Public-domain ebook
by Bernard Shaw
Language: en1,084 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Humour·Plays/Films/Dramas·British Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #943.
Misalliance is a late‑Victorian English drama that opens in the spacious, glass‑enclosed pavilion of Johnny Tarleton’s Surrey home. Shaw introduces the setting with a meticulous inventory of the modern comforts that surround the young businessman, marble pillars, Viennese pottery, a portable Turkish bath, and a swing seat where Johnny reclines with a novel. Into this tableau steps Bentley Summerhays, a thin‑skinned youth of higher social standing, whose arrival sparks a sharp exchange of insults and philosophical barbs. Their dialogue, rendered in Shaw’s characteristic spelling and punctuation quirks, quickly escalates from playful teasing to a heated confrontation about family, ambition, and the prospect of marrying the Tarleton daughter, Hypatia.
The play’s voice is unmistakably Shaw’s: witty, rapid‑fire repartee laced with social satire, delivered in a style that mirrors the early‑20th‑century English stage. Readers who enjoy sharp dialogue, incisive commentary on class and courtship, and a glimpse into Edwardian domestic life will find this work engaging, while those preferring slower‑moving plots may feel its relentless verbal sparring overwhelming.
The opening · free to read
Johnny Tarleton, an ordinary young business man of thirty or less, is taking his weekly Friday to Tuesday in the house of his father, John Tarleton, who has made a great deal of money out of Tarleton's Underwear. The house is in Surrey, on the slope of Hindhead; and Johnny, reclining, novel in hand, in a swinging chair with a little awning above it, is enshrined in a spacious half hemisphere of glass which forms a pavilion commanding the garden, and, beyond it, a barren but lovely landscape of hill profile with fir trees, commons of bracken and gorse, and wonderful cloud pictures.
The glass pavilion springs from a bridgelike arch in the wall of the house, through which one comes into a big hall with tiled flooring, which suggests that the proprietor's notion of domestic luxury is founded on the lounges of week-end hotels. The arch is not quite in the centre of the wall. There is more wall to its right than to its left, and this space is occupied by a hat rack and umbrella stand in which tennis rackets, white parasols, caps, Panama hats, and other summery articles are bestowed. Just through the arch at this corner stands a new portable Turkish bath, recently unpacked, with its crate beside it, and on the crate the drawn nails and the hammer used in unpacking. Near the crate are open boxes of garden games: bowls and croquet. Nearly in the middle of the glass wall of the pavilion is a door giving on the garden, with a couple of steps to surmount the hot-water pipes which skirt the glass. At intervals round the pavilion are marble pillars with specimens of Viennese pottery on them, very flamboyant in colour and florid in design. Between them are folded garden chairs flung anyhow against the pipes. In the side walls are two doors: one near the hat stand, leading to the interior of the house, the other on the opposite side and at the other end, leading to the vestibule.
There is no solid furniture except a sideboard which stands against the wall between the vestibule door and the pavilion, a small writing table with a blotter, a rack for telegram forms and stationery, and a wastepaper basket, standing out in the hall near the sideboard, and a lady's worktable, with two chairs at it, towards the other side of the lounge. The writing table has also two chairs at it. On the sideboard there is a tantalus, liqueur bottles, a syphon, a glass jug of lemonade, tumblers, and every convenience for casual drinking. Also a plate of sponge cakes, and a highly ornate punchbowl in the same style as the keramic display in the pavilion. Wicker chairs and little bamboo tables with ash trays and boxes of matches on them are scattered in all directions. In the pavilion, which is flooded with sunshine, is the elaborate patent swing seat and awning in which Johnny reclines with his novel. There are two wicker chairs right and left of him.
Bentley Summerhays, one of those smallish, thinskinned youths, who from 17 to 70 retain unaltered the mental airs of the later and the physical appearance of the earlier age, appears in the garden and comes through the glass door into the pavilion. He is unmistakably a grade above Johnny socially; and though he looks sensitive enough, his assurance and his high voice are a little exasperating.
JOHNNY. Hallo! Wheres your luggage?
BENTLEY. I left it at the station. Ive walked up from Haslemere. [He goes to the hat stand and hangs up his hat].
JOHNNY [shortly] Oh! And who's to fetch it?
BENTLEY. Dont know. Dont care. Providence, probably. If not, your mother will have it fetched.
JOHNNY. Not her business, exactly, is it?
BENTLEY. [returning to the pavilion] Of course not. Thats why one loves her for doing it. Look here: chuck away your silly week-end novel, and talk to a chap. After a week in that filthy office my brain is simply blue-mouldy. Lets argue about something intellectual. [He throws himself into the wicker chair on Johnny's right].
JOHNNY. [straightening up in the swing with a yell of protest] No. Now seriously, Bunny, Ive come down here to have a pleasant week-end; and I'm not going to stand your confounded arguments. If you want to argue, get out of this and go over to the Congregationalist minister's. He's a nailer at arguing. He likes it.
BENTLEY. You cant argue with a person when his livelihood depends on his not letting you convert him. And would you mind not calling me Bunny. My name is Bentley Summerhays, which you please.
JOHNNY. Whats the matter with Bunny?
BENTLEY. It puts me in a false position. Have you ever considered the fact that I was an afterthought?
JOHNNY. An afterthought? What do you mean by that?
BENTLEY. Dont be afraid: it wont overtax your brain. My father was 44 when I was born. My mother was 41. There was twelve years between me and the next eldest. I was unexpected. I was probably unintentional. My brothers and sisters are not the least like me. Theyre the regular thing that you always get in the first batch from young parents: quite pleasant, ordinary, do-the-regular-thing sort: all body and no brains, like you.
