ACT 1

• ACT 1: (stage directions) The dining room is of a fairly large suburban house, belonging to a prosperous manufacturer
• ACT 1: (stage directions) The general effect is a substantial and heavily comfortable but not cosy and homelike
• ACT 1: (stage directions) The lighting should be pink and intimate until the INSPECTOR arrives and then it should be brighter and harder
• ACT 1: (stage directions) Eric downstage and Sheila and Gerald seated upstage.
• ACT 1: (stage directions) EDNA, the parlourmaid, is just clearing the table, which has no cloth, of the dessert plates and champagne glasses,etc, and then replacing them with decanter of port, cigar box and cigarettes
• ACT 1: (stage directions) Arthur Birling is a heavy-looking, rather portentous man in this middle fifties with fairly easy manners but rather provincial in this speech
• ACT 1: (stage directions) His wife is about fifty, a rather cold woman and her husband's social superior
• ACT 1: (stage directions) Sheila is a pretty girl in her early twenties, very pleased with life and rather excited
• ACT 1: (stage directions) Gerald croft is a attractive chap about thirty, rather too manly to be a dandy but very much the well-bred young man-about-town
• ACT 1: (stage directions) Eric is in his early twenties, not quite at ease, half shy, half assertive
• ACT 1: (Arthur Birling) I’m not a purple-faced old man
• ACT 1: (Sheila) (gaily, possessively) I should jolly well think not, Gerald, I'd hate you to know all about port – like one of these purple-faced old men.
• ACT 1: (Sheila) : (half serious, half playful) Yes – except for all last summer, when you never came near me, and I wondered what had happened to you.
• ACT 1: (Sybil Birling) Now, Sheila, don't tease him. When you're married you'll realize that men with important work to do sometimes have to spend nearly all their time and energy on their business. You'll have to get used to that, just as I had.
• ACT 1: (Arthur Birling) It's one of the happiest nights of my life. And one day, I hope, Eric, when you've a daughter of your own, you'll understand why. Gerald, I’m going to tell you frankly, without any pretences, that your engagement to Sheila means a tremendous lot to me.
• ACT 1: (Arthur Birling) – for lower costs and higher prices.
• ACT 1: (Sheila) Oh – Gerald – you’ve got it – is it the one you wanted me to have?
• ACT 1: (Sheila) I think it's perfect. Now I really feel engaged.
• ACT 1: (Sybil Birling) So you ought, darling. It's a lovely ring. Be careful with it.
• ACT 1: (Arthur Birling) I speak as a hard-headed business man, who has to take risks and know what he's about – I say, you can ignore all this silly pessimistic talk.
• ACT 1: (Arthur Birling) When you marry, you'll be marrying at a very good time. Yes, a very good time – and soon it'll be an even better time. Last month, just because the miners came out on strike, there's a lot of wild talk about possible labour trouble in the near future. Don't worry. We've passed the worst of it...And we're in for a time of steadily increasing prosperity.
• ACT 1: (Arthur Birling) you'll hear some people say that war's inevitable. And to that I say – fiddlesticks! The germans don't want war....Everything to lose and nothing to gain by war.
• ACT 1: (ARthur Birling) And I’m taking as a hard headed, practical man of business. And I say there isn't a chance of war. The world's developing so fast that it'll make war impossible
• ACT 1: (Arthur Birling) unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable
• ACT 1: (Arthur Birling) – and I tell you, by that time you'll be living in a world that'll have forgotten all these capital versus labour agitations and all these silly little war scares. There'll be peace and prosperity and rapid progress everywhere – except of course in russia, which will always be behindhand naturally.
• ACT 1: (Arthur Birling) But what I wanted to say is – there's a fair chance that I might find my way into the next honours list. Just a knighthood, of course.
• ACT 1: (Arthur |Birling) a man has to make his own way – has to look after himself – and his family too, of course, when he has one – and so long as he does that he won't come to much harm.
• ACT 1: (Arthur Birling) as if we were all mixed up together like bees in a hive – community and all that nonsense
• ACT 1: (Arthur Birling) Give us some more light.
• ACT 1: (stage directions) The inspector need not be a big man but he creates at once an impression of massiveness, solidity and purposefulness.
• ACT 1: (stage directions) He speaks carefully, weightily, and has a disconcerting habit of looking hard at the person he addresses before actually speaking
• ACT 1: (Arthur Birling) : I thought you must be. I was an alderman for years – and lord mayor two years ago – and I’m still on the bench – so I know the brumley police offices pretty well – and I thought I’d never seen you before.
• ACT 1: (Inspector) Yes, she was in great agony. They did everything they could for her at the infirmary, but she died. Suicide, of course
• ACT 1: (Inspector) (gravely) Then I'd prefer you to stay
• ACT 1: (Arthur Birling) It's perfectly straightforward case, and as it happened more than eighteen months ago – nearly two years ago – obviously it has nothing whatever to do with the wretched girl's suicide.
• ACT 1: (Inspector) Because what happened to her then may have determined what happened to her afterwards, and what happened to her afterwards may have driven her to suicide. A chain of events
• ACT 1: (Arthur Birling) They were averaging about twenty-two and six, which was neither more nor less than is paid generally in our industry. They wanted the rates raised so that they could average about twenty-five shillings a week. I refused, of course.
• ACT 1: ( Arthur Birling) I don't like that tone.
• ACT 1: (Arthur Birling) Well it's my duty to keep labour costs down. And if I’d agreed to this demand for a new rate we'd have added about twelve per cent to our labour costs. Does that satisfy you? So I refused. Said I couldn't consider it. We were paying the usual rates and if they didn't like those rates, they could go and work somewhere else. It's a free country, I told them
• ACT 1: (Eric) He could. He could have kept her on instead of throwing her out. I call it tough luck.