Plays Unpleasant (43 page)

VIVIE
[
jarred and antagonized by the echo of the slums in her mother's voice
] My duty as a daughter! I thought we should come to that presently. Now once for all, mother, you want a daughter and Frank wants a wife. I dont want a mother; and I dont want a husband. I have spared neither
Frank nor myself in sending him about his business. Do you think I will spare you?

MRS WARREN
[
violently
] Oh, I know the sort you are: no mercy for yourself or anyone else.
I
know. My experience has done that for me anyhow: I can tell the pious, canting, hard, selfish woman when I meet her. Well, keep yourself to yourself:
I
dont want you. But listen to this. Do you know what I would do with you if you were a baby again? aye, as sure as theres a Heaven above us.

VIVIE
, Strangle me, perhaps.

MRS WARREN
. No: I'd bring you up to be a real daughter to me, and not what you are now, with your pride and your prejudices and the college education you stole from me: yes, stole: deny it if you can: what was it but stealing? I'd bring you up in my own house, I would.

VIVIE
[
quietly
] In one of your own houses.

MRS WARREN
[
screaming
] Listen to her! listen to how she spits on her mother's grey hairs! Oh, may you live to have your own daughter tear and trample on you as you have trampled on me. And you will: you will. No woman ever had luck with a mother's curse on her.

VIVIE
. I wish you wouldnt rant, mother. It only hardens me. Come: I suppose I am the only young woman you ever had in your power that you did good to. Dont spoil it all now.

MRS WARREN
. Yes, Heaven forgive me, it's true; and you are the only one that ever turned on me. Oh, the injustice of it! the injustice! the injustice! I always wanted to be a good woman. I tried honest work; and I was slave-driven until I cursed the day I ever heard of honest work. I was a good mother; and because I made my daughter a good woman she turns me out as if I was a leper. Oh, if I only had my life to live over again! I'd talk to that lying clergyman in the school. From this time forth, so help me Heaven in my last hour, I'll do wrong and nothing but wrong. And I'll prosper on it.

VIVIE
: Yes: it's better to choose your line and go through with it. If I had been you, mother, I might have done as you did: but I should not have lived one life and believed in another. You are a conventional woman at heart. That is why I am bidding you goodbye now. I am right, am I not?

MRS WARREN
[
taken aback
] Right to throw away all my money?

VIVIE
. No: right to get rid of you! I should be a fool not to! Isnt that so?

MRS WARREN
[
sulkily
] Oh well, yes, if you come to that, I suppose you are. But Lord help the world if everybody took to doing the right thing! And now I'd better go than stay where I'm not wanted. [
She turns to the door
].

VIVIE
[
kindly
] Wont you shake hands?

MRS WARREN
[
after looking at her fiercely for a moment with a savage impulse to strike her
] No, thank you. Goodbye.

VIVIE
[
matter-of-factly
] Goodbye. [
Mrs Warren goes out, slamming the door behind her. The strain on Vivie's face relaxes; her grave expression breaks up into one of joyous content; her breath goes out in a half sob, half laugh of intense relief. She goes buoyantly to her place at the writing-table; pushes the electric lamp out of the way; pulls over a great sheaf of papers; and is in the act of dipping her pen in the ink when she finds Frank's note. She opens it unconcernedly and reads it quickly, giving a little laugh at some quaint turn of expression in it
]. And goodbye, Frank. [
She tears the note up and tosses the pieces into the wastepaper basket without a second thought. Then she goes at her work with a plunge, and soon becomes absorbed in its figures
].

Composition begun 18 August 1884; completed 20 October 1892. Published 1893. Revised text in
Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant
, 1898. Further revision in Collected Edition, 1930

First presented by the Independent Theatre at the Royalty Theatre, London, on 9 December 1892; repeated on 13 December (matinée).

