"I Have Been Here Before" is about Ouspensky's theory of circular time, and the interest is centred too much in the theory, and too little on the characters and situation. Under these circumstances the dramatist falls back into the role of craftsman. However, Priestley is a highly skilled dramatic craftsman—probably more so than anyone else writing in English, today—and as such he knows how to dress up unpromising material in all the dodges of clever stagecraft which make a successful play. He contrives to arrange his characters in all the possible combinations of twos and threes to show the idea of the play from many different angles, and he knows that it is easier to put across an unconventional idea if you use conventional characters. He uses the same device as Emily Bronte did to prevent a mystical plot becoming too unreal to the audience—he makes two of the characters solid, earthy types, who form a bridge between the unreal world of the plot and the real world or the audience. There is no nonsense about Sally and Sam and they are unchanged and almost unaffected by the action of the play.