JOHNNY. Thank you.
BENTLEY. Dont mention it, old chap. Now I'm different. By the time I was born, the old couple knew something. So I came out all brains and no more body than is absolutely necessary. I am really a good deal older than you, though you were born ten years sooner. Everybody feels that when they hear us talk; consequently, though it's quite natural to hear me calling you Johnny, it sounds ridiculous and unbecoming for you to call me Bunny. [He rises].
JOHNNY. Does it, by George? You stop me doing it if you can: thats all.
BENTLEY. If you go on doing it after Ive asked you not, youll feel an awful swine. [He strolls away carelessly to the sideboard with his eye on the sponge cakes]. At least I should; but I suppose youre not so particular.
JOHNNY [rising vengefully and following Bentley, who is forced to turn and listen] I'll tell you what it is, my boy: you want a good talking to; and I'm going to give it to you. If you think that because your father's a K.C.B., and you want to marry my sister, you can make yourself as nasty as you please and say what you like, youre mistaken. Let me tell you that except Hypatia, not one person in this house is in favor of her marrying you; and I dont believe shes happy about it herself. The match isnt settled yet: dont forget that. Youre on trial in the office because the Governor isnt giving his daughter money for an idle man to live on her. Youre on trial here because my mother thinks a girl should know what a man is like in the house before she marries him. Thats been going on for two months now; and whats the result? Youve got yourself thoroughly disliked in the office; and youre getting yourself thoroughly disliked here, all through your bad manners and your conceit, and the damned impudence you think clever.
BENTLEY. [deeply wounded and trying hard to control himself] Thats enough, thank you. You dont suppose, I hope, that I should have come down if I had known that that was how you felt about me. [He makes for the vestibule door].
JOHNNY. [collaring him]. No: you dont run away. I'm going to have this out with you. Sit down: d'y' hear? [Bentley attempts to go with dignity. Johnny slings him into a chair at the writing table, where he sits, bitterly humiliated, but afraid to speak lest he should burst into tears]. Thats the advantage of having more body than brains, you see: it enables me to teach you manners; and I'm going to do it too. Youre a spoilt young pup; and you need a jolly good licking. And if youre not careful youll get it: I'll see to that next time you call me a swine.
BENTLEY. I didnt call you a swine. But [bursting into a fury of tears] you are a swine: youre a beast: youre a brute: youre a cad: youre a liar: youre a bully: I should like to wring your damned neck for you.
JOHNNY. [with a derisive laugh] Try it, my son. [Bentley gives an inarticulate sob of rage]. Fighting isnt in your line. Youre too small and youre too childish. I always suspected that your cleverness wouldnt come to very much when it was brought up against something solid: some decent chap's fist, for instance.
BENTLEY. I hope your beastly fist may come up against a mad bull or a prizefighter's nose, or something solider than me. I dont care about your fist; but if everybody here dislikes me-- [he is checked by a sob]. Well, I dont care. [Trying to recover himself] I'm sorry I intruded: I didnt know. [Breaking down again] Oh you beast! you pig! Swine, swine, swine, swine, swine! Now!
JOHNNY. All right, my lad, all right. Sling your mud as hard as you please: it wont stick to me. What I want to know is this. How is it that your father, who I suppose is the strongest man England has produced in our time--
BENTLEY. You got that out of your halfpenny paper. A lot you know about him!
JOHNNY. I dont set up to be able to do anything but admire him and appreciate him and be proud of him as an Englishman. If it wasnt for my respect for him, I wouldnt have stood your cheek for two days, let alone two months. But what I cant understand is why he didnt lick it out of you when you were a kid. For twenty-five years he kept a place twice as big as England in order: a place full of seditious coffee-colored heathens and pestilential white agitators in the middle of a lot of savage tribes. And yet he couldnt keep you in order. I dont set up to be half the man your father undoubtedly is; but, by George, it's lucky for you you were not my son. I dont hold with my own father's views about corporal punishment being wrong. It's necessary for some people; and I'd have tried it on you until you first learnt to howl and then to behave yourself.
BENTLEY. [contemptuously] Yes: behavior wouldnt come naturally to your son, would it?
JOHNNY. [stung into sudden violence] Now you keep a civil tongue in your head. I'll stand none of your snobbery. I'm just as proud of Tarleton's Underwear as you are of your father's title and his K.C.B., and all the rest of it. My father began in a little hole of a shop in Leeds no bigger than our pantry down the passage there. He--
BENTLEY. Oh yes: I know. Ive read it. "The Romance of Business, or The Story of Tarleton's Underwear. Please Take One!" I took one the day after I first met Hypatia. I went and bought half a dozen unshrinkable vests for her sake.
JOHNNY. Well: did they shrink?
BENTLEY. Oh, dont be a fool.
JOHNNY. Never mind whether I'm a fool or not. Did they shrink? Thats the point. Were they worth the money?
BENTLEY. I couldnt wear them: do you think my skin's as thick as your customers' hides? I'd as soon have dressed myself in a nutmeg grater.
JOHNNY. Pity your father didnt give your thin skin a jolly good lacing with a cane--!
BENTLEY. Pity you havnt got more than one idea! If you want to know, they did try that on me once, when I was a small kid. A silly governess did it. I yelled fit to bring down the house and went into convulsions and brain fever and that sort of thing for three weeks. So the old girl got the sack; and serve her right! After that, I was let do what I like. My father didnt want me to grow up a broken-spirited spaniel, which is your idea of a man, I suppose.
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