Class Enemy Character Analysis

Class Enemy is a play written by Nigel Williams, and it was published in 1978. Its first performance was on 9th March 1978 at the Theatre Upstairs, and it was directed by Bill Alexander. The first time that it was performed at the Royal Court Theatre was on 4th April 1978. Nigel Williams, born in 1948, is a novelist, playwright, broadcaster and also a screenwriter. He worked at the BBC, being director and producer of Arts Department. He also was an editor. He started writing in the 1970s as a hobby, and he succeed when his first novel, My Life Closed Twice (1978), was published. He also wrote travel memoirs and The Wimbledon Trilogy. Most of his books were adapted for television. His first play was Class Enemy. He had success in writing screenplays

The setting of both acts is a messed and destroyed classroom with scarce school material and it is about half past two in the afternoon (Page 1). In the classroom were Racks, Sky-Light, Nipper, Sweetheart and Iron. The play starts with them talking about her last teacher because they have get rid of her. They start putting desks in front of the door to prevent teachers from entering the classroom. Snatch calls from outside and appears onstage after they remove the desks that they put in front of the door. He comes back from Brixton High School. They start exploring some places of the school that were unexplored. After that, Iron has an idea: he says that, so that time passes faster, each one has to give a lesson to everyone. Nipper starts talking about his drunken father, but Iron does not want personal issues to be told in a lesson. After that, Sweetheart talks about sex a little bit, but Iron dislikes his lesson for starting it with jokes and for being short and based on facts. Rack talks about winder boxes and gardening, but it ends up with Iron arguing against him because he does not find the topic useful. After that, Rack apologizes for talking about an irrelevant topic. A master appears and takes Snatch with him. After leaving them, he tells the students that he does not know if there is any teacher that is prepared to give them class that day. After the master is gone, they start talking about if they had forgot

He tells the students basically that they are hopelessly stupid and pathetic.

An important characteristic of the language of this play is the use of abbreviations and apostrophe, the omission of the letter ‘h’, and the use of vulgar words that are not commonly used in theatre such as ‘cunt’ (page 16), ‘wank’ (page 11), ‘cock’ (page 16) and ‘bollocks’ (page 41). All of these resources are made to create a vulgar language spoken by the students. The aim of this play is to reflect students in a marginal situation, also reflecting bad education and disinterest by the teachers and the education system.

The stage directions are not so descriptive. The setting is described in two lines and the characters are little described. They are limited to describe the actions of the characters. There are sound effects such as the bell that sounds at the end of the play and lightning effects such as the fade out that occurs at the end of each