In the opening stage directions, what does the reader learn about each of the characters present in Act I of An Inspector Calls by J. B....

In the opening stage directions, the reader obtains information about the social status of the various characters present, as well as a little about their attitudes.

The play opens with the four members of the Birling family and Gerald Croft seated at a substantial table where the parlor maid moves the dinner dishes to the sideboard. The family and their guest are in evening dress--the men in tails, and the women in gowns. The port...

In the opening stage directions, the reader obtains information about the social status of the various characters present, as well as a little about their attitudes.

The play opens with the four members of the Birling family and Gerald Croft seated at a substantial table where the parlor maid moves the dinner dishes to the sideboard. The family and their guest are in evening dress--the men in tails, and the women in gowns. The port is poured and Mr. Birling is quite pleased with himself and the present situation of Gerald Croft's engagement to his daughter, as Croft is a "well-bred man" of a higher social class than Mr. Birling, who apparently has risen in financial class because of his industry. Birling is described as having "fairly easy manners" and is "provincial in speech," as opposed to his more sophisticated and urbane wife, "a cold woman" who is described as her husband's social superior.

From the stage directions, also, the reader learns that the Birlings' children, Shiela and Eric, have been protected from the vicissitudes of life. Eric is described as shy and "ill at ease" in the company of the well-bred Croft. His sister Sheila has obviously been sheltered from many realities, as she is "pleased with life" and excited about little things as a child would be. 

In the opening scene focusing on a contented family (only with the discomfort of Eric is there any hint of something else) that seems typical of the upper social and economic classes of Victorian/Ewardian England, Beasley sets a tone that leads to the irony of the situation later presented to them by Inspector Goole.