Secrets and mystery: what the play hides, and when it lets it out

In Act Two, Sybil Birling tells the Inspector why the pregnant girl would not take any more money from the young man. He'd stolen it. Sybil says it to show how far-fetched the girl's story was. She has no idea yet that the young man is her own son, Eric. Nobody catches Eric out. His own mother gives his secret away while she is defending herself. Why would Priestley let a secret come out like that?

The events themselves, in the order the audience sees them, are in An Inspector Calls: An overview. This one is about what stays hidden, and for how long.

Call a secret anything a character knows and keeps from the others. The order of disclosure is the order in which the play lets those secrets out. And that order is not the order things happened. Priestley chooses it, and this video is about why he chooses it the way he does. The first secret is planted in the opening minutes and looks like nothing. At dinner, Eric laughs, and when he is asked why, he answers. I don't know - really. Suddenly I felt I just had to laugh. The audience learns what Eric has been carrying only piece by piece, across Acts Two and Three: the drinking, the girl, the stolen money. The laugh is a secret showing at the edges. Birling shares a secret of his own in Act One, with Gerald alone. He expects a knighthood, so long as the family stays out of the police court and out of any scandal. What does knowing Birling's hope do for the audience in every scene after it? They can see what he stands to lose. Every time he panics about a scandal, they already know the reason. The Inspector knows that secrets have an order too. He tells the family his rule himself. One person and one line of inquiry at a time. Otherwise, there's a muddle. His method is controlled disclosure. He holds back what he knows, so that each person gives up their own secret in turn.

Now, watch who lets each secret out. Several of them are never dragged out by the Inspector at all. They slip out of somebody's mouth, or show on somebody's face. Gerald gives himself away at the end of Act One. When the Inspector says the name Daisy Renton, Gerald's reaction shows he knew her, and Sheila sees it. In Act Two, while Sybil insists her son is only a boy, the Inspector remarks that some young men drink far too much. Who answers him by giving Eric's drinking away: Sybil, Gerald, or Sheila? Sheila. She tells them all that Eric is one of those young men, and has been for two years. Then Sybil gives away the theft, defending her committee, before anyone in the room knows the father is Eric. Look at the pattern. The secrets come out because people are protecting themselves, and in protecting themselves they expose each other. The order is built to make that happen. In Eva's life, Eric's link came before Sybil's refusal. The play swaps that one pair, so Sybil condemns the young man before she learns he is her son. Listed flat, these are five people with things to hide. Told as a structure, they are one machine, where each secret comes out because someone else was protecting themselves. Listing the secrets in turn tells the story again. But it never says what Priestley is doing with them. One examiner's report, on a question about secrets, says: There was a tendency towards narrative retelling, with some essays listing each character's secret in turn without linking them to Priestley's message or the dramatic structure of the play. The better habit is to name, for every secret, who lets it out, and why they were talking just then.

Birling's last secret is not an act. It is a motive, and he lets it slip once the evening looks like a hoax. I'd a special reason for not wanting any public scandal just now. The audience already knows the reason: the knighthood he confided to Gerald in Act One. All evening, his fear was for his own name. Then the mystery turns on the man who started it. Gerald is the one who says it. That man wasn't a police officer. The Inspector's own secret was standing in the room all along. He even spelled his name for them. Goole. G. double O-L-E. And the play ends with it unopened. The telephone rings, and Birling tells the family that a police inspector is on his way here - to ask some - questions. What the Inspector is belongs to another video, The Inspector, part 2: Goole, ghoul, or something else. An essay on mystery does not have to decide it, because leaving him unexplained is the play's own last move.

Priestley uses secrecy as structure, not as plot. Secrets surface because people defend themselves, and the one secret nobody gives away is the Inspector's own.

The last question on this play is about that structure. How does Priestley use what the characters hide, and the order it comes out in, to build the play? Your plan has to put the secrets into an order of its own, before a word of the essay. Give it a go before the reveal: which secret goes first in your plan, and which last? One way to go wrong is the list: each character's secret in turn, the tendency that report named. The other is to settle what the Inspector was, to tidy the essay up. The play leaves him open - so a tidy answer argues against the play. Here's a plan that follows the order of release, not the order of events. Begin with what is planted and held back: Eric's laugh, and the Inspector's rule of one line of inquiry at a time. Then the secrets people let slip while protecting themselves, with Sybil giving away the theft as the sharpest case. Then the swap: Sybil's refusal shown before Eric's link, so her own demand for a confession traps her son. End on the secret that never opens, the Inspector himself, and a last line that starts the questions all over again. One chain, five links: every link hands her on to the next. But the links do not surface in the order they happened.

Three of the play's hiding places to finish, beginning with the man who unmasked the Inspector. Who says That man wasn't a police officer: Birling, or Gerald? Gerald. Birling seizes on it with relief, but the doubt belongs to the young man who sided with him. Here's the Inspector's rule, with a gap in it. One person and one line of... What word fills the gap in the Inspector's rule? Inquiry. His method keeps the secrets in order, and lets them out one at a time. A different order now, one Priestley never wrote. Suppose Eric's link came on stage before Sybil's refusal. What would Sybil's demand for a public confession lose? Its trap. She would already know the young man was her son, so the audience would lose the dread of watching her condemn him. He'd stolen it: three words from Sybil, and now you can say why Priestley let her son's secret out through his mother's own mouth.

When the order of release feels like second nature, mark it with a thumbs-up. Tangled still? Come back to it when you revise the play's ending, because every secret is waiting there.

That completes An Inspector Calls. Next comes a new chapter and a new text: A Christmas Carol.

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