George Bernard Shaw

“ BURGOYNE. Sit down, Mr. Anderson—if I may call you so for the present. (Richard sits down.) Sit down, madam, whilst we wait. Give the lady a newspaper.
RICHARD (indignantly) . Shame!
BURGOYNE (keenly, with a half smile) . If you are not her husband, sir, the case is not a serious one—for her. (Richard bites his lip silenced.)
JUDITH (to Richard, as she returns to her seat) . I couldn't help it. (He shakes his head. She sits down.)
BURGOYNE. You will understand of course, Mr. Anderson, that you must not build on this little incident. We are bound to make an example of somebody. ”

“ ANDERSON. Not vain, my boy. It takes all sorts to make a world —saints as well as soldiers. (Turning to Burgoyne) And now, General, time presses; and America is in a hurry. Have you realized that though you may occupy towns and win battles, you cannot conquer a nation?
BURGOYNE. My good sir, without a Conquest you cannot have an aristocracy. Come and settle the matter at my quarters.
ANDERSON. At your service, sir. (To Richard) See Judith home for me, will you, my boy? ”

“ They are determined to cow us by making an example of somebody on that gallows to-day. Well, let us cow them by showing that we can stand by one another to the death. That is the only force that can send Burgoyne back across the Atlantic and make America a nation.
JUDITH (impatiently) . Oh, what does all that matter?
RICHARD (laughing) . True: what does it matter? what does anything matter? You see, men have these strange notions, Mrs. Anderson; and women see the folly of them.
JUDITH. Women have to lose those they love through them.
RICHARD. They can easily get fresh lovers. ”

“ SWINDON. You are sure he is not Anderson.
CHRISTY. Who?
RICHARD (exasperatedly) . Me, me, me, you—
SWINDON. Silence, sir.
SERGEANT (shouting) . Silence.
RICHARD (impatiently) . Yah! (To Christy) He wants to know am I Minister Anderson. Tell him, and stop grinning like a zany.
CHRISTY (grinning more than ever) . YOU Pastor Anderson! (To Swindon) Why, Mr. Anderson's a minister—-a very good man; and Dick's a bad character: the respectable people won't speak to him. He's the bad brother: I'm the good one, (The officers laugh outright. The soldiers grin.) ”

“ ANDERSON (perfectly self-possessed) . Come, my dear: he is only trying to frighten you. There is no danger. (He takes her out of the house. The rest crowd to the door to follow him, except Essie, who remains near Richard.)
RICHARD (boisterously derisive) . Now then: how many of you will stay with me; run up the American flag on the devil's house; and make a fight for freedom? (They scramble out, Christy among them, hustling one another in their haste.) Ha ha! Long live the devil! (To Mrs. Dudgeon, who is following them) What mother! are you off too? ”

“ Anderson. We are told that the heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. My heart belonged, not to Timothy, but to that poor wretched brother of his that has just ended his days with a rope round his neck—aye, to Peter Dudgeon. You know it: old Eli Hawkins, the man to whose pulpit you succeeded, though you are not worthy to loose his shoe latchet, told it you when he gave over our souls into your charge. He warned me and strengthened me against my heart, and made me marry a Godfearing man—as he thought. What else but that discipline has made me the woman I am? ”

“ Whether Burgoyne or Washington, Lincoln or Davis, Gladstone or Bright, Mr. Chamberlain or Mr. Leonard Courtney was in the right will never be settled, because it will never be possible to prove that the government of the victor has been better for mankind than the government of the vanquished would have been. It is true that the victors have no doubt on the point; but to the dramatist, that certainty of theirs is only part of the human comedy. ”

“ Early next morning the sergeant, at the British headquarters in the Town Hall, unlocks the door of a little empty panelled waiting room, and invites Judith to enter. She has had a bad night, probably a rather delirious one; for even in the reality of the raw morning, her fixed gaze comes back at moments when her attention is not strongly held. The sergeant considers that her feelings do her credit, and is sympathetic in an encouraging military way. Being a fine figure of a man, vain of his uniform and of his rank, he feels specially qualified, in a respectful way, to console her. ”

