The Entertainer Literary Elements

Realist stage play

English, 1950's working and professional class

A seaside tourist town in England, 1957. In the Rice household and onstage at Archie Rice's music-hall

This is a play and so there is no narrator except for Scene 11, in which there is a voice-over of a woman singing during a funeral procession. Stage directions and character descriptions exist but the blocking and movement onstage is mostly left up to the director.

The tone of the play and is sarcastic, frustrated, and full of anger like the main character of the play. The mood is pessimistic.

The main character Archie Rice is both protagonist and antagonist.

Archie Rice's music-hall business is failing, and cannot afford to support himself or his family, and he has turned to some very dishonest business dealings in an attempt to earn money. The decline in the business and in his career parallels the waning influence of the British government and military. One of Archie's sons, Mick, is in the military serving near the Suez Canal. He is captured and later killed.

The climax of the play is when the police arrive with a telegram informing the family of Mick's death.

The party celebrating Mick's safe return begins prematurely. Phoebe buys a cake intending to serve it to Mick when he arrives, and the family starts drinking. Jean has a sense that something is not right, and the elderly Billy, who is unaware of the cake's significance, helps himself to a large slice and eats it, provoking a violent rage from Phoebe.

"Nobody listens to anyone," says Jean. It's true: her drunken family members are all struggling to be heard, and trying so hard to be understood and nurtured that they fail to understand and nurture one another.

Billy makes reference to his service in World War I, where he survived without a scratch.

Archie makes frequent references to homosexuality in a fairly derogatory and bigoted way, however he himself benefited from the bias against homosexual men when he decided to exit military service by pretending to be attracted to men.

An old, fat woman of African descent is described by Archie as having delivered the most stirring, inspiring, emotionally perfect performance of a hymn while singing in a bar. Later, she (or a dancer filling in for her) appears during Billy's funeral procession symbolically picking up the trappings of his successful entertainment career and using them to carry on his tradition.

Although Archie despises his brother Billy, he is reliant on him financially. Although Billy wants to help Archie, he recognizes that in order to properly care for his own children and family (and to have enough to periodically and discreetly help his brother and his family) he must maintain a physically safe distance from Archie's destructive lifestyle. One of the reasons Archie despises Billy is because he maintains such a distance.

The decline of Archie's stage show, and live music-hall performance overall, parallels the decline of British prestige and influence in the global economy and political arena.

Billy personifies an older and happier time: the "Greatest Generation" who fought in the first World War and who got to really experience life and success. Compared to Billy, nobody else in the play really got a chance to excel because the circumstances in which they live limited their opportunities. Even Brother Bill, who became a financially successful barrister, becomes extremely limited by his class and social responsibilities which narrow his perspective. Only Billy is able to move effortlessly between different social classes, interacting with and understanding everybody.

Archie's performances onstage, lit by a spotlight, are monologues. The first one suggests some audience participation, but by the end of the play no obvious audience is present in the "music-hall" to respond to his various lapses in performance, even to heckle. His monologues therefore take on aspects of an extended soliloquy. As the audience of the play-within-a-play gradually disappears, it is replaced by the actual audience of the stage play. This results in a very sneaky, gradual destruction of the fourth wall that is not obvious until the spotlight suddenly turns off.