60 Plays: The George Bernard Shaw Edition (Illustrated). GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
(to Raina complacently). I have put everything right, I hope, gracious young lady!
RAINA (in uncontrollable vexation). I quite agree with your account of yourself. You are a romantic idiot. (Bluntschli is unspeakably taken aback.) Next time I hope you will know the difference between a schoolgirl of seventeen and a woman of twenty-three.
BLUNTSCHLI (stupefied). Twenty-three! (She snaps the photograph contemptuously from his hand; tears it across; and throws the pieces at his feet.)
SERGIUS (with grim enjoyment of Bluntschli’s discomfiture). Bluntschli: my one last belief is gone. Your sagacity is a fraud, like all the other things. You have less sense than even I have.
BLUNTSCHLI (overwhelmed). Twenty-three! Twenty-three!! (He considers.) Hm! (Swiftly making up his mind.) In that case, Major Petkoff, I beg to propose formally to become a suitor for your daughter’s hand, in place of Major Saranoff retired.
RAINA. You dare!
BLUNTSCHLI. If you were twenty-three when you said those things to me this afternoon, I shall take them seriously.
CATHERINE (loftily polite). I doubt, sir, whether you quite realize either my daughter’s position or that of Major Sergius Saranoff, whose place you propose to take. The Petkoffs and the Saranoffs are known as the richest and most important families in the country. Our position is almost historical: we can go back for nearly twenty years.
PETKOFF. Oh, never mind that, Catherine. (To Bluntschli.) We should be most happy, Bluntschli, if it were only a question of your position; but hang it, you know, Raina is accustomed to a very comfortable establishment. Sergius keeps twenty horses.
BLUNTSCHLI. But what on earth is the use of twenty horses? Why, it’s a circus.
CATHERINE (severely). My daughter, sir, is accustomed to a firstrate stable.
RAINA. Hush, mother, you’re making me ridiculous.
BLUNTSCHLI. Oh, well, if it comes to a question of an establishment, here goes! (He goes impetuously to the table and seizes the papers in the blue envelope.) How many horses did you say?
SERGIUS. Twenty, noble Switzer!
BLUNTSCHLI. I have two hundred horses. (They are amazed.) How many carriages?
SERGIUS. Three.
BLUNTSCHLI. I have seventy. Twenty-four of them will hold twelve inside, besides two on the box, without counting the driver and conductor. How many tablecloths have you?
SERGIUS. How the deuce do I know?
BLUNTSCHLI. Have you four thousand?
SERGIUS. NO.
BLUNTSCHLI. I have. I have nine thousand six hundred pairs of sheets and blankets, with two thousand four hundred eider-down quilts. I have ten thousand knives and forks, and the same quantity of dessert spoons. I have six hundred servants. I have six palatial establishments, besides two livery stables, a tea garden and a private house. I have four medals for distinguished services; I have the rank of an officer and the standing of a gentleman; and I have three native languages. Show me any man in Bulgaria that can offer as much.
PETKOFF (with childish awe). Are you Emperor of Switzerland?
BLUNTSCHLI. My rank is the highest known in Switzerland: I’m a free citizen.
CATHERINE. Then Captain Bluntschli, since you are my daughter’s choice, I shall not stand in the way of her happiness. (Petkoff is about to speak.) That is Major Petkoff’s feeling also.
PETKOFF. Oh, I shall be only too glad. Two hundred horses! Whew!
SERGIUS. What says the lady?
RAINA (pretending to sulk). The lady says that he can keep his tablecloths and his omnibuses. I am not here to be sold to the highest bidder.
BLUNTSCHLI. I won’t take that answer. I appealed to you as a fugitive, a beggar, and a starving man. You accepted me. You gave me your hand to kiss, your bed to sleep in, and your roof to shelter me —
RAINA (interrupting him). I did not give them to the Emperor of Switzerland!
BLUNTSCHLI. That’s just what I say. (He catches her hand quickly and looks her straight in the face as he adds, with confident mastery) Now tell us who you did give them to.
RAINA (succumbing with a shy smile). To my chocolate cream soldier!
BLUNTSCHLI (with a boyish laugh of delight). That’ll do. Thank you. (Looks at his watch and suddenly becomes businesslike.) Time’s up, Major. You’ve managed those regiments so well that you are sure to be asked to get rid of some of the Infantry of the Teemok division. Send them home by way of Lom Palanka. Saranoff: don’t get married until I come back: I shall be here punctually at five in the evening on Tuesday fortnight. Gracious ladies — good evening. (He makes them a military bow, and goes.)
SERGIUS. What a man! What a man!
Candida (1898)
ACT I
A fine October morning in the north east suburbs of London, a vast district many miles away from the London of Mayfair and St. James’s, much less known there than the Paris of the Rue de Rivoli and the Champs Elysees, and much less narrow, squalid, fetid and airless in its slums; strong in comfortable, prosperous middle class life; wide-streeted, myriad-populated; well-served with ugly iron urinals, Radical clubs, tram lines, and a perpetual stream of yellow cars; enjoying in its main thoroughfares the luxury of grass-grown “front gardens,” untrodden by the foot of man save as to the path from the gate to the hall door; but blighted by an intolerable monotony of miles and miles of graceless, characterless brick houses, black iron railings, stony pavements, slaty roofs, and respectably ill dressed or disreputably poorly dressed people, quite accustomed to the place, and mostly plodding about somebody else’s work, which they would not do if they themselves could help it. The little energy and eagerness that crop up show themselves in cockney cupidity and business “push.” Even the policemen and the chapels are not infrequent enough to break the monotony. The sun is shining cheerfully; there is no fog; and though the smoke effectually prevents anything, whether faces and hands or bricks and mortar, from looking fresh and clean, it is not hanging heavily enough to trouble a Londoner.
This desert of unattractiveness has its oasis. Near the outer end of the Hackney Road is a park of 217 acres, fenced in, not by railings, but by a wooden paling, and containing plenty of greensward, trees, a lake for bathers, flower beds with the flowers arranged carefully in patterns by the admired cockney art of carpet gardening and a sandpit, imported from the seaside for the delight of the children, but speedily deserted on its becoming a natural vermin preserve for all the petty fauna of Kingsland, Hackney and Hoxton. A bandstand, an unfinished forum for religious, anti-religious and political orators, cricket pitches, a gymnasium, and an old fashioned stone kiosk are among its attractions. Wherever the prospect is bounded by trees or rising green grounds, it is a pleasant place. Where the ground stretches far to the grey palings, with bricks and mortar, sky signs, crowded chimneys and smoke beyond, the prospect makes it desolate and sordid.
The