The Browning Version
Read enough criticism and one can expect to agree with the near-universal conclusion that the gift of the Browning translation which Taplow gives to his teacher is some sort of symbol of rebirth for the old teacher. The evidence does not support this interpretation, however. References are constantly being made to how the school system has been corrupted where it is not enough to merely earn your grade through study; students must insinuate themselves with their teachers on a more social level. The ending of the play (more later) also goes against any interpretation of the book having symbolic value as a life-altering epiphany. The Browning translation as a gift is a symbol of the corrupted downturn of the education system in which grades are not earned through study, but become a means of transactional value.
Agamemnon
The Greek play which at the center of the student/teacher dichotomy (and which forms the basis of the titular book/gift) is Agamemnon by Aeschylus. The play is about an unfaithful wife who murders her husband. The symbolism is not meant to be taken literally, but is tangible: Millie Crocker-Harris is an unfaithful wife how has emotionally tortured her husband and murdered their marriage.
Andrew’s Heart Medicine
Another commonly strange interpretation of symbolism is the heart medicine for her husband which Millie sends Taplow out on an errand to pick up. She only sends him to do it so she can find time to be alone with her lover. This is traditionally seen as symbolic in that Taplow returns with the medication for the teacher’s heart and Taplow’s vocal translation of the Greek in the play touches his teacher’s heart. Thus, Taplow somehow becomes the agency of his teacher’s rebirth. Except that by the play’s end, he still not getting his pension and he’s still leaving to teach as a lesser school and he’s still with his hateful wife. If anything, the heart medication is symbolic of the heartlessness of Millie who goes so far as to use the medication her husband needs to keep his heart healthy as a tool facilitating her own infidelity.
The Tear in the Carpet
In the very first opening minutes of the play, Taplow believes he is alone in the sitting room belonging to this teacher and he picks up a walking stick and pretends it is a golf club. Frank Hunter joins him to give him tips and after swinging the stick, Taplow suddenly freezes, fearing that they have caused a tear in the carpet. Frank, barely taking the time to even look closely, soothes his alarm by telling him the tear was already there. The damage becomes symbolic of the damaged marriage already barely existing in the home which is, in fact, made worse by the intrusions of both Taplow and Frank.
The Warm Dinner
The play ends on a such strangely jarring note that it can only possibly be intended symbolically. After watching the marriage of Andrew and Millie revealing itself as the most co-dependently toxic relationship this side of George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, things settle down for the curtain close with the most mundane of domestic scenes. Andrew suggests that Millie serve dinner before the food gets cold. And she starts doing exactly that. The scene is symbolically rich in its suggestion that despite cruelty and recriminations and threats of separation and potential divorce, these two are quite likely going to spend out the rest of their days married to each and, in their own idiosyncratically perverse way, happier than either ever actually be without the other.
