This play seems the most hopeful of the three time plays I’ve so far read, because Dr. Ormund to commit suicide, and the boarding school to collapse. Farrant had run off together, causing Mr. Görtler attempts to defuse the situation by explaining a dream he had, in which he met Janet at a later time in her life, and learned that she and Mr. The major conflict of the play, which ends up affecting everyone because of how entangled their lives are, is an affair between Janet Ormund and Mr. Görtler, an exiled German scientist who seems to know exactly what everyone is going to do before they do it. Ormund being one of the governors and funders of Mr. Farrant, a teacher at the boarding school which Sally’s son attends. Three interconnected groups meet in the Black Bull Inn: Sam and Sally, father and daughter and the managers of the inn. The story unfolds over the weekend before Whitsuntide, a week-long holiday celebrated after Pentecost in parts of England. The fact that it’s a work of theatre is in itself a formalistic technique, which I’ll discuss in a moment, but otherwise Priestley’s pretty straightforward, and presents the theory in a science fictional style.
The acts occur in chronological order, and it all takes place in the same timeline.
Unlike Time and the Conways or Dangerous Corner, Priestley doesn’t develop this idea through any formalistic techniques. Ouspensky’s theory of eternal recurrence, that everyone lives their life over and over again, and déjà vu and precognitive dreams are the result of remembering past lives. Prietsley’s time plays, written the same year as Time and the Conways.
I Have Been Here Before is the third of J.B.
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