Hirst
Hirst is a sixty-something man in whose spacious but sparse home the action of the play takes place. He is a successful writer and heavy drinker, becoming one of those morose alcoholics rather than the life-of-the-party type. He enjoys fine clothing and expensive alcohol, though one gets the impression that cheap alcohol would do in a pinch.
He has already been drinking heavily by the time the play begins and continues throughout until he literally makes himself exist from Act One crawling on his hands and knees. The alcoholic haze over the narrative is significant because much of what is known about Hirst (and the others) is mired in ambiguity and contradiction. He is clearly successful and financially secure, but also emotionally discontent. He treats two men who also live in the house as servants only to suddenly become submissive and servile.
Hirst also speaks of a wife who may or may not have existed yet seems to go on the prowl for homosexual hookups. On this particular warm summer night in Northwest London, he has brought a guest home whom he just recently met on Hampstead Heath. Or, then again, maybe they haven’t just met as he seems to think the man had an affair with his wife if she actually existed.
Spooner
Spooner is also in his sixties and is the man Hirst met on the Heath and invited back to his place. He claims to be a poet and certainly speaks like a poet but has clearly not enjoyed the commercial success of Hirst. Despite being shabbily dressed in comparison to the stylish Hirst, however, he is curiously boastful. Of course, this could simply be the result that due to Hirst’s intoxication, Spooner dominates the conversation at large between them. Like his host, Spooner has also been drinking heavily, but unlike Hirst who grows softer and quieter, Spooner is loquacious and growing more energetic.
Until Hirst crawls out of the room and two younger and slightly menacing men replace him as host. Spooner is clearly targeted as an interloper and even a dangerous threat by the men. His footing as a guest in the house grows increasingly unstable because though he is confident of his abilities to manipulate Hirst with his charm and intellect, the same tools fail miserably with the strangers. He is also unsure because of the uncertainty of what role these men play in Hirst’s life.
Spooner is there to insinuate himself into the good graces of his host. The two men quickly realize this and work together in a good-bad cop/bad-good cop sort of way to psychologically intimidate. Spooner the confident but unsuccessful poet has been reduced to busboy duties just to make a living and is thus not exactly overcome with awe at the implied prospect of a potential beating by servants his host can send into the streets at a moment’s notice.
Foster & Briggs
Unlike Hirst and Spooner who are clearly situated as two distinct individuals despite sharing certain aspects, the two men who seem to work for Hirst are more like a single entity sharing two heads that are constantly bickering. Foster is younger than Spooner and Hirst, dressed casually, and somewhat effeminate. He claims to have been hired as Hirst’s secretary. He claims to have wild adventures in the Far East. He also makes claims about missing the girls there, though the subtext of his discourse definitely raises suspicions about whether the girls are actually female.
Briggs follows Foster into the scene created when Hirst drags himself out of the room, leaving the bewildered Spooner to be confronted by them. While they share a dress code, Briggs is different from Foster in every other way. He is slightly older, rougher, and more explicitly threatening, projecting greater masculinity than his companion while also intimating the possibility of a homosexual relationship existing between them. It is Briggs who recognizes Spooner from his menial job cleaning tables at a local pub.
Upon surprising Spooner, Foster identifies himself and his partner as essential members of the household engaged to protect the brilliant artist of the house against the malevolent external forces seeking to corrupt him. Hirst soon joins Foster in the task of ruthlessly interrogating Spooner. Ultimately, however, the ambiguous dynamics of the exact relationship existing between Hirst, Foster, and Briggs will prove to be far different than it initially appears.
