The Archer-Shee Case: The Root Of Terence Rattigan's 'The Winslow Boy'

Contemporary Review, April, 2001 by John Rossi

Both of Rattigan's grandfathers had been banisters which might explain his fascination with a great legal case. He also was familiar with the social milieu of late Victorian and Edwardian England where every individual knew his or her precise place in the order of things. But Rattigan was not interested in the Archer-Shee case as an opportunity to paint a portrait of a lost age or as a battleground of legal ideas. What appealed to him in this case was the dramatic possibility of how a seemingly insignificant event could change people's lives forever. The Winslow Boy in his retelling became a study in the power of moral values.

Rattigan took the details of the case and transformed them into high drama. He wanted to avoid merely transcribing the historical details. The changes that Rattigan made were substantial and as revealing of the mindset of the 1940s as of the Edwardian era. He moved the scene of the play to London because he felt comfortable with the details of the Edwardian social milieu of Wimbledon, a suburb of wealthy middle class bankers, retired military and professional men. Rattigan changed the time to 1912, on the eve of World War I, to create more tension by having the events of the play take place against the approach of the war that would destroy the social world of Edwardian England. He also made the Winslow family a model of middle class respectability.

In real life young George Archer-Shee's half-brother, Martin, was 35 years old and elected a Conservative Member of Parliament in 1910. Rattigan saw at once that having an influential older brother would detract from the young boy's isolation. It would also undermine the uniqueness of the father's struggle against the government by providing him with a powerful ally. So the older brother became a rather feckless Oxford undergraduate just about to begin his own career.

Rattigan also dropped the Archer-Shee family's Catholicism from the play, apparently because he believed that this would confuse the dramatic possibilities of the case. But in fact the appearance of religious bigotry could have added another dimension to the dramatic tension of the play. Rattigan's decision to eliminate this element reflects the continuing anti-Catholic mentality of the theatre-going middle class English public of the 1940s. Catholicism still possessed a vaguely distasteful quality for many people.

Rattigan focused his story on the father rather than the accused son. In fact, the play really is a testament to the father's stubborn conviction of his son's innocence and the lengths he would go to assure that end. The boy, admirable in his directness and honesty when he appears, fades from the play entirely at times as the father holds centre stage. The play could easily have been called the 'Winslow Father'. One has the feeling that Rattigan is creating a truly admirable father to replace the slightly sordid one that he had in life.

The relationship between the father and his daughter, called Catherine, is stronger and deeper than that with his young son. The daughter, who in reality was a Tory like her father, was transformed into something of a radical and suffragette in the play. Engaged to an Army officer who is a neighbour, she has her life destroyed by the father's persistence with insuring his son's innocence. And yet she draws closer to the father, ultimately losing her straitlaced suitor as she is drawn deeper into the story as it unfolds. She and her father become allies equally determined to gain vindication for the young boy.