Название: The Essential Plays of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated Edition)
Автор: GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 9788027230358
isbn:
CHARTERIS. Yes: this is the doom of the philanderer. I shall have to go on philandering now all my life. No domesticity, no fireside, no little ones, nothing at all in Cuthbertson’s line! Nobody will marry me — unless you, Sylvia — eh?
SYLVIA. Not if I know it, Charteris.
CHARTERIS (to them all). You see!
CRAVEN (coming between Charteris and Sylvia). Now you really shouldn’t make a jest of these things: upon my life and soul you shouldn’t, Charteris.
CUTHBERTSON (on the hearthrug). The only use he can find for sacred things is to make a jest of them. That’s the New Order. Thank Heaven, we belong to the Old Order, Dan!
CHARTERIS. Cuthbertson: don’t be symbolic.
CUTHBERTSON (outraged). Symbolic! That is an accusation of Ibsenism. What do you mean?
CHARTERIS. Symbolic of the Old Order. Don’t persuade yourself that you represent the Old Order. There never was any Old Order.
CRAVEN. There I flatly contradict you and stand up for Jo. I’d no more have behaved as you do when I was a young man than I’d have cheated at cards. I belong to the Old Order.
CHARTERIS. You’re getting old, Craven; and you want to make a merit of it, as usual.
CRAVEN. Come, now, Charteris: you’re not offended, I hope. (With a conciliatory outburst.) Well, perhaps I shouldn’t have said that about cheating at cards. I withdraw it (offering his hand).
CHARTERIS (taking Craven’s hand). No offence, my dear Craven: none in the world. I didn’t mean to shew any temper. But (aside, after looking round to see whether the others are listening) only just consider! — the spectacle of a rival’s happiness!
CRAVEN (aloud, decisively). Charteris: now you’ve got to behave like a man. Your duty’s plain before you. (To Cuthbertson.) Am I right, Jo?
CUTHBERTSON (firmly). You are, Dan.
CRAVEN (to Charteris). Go straight up and congratulate Julia. And do it like a gentleman, smiling.
CHARTERIS. Colonel: I will. Not a muscle shall betray the conflict within.
CRAVEN. Julia: Charteris has not congratulated you yet. He’s coming to do it. (Julia rises and fixes a dangerous look on Charteris.)
SYLVIA (whispering quickly behind Charteris as he is about to advance). Take care. She’s going to hit you. I know her. (Charteris stops and looks cautiously at Julia, measuring the situation. They regard one another steadfastly for a moment. Grace softly rises and gets close to Julia.)
CHARTERIS (whispering over his shoulder to Sylvia). I’ll chance it. (He walks confidently up to Julia.) Julia? (He proffers his hand.)
JULIA (exhausted, allowing herself to take it). You are right. I am a worthless woman.
CHARTERIS (triumphant, and gaily remonstrating). Oh, why?
JULIA. Because I am not brave enough to kill you.
GRACE (taking her in her arms as she sinks, almost fainting, away from him). Oh, no. Never make a hero of a philanderer. (Charteris, amused and untouched, shakes his head laughingly. The rest look at Julia with concern, and even a little awe, feeling for the first time the presence of a keen sorrow.)
CURTAIN.
Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1898)
THE AUTHOR’S APOLOGY
Mrs Warren’s Profession has been performed at last, after a delay of only eight years; and I have once more shared with Ibsen the triumphant amusement of startling all but the strongest-headed of the London theatre critics clean out of the practice of their profession. No author who has ever known the exultation of sending the Press into an hysterical tumult of protest, of moral panic, of involuntary and frantic confession of sin, of a horror of conscience in which the power of distinguishing between the work of art on the stage and the real life of the spectator is confused and overwhelmed, will ever care for the stereotyped compliments which every successful farce or melodrama elicits from the newspapers. Give me that critic who rushed from my play to declare furiously that Sir George Crofts ought to be kicked. What a triumph for the actor, thus to reduce a jaded London journalist to the condition of the simple sailor in the Wapping gallery, who shouts execrations at Iago and warnings to Othello not to believe him! But dearer still than such simplicity is that sense of the sudden earthquake shock to the foundations of morality which sends a pallid crowd of critics into the street shrieking that the pillars of society are cracking and the ruin of the State is at hand. Even the Ibsen champions of ten years ago remonstrate with me just as the veterans of those brave days remonstrated with them. Mr Grein, the hardy iconoclast who first launched my plays on the stage alongside Ghosts and The Wild Duck, exclaimed that I have shattered his ideals. Actually his ideals! What would Dr Relling say? And Mr William Archer himself disowns me because I “cannot touch pitch without wallowing in it”. Truly my play must be more needed than I knew; and yet I thought I knew how little the others know.
Do not suppose, however, that the consternation of the Press reflects any consternation among the general public. Anybody can upset the theatre critics, in a turn of the wrist, by substituting for the romantic commonplaces of the stage the moral commonplaces of the pulpit, platform, or the library. Play Mrs Warren’s Profession to an audience of clerical members of the Christian Social Union and of women well experienced in Rescue, Temperance, and Girls’ Club work, and no moral panic will arise; every man and woman present will know that as long as poverty makes virtue hideous and the spare pocket-money of rich bachelordom makes vice dazzling, their daily hand-to-hand fight against prostitution with prayer and persuasion, shelters and scanty alms, will be a losing one. There was a time when they were able to urge that though “the whitelead factory where Anne Jane was poisoned” may be a far more terrible place than Mrs Warren’s house, yet hell is still more dreadful. Nowadays they no longer believe in hell; and the girls among whom they are working know that they do not believe in it, and would laugh at them if they did. So well have the rescuers learnt that Mrs Warren’s defence of herself and indictment of society is the thing that most СКАЧАТЬ