The Browning Version By Terence Rattigan The play is about the t he last few days in the career o f Andrew Crocker-Harris, Crocker-Harris, an aging ag ingclassics classics teacher at a British public British public school. school. The man's academic life is fading away following illness and he feels that he has beco me obsolete. The headmaster informs him that the schoo l will not give him his pension because of his early ret irement, though he was depending o n it, and wishes him to relinquish his place in the end-of-term end-o f-term speech-giving to a popular sports master. When Taplow, a pupil p upil who needs Crocker-Harris to pass him so he can go up to the next year, comes to him for help with his Greek , Crocker-Harris begins to show his true feelings through his love for literature. Mr. Gilbert, Crocker-Harris's successor at his teaching post, arrives to view the Crocker-Harrises' home. He seeks advice on the lower fifth, the year Crocker-Harris teaches, and how to control them. Crocker-Harris begins to relate to Gilbert his own sad exper iences after Gilbert tells Crocker-Harris that the headmaster had referred to Crocker-Harris as the 'Himmler of the lower fifth'. Crocker-Harris, who did not realize he was feared by t he boys, is very disturbed by this title. Crocker-Harris's wife, wife, Millie, is being unfaithful un faithful to him with a younger master named Frank Hunter, something that Crocker-Harris has been aware o f, but has been ignoring. After Taplow moves him by giving him an inscribed version of the Browning translation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon, he breaks down cr ying. Millie, his wife, shows her callousness at Crocker-Harris's emotional state, and Hunter breaks off o ff the affair with her, instead turning his sympathies to Crocker-Harris. Crocker-Harris informs informs him that he knew of Millie's affair with Hunter, as well as her previous ones, but despite this he does not wish to divorce her. As the play ends, Hunter makes plans with a reluctant Crocker-Harris to meet him at his new place of work, and an uplifted Crocker-Harris telephones the headmaster saying that he w ill make his speech after sports master, as is his right. The "Browning Version" of the title t itle is the reference within the story of Robert Browning's translation of the Greek tragedy Agamemnon. In the tragedy, Agamemnon is murdered by his wife, aided by her lover. Although the name of the school scho ol is not given in the p lay, it is clearlyHarrow clearly Harrow School (which Terence Rattigan attended), something evident from the idiosyncrasies of the t imetable that Crocker-Harris is in charge of writing.
