Arthur Wing Pinero

“ Cleeve's wife divorces him, he will marry you?
AGNES. No.
GERTRUDE. No!
AGNES. No. I haven't made you quite understand—Lucas and I don't desire to marry, in your sense.
GERTRUDE. But you are devoted to each other!
AGNES. Thoroughly.
GERTRUDE. What, is that the meaning of "for as long as you are together?" You would go your different ways if ever you found that one of you was making the other unhappy?
AGNES. I do mean that. We remain together only to help, to heal, to console. Why should men and women be so eager to grant to each other the power of wasting life? ”

“ Philip.
[Consciously.] Degrade me?
Ottoline.
Degrade you. If I hadn't come into your life again, you would have accepted your reverse—your failure to gain popularity by your latest book—as you've accepted similar disappointments—with a shrug and a confident snap of your fingers. [Advancing.] But I've humbled you—bruised your spirit—shaken your courage; and now you express your willingness—you!—to throw your pen aside, and tack yourself to my skirts, and to figure meekly for the rest of your existence as "Mrs. Mackworth's husband"! [At the nearer end of the writing-table.] Mon Dieu! ”

“ Leslie.
But you will not forget; you will die under the burden of your husband’s past.
Irene.
I! oh, no! What is a man’s past to the woman who marries him!
Leslie.
It is her pride or her shame, the jewel she wears upon her brow or the mud which clings to her skirts! It is her light or her darkness; her life or her death!
Irene.
You’re too young a wife to lecture me like this! The only difference between me and other women [58] will be that Lord Dangars’s story is public and their husband’s vices are unrevealed!
Leslie.
That is not true! You have no right to defend yourself in that way. ”

“ The art—the great and fascinating and most difficult art—of the modern dramatist is nothing else than to achieve that compression of life which the stage undoubtedly demands without falsification. If Stevenson had ever mastered that art—and I do not question that if he had properly conceived it, he had it in him to master it—he might have found the stage a gold mine, but he would have found, too, that it is a gold mine which cannot be worked in a smiling, sportive, half-contemptuous spirit, but only in the sweat of the brain, and with every mental nerve and sinew strained to its uttermost. ”

“ Lukyn.
Ah, devilled oysters!
Charlotte.
Oh!
[Drops dish-cover with a crash, and runs over to the table and speaks to Agatha Posket.
Lukyn.
Don’t go—pray look at ’em again—wish I could persuade you to taste them. What am I to do? Shall I promise? Poor Posket! If I don’t promise she’ll cry and won’t go home. The oysters are nearly cold—cold! What must he be! [Drawing aside the curtain, and not seeing Vale, he staggers back.] Gone—and without a cry—brave fellow, brave fellow!
Agatha Posket.
Colonel Lukyn.
Lukyn.
Decay of stamina in the army—pah! The young ’uns are worthy of our best days. ”