Dr Harry Trench
W. J. Robertson

William de Burgh Cokane
Arthur Whittaker

Sartorius
T. Wigney Percyval

Lickcheese
James Welch

Waiter
E. P. Donne

Porter
W. Alison

Blanche Sartorius
Florence Farr

Annie (parlourmaid)
N. de Silva

ACT
I
In the Grounds of a Hotel-Restaurant at Remagen, on the Rhine

ACT
II
Library in Sartorious' House at Surbiton

ACT
III
The Drawing-Room
–
Evening

Composition begun 14 March 1893; completed 27 June 1893. Published in
Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant
, 1898. Revised text in Collected Edition, 1930

Copyright reading at the Victoria Hall (Bijou Theatre), London, on 30 March 1898. First presented by the New Stage Club (amateurs) at the Cripplegate Institute, London, on 20 February 1905. First professional performance presented by J. E. Vedrenne and H. Granville Barker at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on 5 February 1907 (for a series of eight matinées).

First performance of the deleted last act, Hampstead Theatre, London, on 14 November 1991.

Leonard Charteris
Ben Webster

Mrs Grace Tranfield
Wynne Matthison

Julia Craven
Mary Barton

Colonel Daniel Craven, V.C.
Eric Lewis

Joseph Cuthbertson
Luigi Lablache

Sylvia Craven
Dorothy Minto

Dr Percy Paramore
Hubert Harben

The Club Page
Cyril Bruce

ACT
I
Mr Joseph Cuthbertson's Flat in Ashley Gardens

ACTS
II
AND
III
The Library of the Ibsen Club

ACT
IV
Dr Paramore's Rooms in Savile Row

Composition begun 20 August 1883; completed 2 November 1893. Published in
Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant
, 1898. Separate edition, 1902 (containing a new preface ‘The Author's Apology'). Revised text in Collected Edition, 1930

Copyright reading at the Victoria Hall (Bijou Theatre), London, on 30 March 1898. First presented by the Stage Society at the New Lyric Club on 5 January 1902; repeated on 6 January.

Praed
Julius Knight

Sir George Crofts
Charles Goodhart

The Reverend Samuel Gardner
Cosmo Stuart

Frank Gardner
H. Granville Barker

Vivie Warren
Madge McIntosh

Mrs Kitty Warren
Fanny Brough

ACT
I
In Garden of Vivie Warren's Holiday Cottage at Haslemere

ACT
II
Inside the Cottage

ACT
III
The Vicarage Garden

ACT
IV
Honoria Fraser's Chambers in Chancery Lane

Widowers' Houses
(1893)

Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant
(1898) (including
Mrs Warren's

Profession; Arms and the Man; Candida; Tou Never Can Tell)

Three Plays for Puritans
(1901) (including
The Devil's Disciple; Caesar and Cleopatra)

Man and Superman
(1903)

John Bull's Other Island
(1907)

Major Barbara
(1907)

The Doctor's Dilemma
(1911)

Getting Married
(1911)

Misalliance
(1914)

Androcles and the Lion
(1916)

Pygmalion
(1916)

Heartbreak House
(1919)

Back to Methuselah
(1921)

Saint Joan
(1924)

The Apple Cart
(1930)

Too True to be Good
(1934)

On the Rocks
(1934)

The Millionairess
(1936)

In Good King Charles's Golden Days
(1939)

An Unsocial Socialist
(1884)

Cashel Byron's Profession
(1885–6)

The Irrational Knot
(1885–7)

Love among the Artists
(1887–8)

Immaturity
(1930)

The Black Girl in Search of God
(1932)

Major Critical Essays
(1930) (including
The Quintessence of Ibsenism
, 1891;
The Sanity of Art
, 1895 and 1908;
The Perfect Wagnerite
, 1898)

Music in London
(1931; from serialization 1890–94)

Our Theatres in the Nineties
(1931; from serialization 1895–98)

Fabian Essays in Socialism
(edited, 1893)

Common Sense about the War
(1914)

The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism
(1928)

Everybody's Political What's What?
(1944)

*
Dates are of first English-language publication.

[
NB
This clarification is essential in Shaw, for some of his works appeared in translation two and three years before English publication].