“ JUDITH (ostentatiously shocked) . Dick Dudgeon! Essie: do you wish to be a really respectable and grateful girl, and to make a place for yourself here by steady good conduct?
ESSIE (very half-heartedly) . Yes.
JUDITH. Then you must never mention the name of Richard Dudgeon— never even think about him. He is a bad man.
ESSIE. What has he done?
JUDITH. You must not ask questions about him, Essie. You are too young to know what it is to be a bad man. But he is a smuggler; and he lives with gypsies; and he has no love for his mother and his family ”

“ Uncle Titus: come forth. (He comes upon him holding the chair as Judith sits down.) As usual, looking after the ladies.
UNCLE TITUS (indignantly) . Be ashamed of yourself, sir—
RICHARD (interrupting him and shaking his hand in spite of him) . I am: I am; but I am proud of my uncle—proud of all my relatives (again surveying them) who could look at them and not be proud and joyful? (Uncle Titus, overborne, resumes his seat on the sofa. Richard turns to the table.) Ah, Mr. Anderson, still at the good work, still shepherding them. Keep them up to the mark, minister, keep them up to the mark. Come! ”

“ BURGOYNE (bitterly) . And therefore, I suppose, sir, the British officer need not know his business: the British soldier will get him out of all his blunders with the bayonet. In future, sir, I must ask you to be a little less generous with the blood of your men, and a little more generous with your own brains.
SWINDON. I am sorry I cannot pretend to your intellectual eminence, sir. I can only do my best, and rely on the devotion of my countrymen. ”

“ CHRISTY (interrupting her with an apprehensive glance at the door by which Essie went out) . Sh! She may hear you.
MRS. DUDGEON (raising her voice) . Let her hear me. People who fear God don't fear to give the devil's work its right name. (Christy, soullessly indifferent to the strife of Good and Evil, stares at the fire, warming himself.) Well, how long are you going to stare there like a stuck pig? What news have you for me?
CHRISTY (taking off his hat and shawl and going to the rack to hang them up) . The minister is to break the news to you. ”

“ The crowd becomes quiet at once; and the sergeant and petty officers, hurrying to the back of the square, with a few whispered orders and some stealthy hustling cause it to open and admit the funeral procession, which is protected from the crowd by a double file of soldiers. First come Burgoyne and Swindon, who, on entering the square, glance with distaste at the gallows, and avoid passing under it by wheeling a little to the right and stationing themselves on that side. ”

“ SWINDON (severely) . Well, sir, we shall teach you and your townspeople a lesson they will not forget. Have you anything more to say?
RICHARD. I think you might have the decency to treat me as a prisoner of war, and shoot me like a man instead of hanging me like a dog.
BURGOYNE (sympathetically) . Now there, Mr. Anderson, you talk like a civilian, if you will excuse my saying so. Have you any idea of the average marksmanship of the army of His Majesty King George the Third? If we make you up a firing party, what will happen? ”

“ HAWKING. Because, sir, the courts will sustain the claim of a man—and that man the eldest son—against any woman, if they can. I warned you, Mrs. Dudgeon, when you got me to draw that other will, that it was not a wise will, and that though you might make him sign it, he would never be easy until he revoked it. But you wouldn't take advice; and now Mr. Richard is cock of the walk. (He takes his hat from the floor; rises; and begins pocketing his papers and spectacles.)
This is the signal for the breaking-up of the party. Anderson takes his hat from the rack and joins Uncle William at the fire. ”

“ In the working class, which, like all classes, has its own official aristocracy, there is the same reluctance to discredit an institution or to "do a man out of his job." At bottom, of course, this apparently shameless sacrifice of great public interests to petty personal ones, is simply the preference of the ordinary man for the things he can feel and understand to the things that are beyond his capacity. It is stupidity, not dishonesty.
Burgoyne fell a victim to this stupidity in two ways. ”

“ Dudgeon's face, even at its best, is grimly trenched by the channels into which the barren forms and observances of a dead Puritanism can pen a bitter temper and a fierce pride. She is an elderly matron who has worked hard and got nothing by it except dominion and detestation in her sordid home, and an unquestioned reputation for piety and respectability among her neighbors, to whom drink and debauchery are still so much more tempting than religion and rectitude, that they conceive goodness simply as self-denial. ”

