George Bernard Shaw - Pygmalion and Three Other Plays

BARBARA is leaning over the parapet, looking towards the town. On her right is the cannon; on her left the end of a shed raised on piles, with a ladder of three or four steps up to the door, which opens outwards and has a little wooden landing at the threshold, with a fire bucket in the corner of the landing. The parapet stops short of the shed, leaving a gap which is the beginning of the path down the hill through the foundry to the town. Behind the cannon is a trolley carrying a huge conical bombshell, with a red band painted on it. Further from the parapet, on the same side, is a deck chair, near the door of an office, which, like the sheds, is of the lightest possible construction.

CUSINS arrives by the path from the town.

BARBARA Well?

CUSINS Not a ray of hope. Everything perfect, wonderful, real. It only needs a cathedral to be a heavenly city instead of a hellish one.

BARBARA Have you found out whether they have done anything for old Peter Shirley.

CUSINS They have found him a job as gatekeeper and time-keeper. He’s frightfully miserable. He calls the timekeeping brainwork, and says he isnt used to it; and his gate lodge is so splendid that hes ashamed to use the rooms, and skulks in the scullery.

BARBARA Poor Peter!

STEPHEN arrives from the town. He carries a field-glass.

STEPHEN [enthusiastically) Have you two seen the place? Why did you leave us?

CUSINS I wanted to see everything I was not intended to see; and Barbara wanted to make the men talk.

STEPHEN Have you found anything discreditable?

CUSINS No. They call him Dandy Andy and are proud of his being a cunning old rascal; but it’s all horribly, frightfully, im morally, unanswerably perfect.

SARAH arrives.

SARAH Heavens! what a place! [She crosses to the trolley.] Did you see the nursing home!? [She sits down on the shell. ]

STEPHEN Did you see the libraries and schools!?

SARAH Did you see the ball room and the banqueting chamber in the Town Hall!?

STEPHEN Have you gone into the insurance fund, the pension fund, the building society, the various applications of cooperation!?

UNDERSHAFT comes from the Office, with a sheaf of telegrams in his hands.

UNDERSHAFT Well, have you seen everything? I’m sorry I was called away. [Indicating the telegrams.] News from Manchuria.

STEPHEN Good news, I hope.

UNDERSHAFT Very.

STEPHEN Another Japanese victory?

UNDERSHAFT Oh, I dont know. Which side wins does not concern us here. No: the good news is that the aerial battleship is a tremendous success. At the first trial it has wiped out a fort with three hundred soldiers in it.

CUSINS [from the platform] Dummy soldiers?

UNDERSHAFT No: the real thing. [CUSINS and BARBARA exchange glances. Then CUSINS sits on the step and buries his face in his hands. BARBARA gravely lays her hand on his shoulder, and he looks up at her in a sort of whimsical desperation.] Well, Stephen, what do you think of the place?

STEPHEN Oh, magnificent. A perfect triumph of organization. Frankly, my dear father, I have been a fool: I had no idea of what it all meant — of the wonderful forethought, the power of organization, the administrative capacity, the financial genius, the colossal capital it represents. I have been repeating to myself as I came through your streets “Peace hath her victories no less renowned than War.” [75] Quotation from Sonnet 16, “Cromwell, our chief of men” (lines 10-11), by English poet John Milton (1608-1674.). I have only one misgiving about it all.

UNDERSHAFT Out with it.

STEPHEN Well, I cannot help thinking that all this provision for every want of your workmen may sap their independence and weaken their sense of responsibility. And greatly as we enjoyed our tea at that splendid restaurant — how they gave us all that luxury and cake and jam and cream for threepence I really cannot imagine! — still you must remember that restaurants break up home life. Look at the continent, for instance! Are you sure so much pampering is really good for the men’s characters?

UNDERSHAFT Well you see, my dear boy, when you are organizing civilization you have to make up your mind whether trouble and anxiety are good things or not. If you decide that they are, then, I take it, you simply dont organize civilization; and there you are, with trouble and anxiety enough to make us all angels! But if you decide the other way, you may as well go through with it. However, Stephen, our characters are safe here. A sufficient dose of anxiety is always provided by the fact that we may be blown to smithereens at any moment.

SARAH By the way, papa, where do you make the explosives?

UNDERSHAFT In separate little sheds, like that one. When one of them blows up, it costs very little; and only the people quite close to it are killed.

STEPHEN, who is quite close to it, looks at it rather scaredly, and moves away quickly to the cannon.At the same moment the door of the shed is thrown abruptly open; and a foreman in overalls and list slippers comes out on the little landing and holds the door open for LOMAX, who appears in the doorway.

LOMAX [with studied coolness] My good fellow: you neednt get into a state of nerves. Nothing’s going to happen to you; and I suppose it wouldnt be the end of the world if anything did. A little bit of British pluck is what you want, old chap. [He descends and strolls across to SARAH. ]

UNDERSHAFT [to the foreman] Anything wrong, Bilton?

BILTON [with ironic calm] Gentleman walked into the high explosives shed and lit a cigaret, sir: thats all.

UNDERSHAFT Ah, quite so. [To LOMAX.] Do you happen to remember what you did with the match?

LOMAX Oh come! I’m not a fool. I took jolly good care to blow it out before I chucked it away.

BILTON The top of it was red hot inside, sir.

LOMAX Well, suppose it was! I didnt chuck it into any of your messes.

UNDERSHAFT Think no more of it, Mr. Lomax. By the way, would you mind lending me your matches?

LOMAX [offering his box] Certainly.

UNDERSHAFT Thanks. [He pockets the matches.]

LOMAX [lecturing to the company generally ] You know, these high explosives dont go off like gunpowder, except when theyre in a gun. When theyre spread loose, you can put a match to them without the least risk: they just burn quietly like a bit of paper. [Warming to the scientific interest of the subject.] Did you know that, Undershaft? {32} 32 32 (p. 137) “Did you know that, Undershaft?”: Lomax’s presumptuously familiar form of address here is underlined by Undershaft’s pointedly formal address in his response: “Mr. Lomax.” Lomax’s carelessness with matches extends to his manners and, Shaw implies, to his intellectual exercises as well. Have you ever tried?

UNDERSHAFT Not on a large scale, Mr. Lomax. Bilton will give you a sample of gun cotton when you are leaving if you ask him. You can experiment with it at home. [Bilton looks puzzled. ]

SARAH Bilton will do nothing of the sort, papa. I suppose it’s your business to blow up the Russians and Japs; but you might really stop short of blowing up poor Cholly. [BILTON gives it up and retires into the shed. ]

LOMAX My ownest, there is no danger. [He sits beside her on the shell. ]

LADY BRITOMART arrives from the town with a bouquet.

LADY BRITOMART [coming impetuously between UNDERSHAFT and the deck chair] Andrew: you shouldnt have let me see this place.

UNDERSHAFT Why, my dear?

LADY BRITOMART Never mind why: you shouldnt have: thats all. To think of all that [indicating the town] being yours! and that you have kept it to yourself all these years!