The Browning Version: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Browning Version" is a poignant exploration of personal and professional failure, primarily through the character of Andrew Crocker-Harris, a schoolmaster on the verge of retirement from a prestigious English public school. Known derisively as "The Crock," Andrew grapples with the end of his career and the disintegration of his marriage to Millie, who is embroiled in an affair with a younger colleague, Frank Hunter. As Andrew confronts his emotional repression and acknowledges his failures, he experiences a transformative release, aided by interactions with his students and colleagues. Millie's contempt for Andrew is starkly revealed during a climactic moment that underscores the couple’s bitterness. John Taplow, a sympathetic student, and Frank Hunter, who struggles with his own moral dilemmas, both serve as catalysts for Andrew's self-examination. The dynamics between these characters illustrate the themes of regret, the search for dignity, and the struggle for meaningful connections. The play ultimately delves into the complexities of human relationships and the quest for self-respect amidst life's disappointments.
The Browning Version: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Terence Rattigan
First published: 1949
Genre: Play
Locale: A public school in southern England
Plot: Social realism
Time: The 1940's
Andrew Crocker-Harris, a schoolmaster in an English public school. He is a failure both in his teaching of the classics and in his marriage. “The Crock,” as he is dubbed by his pupils, is retiring for health reasons, one year short of qualifying for a pension. He assumes that because there is precedent, he will be granted a pension. With a reputation for giving students grades that are neither more nor less than they deserve, he seems an anachronism in a time when younger masters curry favor with students. Emotionally repressed, he gives no outward sign of his knowledge of his wife's infidelities, the latest involving Frank Hunter, a popular and younger master. On this, his penultimate day at the private school, he experiences for the first time in many years an emotional release that he describes as the twitchings of a corpse. His pupil, Taplow; his colleague, Hunter; and his replacement, Gilbert serve as catalysts for this release. Confronting his personal and professional failure openly, he breaks down his traditional English “stiff upper lip” and makes hard choices: to leave Millie, to take a position at a crammers' school, and to follow rather than precede a popular master in speaking at term-end exercises. In making these choices, he begins to rejoin the human community and gain a self-respect that enables him to face his future with a new dignity.
Millie Crocker-Harris, the unfaithful wife of Andrew. Bitter about his professional failure and their marital failure, she has been involved in a desultory affair with Frank Hunter. She expresses her contempt for her husband in a grippingly climactic moment when, in the presence of Hunter, she taunts Andrew with the fact that she had witnessed Taplow mimicking Andrew. She reacts even more cruelly to Andrew's emotional display when he receives a gift from Taplow—a secondhand copy of Robert Browning's version of Agamemnon. She describes the gift as a few bobs' worth of appeasement for a grade.
John Taplow, a plain boy of about sixteen who wears glasses. Entering the Crocker-Harris flat for a final Greek tutorial, he is soon joined by Hunter, who has arrived for his final farewell to Andrew. The two have an easy, informal exchange, during which Taplow mimics “the Crock.” Despite Andrew's reputation for teaching Agamemnon as an exercise in translation, rather than as an exciting story about a woman who murders her husband, Taplow confesses to a sympathy for Andrew. His sympathy is expressed in his inscription in his gift, a quotation from a speech by Agamemnon to Clytemnestra: “God from afar looks graciously upon a gentle master.”
Frank Hunter, a ruggedly built younger man with the confident bearing of a popular schoolmaster. Intending for some time to bring his relationship with Millie to an end, he now does so out of anger over Millie's devastating cruelty to Andrew. In an offer of friendship that he convinces the reluctant schoolmaster to accept, Hunter promises to visit Andrew when Andrew is settled in his new position.
Dr. Frobisher, a stereotypical headmaster who conveys to Andrew the rejection of the latter's application for a pension and who only makes matters worse when he attempts to assuage the impact of his disappointing news by suggesting that Andrew precede rather than follow the more popular master as speaker at the end-of-term ceremonies. The latter would be embarrassingly anticlimactic, but Andrew refuses to speak in the earlier position.
Peter Gilbert, the young replacement for Andrew. During his visit to look over the Crocker-Harrises' flat, into which he and his wife will move, he inadvertently lets slip the head-master's description of Andrew as the Heinrich Himmler of the lower fifth. Even though he apologizes for the unintentional tactlessness of his comment, Gilbert, like Taplow and Hunter, serves as a catalyst for Andrew's confrontation with his failure to communicate with the young boys. The two men reach an understanding and achieve a bond of which Andrew was in need.
Mrs. Gilbert, the young wife of Peter. In a marriage only two months old, she seems superficial and immersed in petty concerns, so that Peter reacts harshly to her inaccurate account of what he describes as their sordid encounter, their first meeting. Their marriage seems destined for a fate not unlike that of the Crocker-Harrises.