George Bernard Shaw

“ Why are you trying to fascinate me, Jack, if you don't want to marry me?
TANNER The Life Force. I am in the grip of the Life Force.
ANN I don't understand in the least: It sounds like the Life Guards.
TANNER Why don't you marry Tavy? He is willing. Can you not be satisfied unless your prey struggles?
ANN [turning to him as if to let him into a secret] Tavy will never marry. Haven't you noticed that that sort of man never marries?
TANNER What! a man who idolizes women who sees nothing in nature but romantic scenery for love duets! Tavy, the chivalrous, the faithful, the tenderhearted and true! ”

“ TANNER Mr Mendoza: I have no heart's desires. Ramsden: It is very easy for you to call me a happy man: You are only a spectator. I am one of the principals; and I know better. Ann: Stop tempting Tavy, and come back to me.
ANN [complying] You are absurd, Jack. [She takes his proffered arm.]
TANNER [continuing] I solemnly say that I am not a happy man. Ann looks happy; but she is only triumphant, successful, victorious. That is not happiness, but the price for which the strong sell their happiness. ”

“ This particular garden is on a hill opposite the Alhambra; and the villa is as expensive and pretentious as a villa must be if it is to be let furnished by the week to opulent American and English visitors. If we stand on the lawn at the foot of the garden and look uphill, our horizon is the stone balustrade of a flagged platform on the edge of infinite space at the top of the hill. ”

“ And since she has plunged Tavy head over ears in love with her without any intention of marrying him, she is a coquette,—according to the standard definition of a coquette as a woman who rouses passions she has no intention of gratifying. And as she has now reduced you to the point of being willing to sacrifice me at the altar for the mere satisfaction of getting me to call her a liar to her face, I may conclude that she is a bully as well. She can't bully men as she bullies women; so she habitually and unscrupulously uses her personal fascination to make men give her whatever she wants. ”

“ MALONE [deeply wounded and full of concern] Hector: You don't know what poverty is.
HECTOR [fervidly] Well, I want to know what it is. I want t' be a Man. Violet: you come along with me, to your own home: I'll see you through.
OCTAVIUS [jumping down from the garden to the lawn and running to Hector's left hand] I hope you'll shake hands with me before you go, Hector. I admire and respect you more than I can say. [He is affected almost to tears as they shake hands.]
VIOLET [also almost in tears, but of vexation] Oh don't be an idiot, Tavy. Hector's about as fit to become a workman as you are. ”

“ MRS WHITEFIELD [in mild expostulation] Well, you can't expect perfection, Jack.
TANNER I don't. But what annoys me is that Ann does. I know perfectly well that all this about her being a liar and a bully and a coquette and so forth is a trumped-up moral indictment which might be brought against anybody. We all lie; we all bully as much as we dare; we all bid for admiration without the least intention of earning it; we all get as much rent as we can out of our powers of fascination. If Ann would admit this I shouldn't quarrel with her. ”

“ I shall decay like a thing that has served its purpose and is done with; I shall change from a man with a future to a man with a past; I shall see in the greasy eyes of all the other husbands their relief at the arrival of a new prisoner to share their ignominy. The young men will scorn me as one who has sold out: to the young women I, who have always been an enigma and a possibility, shall be merely somebody else's property—and damaged goods at that: a secondhand man at best.
ANN Well, your wife can put on a cap and make herself ugly to keep you in countenance, like my grandmother. ”

“ MRS WHITEFIELD [thoughtfully] Then I'm very sorry for you, Tavy. It's only her way of saying SHE wants to marry Jack. Little she cares what I say or what I want!
OCTAVIUS But she would not say it unless she believed it. Surely you don't suspect Ann of—of DECEIT!!
MRS WHITEFIELD Well, never mind, Tavy. I don't know which is best for a young man: to know too little, like you, or too much, like Jack.
[Tanner returns.] TANNER Well, I've disposed of old Malone. I've introduced him to Mendoza, Limited; and left the two brigands together to talk it out. Hullo, Tavy! anything wrong? ”

“ MRS WHITEFIELD [with snivelling gratitude] Thank you, Jack. [She sits down. Tanner brings the other chair from the table and sits close to her with his elbows on his knees, giving her his whole attention.] I don't know why it is that other people's children are so nice to me, and that my own have so little consideration for me. It's no wonder I don't seem able to care for Ann and Rhoda as I do for you and Tavy and Violet. It's a very queer world. ”

“ The looseness of skin that comes with age has attacked his throat and the laps of his cheeks; but he is still hard as an apple above the mouth; so that the upper half of his face looks younger than the lower. He has the self-confidence of one who has made money, and something of the truculence of one who has made it in a brutalizing struggle, his civility having under it a perceptible menace that he has other methods in reserve if necessary. Withal, a man to be rather pitied when he is not to be feared ”

“ Act IV The garden of a villa in Granada. Whoever wishes to know what it is like must go to Granada and see. One may prosaically specify a group of hills dotted with villas, the Alhambra on the top of one of the hills, and a considerable town in the valley, approached by dusty white roads in which the children, no matter what they are doing or thinking about, automatically whine for halfpence and reach out little clutching brown palms for them; but there is nothing in this description except the Alhambra, the begging, and the color of the roads, that does not fit Surrey as well as Spain. ”

