The Essential Plays of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated Edition). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
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Название: The Essential Plays of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated Edition)
Автор: GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 9788027230358
isbn:
MORELL (with cold scorn). Wait a moment: I am not going to touch you: don’t be afraid. When my wife comes back she will want to know why you have gone. And when she finds that you are never going to cross our threshold again, she will want to have that explained, too. Now I don’t wish to distress her by telling her that you have behaved like a blackguard.
MARCHBANKS (Coming back with renewed vehemence). You shall — you must. If you give any explanation but the true one, you are a liar and a coward. Tell her what I said; and how you were strong and manly, and shook me as a terrier shakes a rat; and how I shrank and was terrified; and how you called me a snivelling little whelp and put me out of the house. If you don’t tell her, I will: I’ll write to her.
MORELL (taken aback.) Why do you want her to know this?
MARCHBANKS (with lyric rapture.) Because she will understand me, and know that I understand her. If you keep back one word of it from her — if you are not ready to lay the truth at her feet as I am — then you will know to the end of your days that she really belongs to me and not to you. Goodbye. (Going.)
MORELL (terribly disquieted). Stop: I will not tell her.
MARCHBANKS (turning near the door). Either the truth or a lie you MUST tell her, if I go.
MORELL (temporizing). Marchbanks: it is sometimes justifiable.
MARCHBANKS (cutting him short). I know — to lie. It will be useless. Goodbye, Mr. Clergyman.
(As he turns finally to the door, it opens and Candida enters in housekeeping attire.)
CANDIDA. Are you going, Eugene?(Looking more observantly at him.) Well, dear me, just look at you, going out into the street in that state! You ARE a poet, certainly. Look at him, James! (She takes him by the coat, and brings him forward to show him to Morell.) Look at his collar! look at his tie! look at his hair! One would think somebody had been throttling you. (The two men guard themselves against betraying their consciousness.) Here! Stand still. (She buttons his collar; ties his neckerchief in a bow; and arranges his hair.) There! Now you look so nice that I think you’d better stay to lunch after all, though I told you you mustn’t. It will be ready in half an hour. (She puts a final touch to the bow. He kisses her hand.) Don’t be silly.
MARCHBANKS. I want to stay, of course — unless the reverend gentleman, your husband, has anything to advance to the contrary.
CANDIDA. Shall he stay, James, if he promises to be a good boy and to help me to lay the table? (Marchbanks turns his head and looks steadfastly at Morell over his shoulder, challenging his answer.)
MORELL (shortly). Oh, yes, certainly: he had better. (He goes to the table and pretends to busy himself with his papers there.)
MARCHBANKS (offering his arm to Candida). Come and lay the table.(She takes it and they go to the door together. As they go out he adds) I am the happiest of men.
MORELL. So was I — an hour ago.
ACT II
The same day. The same room. Late in the afternoon. The spare chair for visitors has been replaced at the table, which is, if possible, more untidy than before. Marchbanks, alone and idle, is trying to find out how the typewriter works. Hearing someone at the door, he steals guiltily away to the window and pretends to be absorbed in the view. Miss Garnett, carrying the notebook in which she takes down Morell’s letters in shorthand from his dictation, sits down at the typewriter and sets to work transcribing them, much too busy to notice Eugene. Unfortunately the first key she strikes sticks.
PROSERPINE. Bother! You’ve been meddling with my typewriter, Mr. Marchbanks; and there’s not the least use in your trying to look as if you hadn’t.
MARCHBANKS (timidly). I’m very sorry, Miss Garnett. I only tried to make it write.
PROSERPINE. Well, you’ve made this key stick.
MARCHBANKS (earnestly). I assure you I didn’t touch the keys. I didn’t, indeed. I only turned a little wheel. (He points irresolutely at the tension wheel.)
PROSERPINE. Oh, now I understand. (She sets the machine to rights, talking volubly all the time.) I suppose you thought it was a sort of barrel-organ. Nothing to do but turn the handle, and it would write a beautiful love letter for you straight off, eh?
MARCHBANKS (seriously). I suppose a machine could be made to write love-letters. They’re all the same, aren’t they!
PROSERPINE (somewhat indignantly: any such discussion, except by way of pleasantry, being outside her code of manners). How do I know? Why do you ask me?
MARCHBANKS. I beg your pardon. I thought clever people — people who can do business and write letters, and that sort of thing — always had love affairs.
PROSERPINE (rising, outraged). Mr. Marchbanks! (She looks severely at him, and marches with much dignity to the bookcase.)
MARCHBANKS (approaching her humbly). I hope I haven’t offended you. Perhaps I shouldn’t have alluded to your love affairs.
PROSERPINE (plucking a blue book from the shelf and turning sharply on him). I haven’t any love affairs. How dare you say such a thing?
MARCHBANKS (simply). Really! Oh, then you are shy, like me. Isn’t that so?
PROSERPINE. Certainly I am not shy. What do you mean?
MARCHBANKS (secretly). You must be: that is the reason there are so few love affairs in the world. We all go about longing for love: it is the first need of our natures, the loudest cry Of our hearts; but we dare not utter our longing: we are too shy. (Very earnestly.) Oh, Miss Garnett, what would you not give to be without fear, without shame —
PROSERPINE (scandalized), Well, upon my word!
MARCHBANKS (with petulant impatience). Ah, don’t say those stupid things to me: they don’t deceive me: what use are they? Why are you afraid to be your real self with me? I am just like you.
PROSERPINE. Like me! Pray, are you flattering me or flattering yourself? I don’t feel quite sure which. (She turns to go back to the typewriter.)
MARCHBANKS (stopping her mysteriously). Hush! I go about in search of love; and I find it in unmeasured stores in the bosoms of others. But when I try to ask for it, this horrible shyness strangles me; and I stand dumb, or worse than dumb, saying meaningless things — foolish lies. And I see the affection I am longing for given to dogs and cats and pet birds, because they come and ask for it. (Almost whispering.) It must be asked for: it is like a ghost: it cannot speak unless it is first spoken to. (At his normal pitch, but with deep melancholy.) All the love in the world is longing to speak; only it dare not, because it is shy, shy, shy. That is the world’s tragedy. (With a deep sigh he sits in the spare chair and buries his face in his hands.)
PROSERPINE (amazed, but keeping her wits about her — her point of honor in encounters with strange young men). Wicked people get over that shyness occasionally, don’t they?
MARCHBANKS (scrambling up almost fiercely). Wicked people means people who have no love: therefore they have СКАЧАТЬ