J. B. Priestley's Time Plays
The English author J. B. Priestley wrote a number of dramas during the 1930s and 40s, which have come to be known as his Time Plays.[1] They are so called because each constructs its plot around a particular concept of time. In the plays, various theories of time become a central theatrical device of the play, the characters' lives being affected by how they react to the unusual temporal landscape they encounter.[2]
The Time Plays comprise:
- Dangerous Corner (1932), in which exposure of a group of characters' dark secrets is wiped out when the play returns to the beginning at the fall of the curtain;
- Time and the Conways (1937), which explores J. W. Dunne's theory of simultaneous time expounded in the book An Experiment with Time;
- I Have Been Here Before, which is inspired by P. D. Ouspensky's theory of eternal recurrence from A New Model of the Universe;[3]
- Johnson Over Jordan, in which a man encounters a series of trials in the afterlife;[3]
- Music at Night, given a dreamlike setting outside of passing time (as in dreams).[3]
- The Long Mirror, in which a woman artist has a curiously intimate relationship with a musician she has never met but has shared his life for five years in the spirit finally meet at a Welsh hotel;
- An Inspector Calls (USSR 1945, UK 1946), the most famous of them, where a family undergoes a police investigation into a suicide in which they are revealed to be progressively more entangled.
Of all the theories of time employed in the plays, Priestley professed to take only one seriously: that of J. W. Dunne as expounded in his book An Experiment with Time. However, his acceptance of the theory is qualified. Dunne's theory involved an infinite regress of time dimensions and levels of the self and Priestley rejected more than the first few time dimensions, which were sufficient to explain both the passage of time and precognition.[4]
References
External links
- The J. B. Priestley Society
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- Adam in Moonshine (1927)
- Benighted (1927)
- Farthing Hall (1929 with Hugh Walpole)
- The Good Companions (1929)
- Angel Pavement (1930)
- Faraway (1932)
- I'll Tell You Everything (1932 with Gerald Bullett)
- Wonder Hero (1933)
- They Walk in the City: The Lovers in the Stone Forest (1936)
- The Doomsday Men (1938)
- Let the People Sing (1939)
- Blackout in Gretley (1942)
- Daylight on Saturday (1943)
- Three Men in New Suits (1945)
- Bright Day (1946)
- Jenny Villiers (1947)
- Festival at Farbridge (1951)
- Low Notes on a High Level (1954)
- The Magicians (1954)
- Saturn Over the Water (1961)
- The Shapes of Sleep (1962)
- Sir Michael & Sir George (1964)
- Lost Empires (1965)
- Salt Is Leaving (1966)
- It's an Old Country (1967)
- London End (1968)
- Out Of Town (1968)
- Snoggle (1971)
- Found, Lost, Found (1976)
- "The Town Major of Miracourt" (1930)
- The Other Place (1953)
- The Carfitt Crisis (1974)
- Time Plays series
- The Good Companions (1931)
- Dangerous Corner (1932)
- The Roundabout (1932)
- Eden End (1934)
- Laburnum Grove (1934)
- Cornelius (1935)
- Duet in Floodlight (1935)
- Bees on the Boat Deck (1936)
- Time and the Conways (1937)
- I Have Been Here Before (1937)
- People at Sea (1937)
- Mystery of Greenfingers (1937)
- Music at Night (1938)
- When We Are Married (1938)
- Johnson Over Jordan (1939)
- The Long Mirror (1940)
- Goodnight Children (1942)
- They Came to a City (1943)
- Desert Highway (1944)
- How Are They at Home? (1944)
- An Inspector Calls (1945)
- Ever Since Paradise (1946)
- The Long Mirror (1947)
- The Rose and Crown (1947)
- The Linden Tree (1947)
- Home Is Tomorrow (1948)
- Summer Day's Dream (1949)
- Bright Shadow (1950)
- Dragon's Mouth (1952)
- Mother's Day (1953)
- Private Rooms (1953)
- Treasure on Pelican (1953)
- The White Countess (1954)
- Mr. Kettle and Mrs. Moon (1955)
- The Glass Cage (1957)
- The Chapman of Rhymes (1918)
- Sing As We Go (1934)
- Jamaica Inn (1939)
- Britain at Bay (1940)
- Last Holiday (1950)
- Brief Diversions (1922)
- Papers from Lilliput (1922)
- Open House (1927)
- Self-selected Essays (1932)
- English Journey (1934)
- Midnight on the Desert (1937 autobiography)
- We Live In Two Worlds (1937 documentary)
- Rain Upon Godshill (1939 autobiography)
- British Women Go To War (1943)
- Margin Released (1962 autobiography)
- Man and Time (1964)
- The Edwardians (1970)
- Over The Long High Wall (1972)
- Particular Pleasures (1975)
- Instead Of The Trees (1977 autobiography)
- The Old Dark House (1932 film)
- The Good Companions (1933 film)
- An Inspector Calls (1954 film)
- Angel Pavement (1957 TV series)
- The Good Companions (1957 film)
- The Old Dark House (1963 film)
- Out of the Unknown: "Level Seven" (1966 sci-fi series)
- Angel Pavement (1967 TV series)
- An Inspector Calls (1982 film)
- Lost Empires (1986)
- An Inspector Calls (2015 film)
- Jacquetta Hawkes (third wife)
- Mary Priestley (daughter)
This article on a play from the 1930s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
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This article on a play from the 1940s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
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