“ The two soldiers take the shaft of the wagon, ready to pull it away. The executioner, standing in the cart behind Richard, makes a sign to the sergeant. SERGEANT (to Burgoyne) . Ready, sir.
BURGOYNE. Have you anything more to say, Mr. Dudgeon? It wants two minutes of twelve still.
RICHARD (in the strong voice of a man who has conquered the bitterness of death) . Your watch is two minutes slow by the town clock, which I can see from here, General. (The town clock strikes the first stroke of twelve. Involuntarily the people flinch at the sound, and a subdued groan breaks from them.) Amen! ”

“ MRS. DUDGEON (bursting into dry angry tears) . Well, I do think this is hard on me—very hard on me. His brother, that was a disgrace to us all his life, gets hanged on the public gallows as a rebel; and your father, instead of staying at home where his duty was, with his own family, goes after him and dies, leaving everything on my shoulders. After sending this girl to me to take care of, too! (She plucks her shawl vexedly over her ears.) It's sinful, so it is; downright sinful.
CHRISTY (with a slow, bovine cheerfulness, after a pause) . I think it's going to be a fine morning, after all. ”

“ BURGOYNE. I am, sir; and I am humane enough to be glad of it. (Richard jumps down from the cart, Brudenell offering his hand to help him, and runs to Anderson, whose left hand he shakes heartily, the right being occupied by Judith.) By the way, Mr. Anderson, I do not quite understand. The safe-conduct was for a commander of the militia. I understand you are a— (he looks as pointedly as his good manners permit at the riding boots, the pistols, and Richard's coat, and adds) a clergyman.
ANDERSON (between Judith and Richard) . Sir: it is in the hour of trial that a man finds his true profession. ”

“ There is even some fear of a disappointment as midday approaches and the arrival of the beadle with the ladder remains the only sign of preparation. But at last reassuring shouts of Here they come: Here they are, are heard; and a company of soldiers with fixed bayonets, half British infantry, half Hessians, tramp quickly into the middle of the market place, driving the crowd to the sides. ”

“ After them comes the family, headed by the senior uncle, William Dudgeon, a large, shapeless man, bottle-nosed and evidently no ascetic at table. His clothes are not the clothes, nor his anxious wife the wife, of a prosperous man. The junior uncle, Titus Dudgeon, is a wiry little terrier of a man, with an immense and visibly purse-proud wife, both free from the cares of the William household. Hawkins at once goes briskly to the table and takes the chair nearest the sofa, Christy having left the inkstand there. He puts his hat on the floor beside him, and produces the will. ”

“ But his next example will be the best man in the town to whom he can bring home a rebellious word. Well, we're all rebels; and you know it.
ALL THE MEN (except Anderson) . No, no, no!
RICHARD. Yes, you are. You haven't damned King George up hill and down dale as I have; but you've prayed for his defeat; and you, Anthony Anderson, have conducted the service, and sold your family bible to buy a pair of pistols. They mayn't hang me, perhaps; because the moral effect of the Devil's Disciple dancing on nothing wouldn't help them. But a Minister! (Judith, dismayed, clings to Anderson) or a lawyer! ”

“ Judith Anderson, the minister's wife, comes in. Judith is more than twenty years younger than her husband, though she will never be as young as he in vitality. She is pretty and proper and ladylike, and has been admired and petted into an opinion of herself sufficiently favorable to give her a self-assurance which serves her instead of strength. ”

“ As noon approaches there is excitement in the market place. The gallows which hangs there permanently for the terror of evildoers, with such minor advertizers and examples of crime as the pillory, the whipping post, and the stocks, has a new rope attached, with the noose hitched up to one of the uprights, out of reach of the boys. Its ladder, too, has been brought out and placed in position by the town beadle, who stands by to guard it from unauthorized climbing. The Websterbridge townsfolk are present in force, and in high spirits ”

“ JUDITH. They are beginning to come. Now remember your aunt's directions, Essie; and be a good girl. (Christy comes back with the stand of stuffed birds under a glass case, and an inkstand, which he places on the table.) Good morning, Mr. Dudgeon. Will you open the door, please: the people have come. ”

“ JUDITH. May I not stay? What harm am I doing?
SERGEANT. I want none of your argufying. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, running to see a man hanged that's not your husband. And he's no better than yourself. I told my major he was a gentleman; and then he goes and tries to strangle him, and calls his blessed Majesty a lunatic. ”