George Bernard Shaw

“ Oh, Strega, dont you want a dear little domesticated husband who would have no concern but to please you, no thought outside our home, who would be unspotted and unsoiled by the rude cold world, who would never meddle in politics or annoy you by interfering with your profession? ”

“ I never break an engagement, especially a two hundred and fifty guinea one. [She turns towards the piano] .
REGINALD. But didnt she tell you anything about me?
STREGA. [turning back to him] She said there would be a foolish young man in the room, but that I was not to mind him. She assured me you were not dangerous except to your- self [Collaring him and holding him bent backwards over the piano] . But I will have no nonsense about not listening. All the world listens when I play. Listen, or go.
REGINALD. [helpless] But I shall have to sit on the stairs. ”

“ REGINALD. But it's so frightfully intellectual. It would overtax my brain.
THE DOCTOR. Oh, well, I suppose it would. Well, sleep. Perhaps I'd better give you something to send you off [he produces a medicine case] .
REGINALD. Whats this ? Veronal ?
THE DOCTOR. Dont be alarmed. Only the old-fashioned remedy: opium. Take this [Reginald takes a pill] : that will do the trick, I expect. If you find after half an hour that it has only excited you, take another. I'll leave one for you [he puts one on the plate, and pockets his medicine case] .
REGINALD. Better leave me a lot. I like pills. ”

“ Reginald. [on the floor staring at her] You are strong.
STREGA. My strength has been developed by playing left hand octave passages—like this. [She begins playing Liszt's transcription of Schubert's Erl König] .
Reginald. [puts his fingers in his ears, but continues to stare at her] .
STREGA. [stopping] I really cannot play if you keep your ears stopped. It is an insult. Leave the room.
REGINALD. But I tell you it's my room.
STREGA. [rising] Leave the room, or I will ring your bell and have you put out. [She goes to the little table, and poises her fingers over the bell call] . ”

“ Lord Reginald Fitzambry, a fashionably dressed, rather-pretty young man of 22, is prostrate on a sofa in a large hotel drawing room, crying convulsively. His doctor is trying to soothe him. The doctor is about a dozen years his senior; and his ways are the ways of a still youthful man who considers himself in smart society as well as professionally attendant on it. ”

“ If you were in a Republic you wouldnt be trusted to clean boots, unless your father was a millionaire. No, Reginald the day you give up vamping accompaniments and playing the latest ragtimes by ear, youre a lost man socially. ”

“ You stood up to it for six days with the coolness of an iceberg and the cheerfulness of an idiot. Every member of it had a go at you; and everyone of them, including some of the cleverest cross-examiners in London, fell back baffled before your fatuous self-satisfaction, your impenetrable in- ability to see any reason why you shouldnt have bought those shares. ”

“ Though you mightnt think it, I can be quite stern and strongminded with servants. I get on splendidly with children; they never talk over my head as grown-up people do. I have a real genius for home life. ”

“ If anyone could enter under these circumstances, he would find on his left a grand piano with the keyboard end towards him, and a smaller door beyond the piano. On his right would be the window, and, further on, the sofa on which the unhappy youth is wallowing, with, close by it, the doctor's chair and a little table accommodating the doctor's hat, a plate, a medicine bottle, a half emptied glass, and a bell call.
THE DOCTOR. Come come! be a man. ”