's on the way), we're becoming more collectivist, women have more equality, the Fabian Society is really growing, etc., etc.—but things still have a really long way to go; things are not good enough.

And so when he breaks the well-made play convention, when he disrupts that, it's his way of being like: we're not done, the story isn't over! Just like the Inspector was saying, there's still millions and millions of John Smiths and Eva Smiths out there. This isn't over. There is no neat and tidy ending to this yet. Those capitalists are still out there; the types of Mr. Birlings are still out there. Will they face repercussions for their actions? Now it's over to you, dear audience, to decide.

So I think ending in that way, disrupting that well-made play, is about almost shocking our audience into being like: it's over, the play, but it's not over, life. If you think about it, like if everything had been really nice and resolved—if the play ended with, I don't know (this wouldn't happen anyway), but, you know, the Birlings going to prison, or there's a great parade for Eva, or the working class get more rights, whatever—the audience might get to leave with that sort of warm and fuzzy feeling of: "Oh, I think things turned out all right in the end." But they don't get to have that feeling! They get to have that feeling of: do the upper-middle classes actually ever face repercussions for their actions, and what is next for the working class? And that question is essentially left unanswered because Priestley wants it unanswered, because Priestley wants the audience to answer it: we as the audience need to now go and be that change. And the disruption of the well-made play is a really important way that he gets that across.

So when you write your essay about An Inspector Calls, don't just think about that really close-up picture of the meanings of individual words and individual techniques inside of a line: get the bigger picture as well. Think about the whole-play structure—well-made play, crime thriller; think about the structural significance across the play of the different entrances and the exits. And that is how you are going to get yourself a Grade 9 when you write about An Inspector Calls.