Andrew Crocker-Harris
You lug nineteen years as a teacher in the south of England and then decide to step down for health reasons and take a job at an undistinguished private school and what do you get? For starters, not a pension that only comes with twenty solid years. Money is the least of “The Crock’s” problems, however: his students don’t like him, he’s got a bad heart and he’s married to a woman repugnant in every possible way. In fact, there’s only thing going right for Andrew: most of his wife’s time is occupied with the affair she’s having rather than unloading her selfish wrath upon him.
Millie Crocker-Harris
What is there to say about a woman who tires to steal kisses from her lover when her husband might enter the room unannounced at any time? What can you say about a woman who doesn’t worry about being caught kissing another man because she’s already confessed to the affair just for the pure enjoyment of watching the hurt it causes? The less said about Mrs. Crocker-Harris, the better.
Frank Hunter
Frank is a teacher at the same school. He is younger than Andrew, more ruggedly masculine than Andrew, more at ease with students than Andrew and sleeping with Millie way more often than Andrew. Before this latter information is known, once it becomes known and once the circumstances of that information become the engine for a majestic left turn in the plot, Frank at all times manages to seem like a decent guy. Even once it is learned he’s betraying his colleague, this remains true; by the end of the play, it becomes clear that his sense of decency was only temporarily corrupted for reasons that have become almost inexplicable.
John Taplow
The first character to be introduced is Andrew’s sixteen-year-old student, John Taplow. He has come to the Crocker-Harris home to speak with the instructor about his end-of-term situation. The topic at hand has to do with translating Agamemnon from the original Greek. That particular ancient text will subsequently appear a little later in the play the form of the book containing Robert Browning’s version of the play by Aeschylus. The book is a gift from Taplow to Andrew and it ignites the tensions simmering beneath into an emotional conflagration.
Dr. Frobisher
Frobisher is the school’s headmaster who shows up bringing nothing but humiliation for Andrew. He informs him first about his not receiving his pension and then adds insult to injury by asking him to give up his spotlight speaking spot at the prize ceremony the next day. Then he just plains kicks Andrew in the groin by dropping the bomb without warning: the man and wife who will be moving in when he moves out are doing to drop by any minute.
The Gilberts
Barely before he’s heard the news that the Gilberts are stopping by to check out “their new home” the Gilberts suddenly drop by. Millie takes the wife on a tour of the home while Peter Gibert inadvertently works Andrew into a heightened state of emotion by confusing the Nazi nickname students us to refer to his disciplinary methods with somehow not being an insult.