“ You had better marry what you call a hypocrite, Jack. Women who are not hypocrites go about in rational dress and are insulted and get into all sorts of hot water. And then their husbands get dragged in too, and live in continual dread of fresh complications. Wouldn't you prefer a wife you could depend on?
TANNER No, a thousand times no: hot water is the revolutionist's element. You clean men as you clean milkpails, by scalding them.
ANN Cold water has its uses too. It's healthy.
TANNER [despairingly] Oh, you are witty: at the supreme moment the Life Force endows you with every quality. ”

“ HECTOR That's all right. Don't you trouble yourself about that. I'll answer for the morality of what I'm doing.
TANNER. [coming forward to Hector's right hand with flashing eyes] Well said, Malone! You also see that mere marriage laws are not morality! I agree with you; but unfortunately Violet does not.
MALONE I take leave to doubt that, sir. [Turning on Violet] Let me tell you, Mrs Robinson, or whatever your right name is, you had no right to send that letter to my son when you were the wife of another man.
HECTOR [outraged] This is the last straw. Dad: You have insulted my wife. ”

“ On their way to the steps Ann sends a little grimace of mute sympathy to Violet, who is standing with her back to the little table, looking on in helpless annoyance as her husband soars to higher and higher moral eminences without the least regard to the old man's millions. ”

“ What we have both done this afternoon is to renounce tranquillity, above all renounce the romantic possibilities of an unknown future, for the cares of a household and a family. I beg that no man may seize the occasion to get half drunk and utter imbecile speeches and coarse pleasantries at my expense. We propose to furnish our own house according to our own taste ”

“ This elderly gentleman defies the Spanish sun in a black frock coat, tall silk bat, trousers in which narrow stripes of dark grey and lilac blend into a highly respectable color, and a black necktie tied into a bow over spotless linen. Probably therefore a man whose social position needs constant and scrupulous affirmation without regard to climate: One who would dress thus for the middle of the Sahara or the top of Mont Blanc. ”

“ The garden is higher than our lawn; so we reach it by a few steps in the middle of its embankment. The platform is higher again than the garden, from which we mount a couple more steps to look over the balustrade at a fine view of the town up the valley and of the hills that stretch away beyond it to where, in the remotest distance, they become mountains. On our left is the villa, accessible by steps from the left hand corner of the garden. ”

“ There are no newspapers, a circumstance which, with the absence of games, might lead an intelligent spectator to the most far reaching conclusions as to the sort of people who live in the villa. Such speculations are checked, however, on this delightfully fine afternoon, by the appearance at a little gate in a paling an our left, of Henry Straker in his professional costume. He opens the gate for an elderly gentleman, and follows him on to the lawn. ”

“ The difference is that the Surrey hills are comparatively small and ugly, and should properly be called the Surrey Protuberances; but these Spanish hills are of mountain stock: the amenity which conceals their size does not compromise their dignity. ”

“ Straker, with the air of a man who has been making haste, opens the little gate, and admits Hector, who, snorting with indignation, comes upon the lawn, and is making for his father when Violet, greatly dismayed, springs up and intercepts him. ”

“ I have promised to marry Jack. [She swoons. Violet kneels by her and chafes her band. Tanner runs round to her other hand, and tries to lift her head. Octavius goes to Violet's assistance, but does not know what to do. Mrs Whitefield hurries back into the villa. Octavius, Malone and Ramsden run to Ann and crowd round her, stooping to assist. Straker coolly comes to Ann's feet, and Mendoza to her head, both upright and self-possessed.]
STRAKER Now then, ladies and gentlemen: she don't want a crowd round her: She wants air—all the air she can git. ”

“ They're the best sort, Miss Whitefield. I congratulate Mr Tanner; and I hope to meet you and him as frequent guests at the Abbey.
ANN Thank you. [She goes past Malone to Octavius] Ricky Ticky Tavy: Congratulate me. [Aside to him] I want to make you cry for the last time.
TAVY [steadfastly] No more tears. I am happy in your happiness. And I believe in you in spite of everything.
RAMSDEN [coming between Malone and Tanner] You are a happy man, Jack Tanner. I envy you.
MENDOZA [advancing between Violet and Tanner] Sir: There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. ”

“ And since he has not the stamp of the class which accepts as its life-mission the advertizing and maintenance of first rate tailoring and millinery, he looks vulgar in his finery, though in a working dress of any kind he would look dignified enough. He is a bullet cheeked man with a red complexion, stubbly hair, smallish eyes, a hard mouth that folds down at the corners, and a dogged chin. ”

“ Tavy never marry! Why, he was born to be swept up by the first pair of blue eyes he meets in the street.
ANN Yes, I know. All the same, Jack, men like that always live in comfortable bachelor lodgings with broken hearts, and are adored by their landladies, and never get married. Men like you always get married. ”