The end of a saloon in an old-fashioned country house (Florence Towers, the property of Count O'Dowda) has been curtained off to form a stage for a private theatrical performance. A footman in grandiose Spanish livery enters before the curtain, on its O.P. side.
FOOTMAN . [announcing] Mr Cecil Savoyard. [Cecil Savoyard comes in: a middle-aged man in evening dress and a fur-lined overcoat. He is surprised to find nobody to receive him. So is the Footman]. Oh, beg pardon, sir: I thought the Count was here. He was when I took up your name. He must have gone through the stage into the library. This way, sir. [He moves towards the division in the middle of the curtains].
SAVOYARD. Half a mo. [The Footman stops]. When does the play begin? Halfpast eight?
FOOTMAN. Nine, sir.
SAVOYARD. Oh, good. Well, will you telephone to my wife at the George that it's not until nine?
FOOTMAN. Right, sir. Mrs Cecil Savoyard, sir?
SAVOYARD. No: Mrs William Tinkler. Dont forget.
THE FOOTMAN . Mrs Tinkler, sir. Right, sir. [The Count comes in through the curtains]. Here is the Count, sir. [Announcing] Mr Cecil Savoyard, sir. [He withdraws].
COUNT O'DOWDA . [A handsome man of fifty, dressed with studied elegance a hundred years out of date, advancing cordially to shake hands with his visitor] Pray excuse me, Mr Savoyard. I suddenly recollected that all the bookcases in the library were locked--in fact theyve never been opened since we came from Venice--and as our literary guests will probably use the library a good deal, I just ran in to unlock everything.
SAVOYARD . Oh, you mean the dramatic critics. M'yes. I suppose theres a smoking room?
THE COUNT. My study is available. An old-fashioned house, you understand. Wont you sit down, Mr Savoyard?
SAVOYARD. Thanks. [They sit. Savoyard, looking at his host's obsolete costume, continues] I had no idea you were going to appear in the piece yourself.
THE COUNT. I am not. I wear this costume because--well, perhaps I had better explain the position, if it interests you.
SAVOYARD. Certainly.
THE COUNT . Well, you see, Mr Savoyard, I'm rather a stranger in your world. I am not, I hope, a modern man in any sense of the word. I'm not really an Englishman: my family is Irish: Ive lived all my life in Italy--in Venice mostly--my very title is a foreign one: I am a Count of the Holy Roman Empire.
SAVOYARD. Where's that?
THE COUNT . At present, nowhere, except as a memory and an ideal. [Savoyard inclines his head respectfully to the ideal]. But I am by no means an idealogue. I am not content with beautiful dreams: I want beautiful realities.
SAVOYARD. Hear, hear! I'm all with you there--when you can get them.
THE COUNT . Why not get them? The difficulty is not that there are no beautiful realities, Mr Savoyard: the difficulty is that so few of us know them when we see them. We have inherited from the past a vast treasure of beauty--of imperishable masterpieces of poetry, of painting, of sculpture, of architecture, of music, of exquisite fashions in dress, in furniture, in domestic decoration. We can contemplate these treasures. We can reproduce many of them. We can buy a few inimitable originals. We can shut out the nineteenth century--
SAVOYARD. [correcting him] The twentieth.
THE COUNT . To me the century I shut out will always be the nineteenth century, just as your national anthem will always be God Save the Queen, no matter how many kings may succeed. I found England befouled with industrialism: well, I did what Byron did: I simply refused to live in it. You remember Byron's words: "I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country. I believe the thought would drive me mad on my deathbed could I suppose that any of my friends would be base enough to convey my carcase back to her soil. I would not even feed her worms if I could help it."
SAVOYARD. Did Byron say that?
THE COUNT. He did, sir.
SAVOYARD. It dont sound like him. I saw a good deal of him at one time.
THE COUNT. You! But how is that possible? You are too young.
SAVOYARD. I was quite a lad, of course. But I had a job in the original production of Our Boys.
THE COUNT. My dear sir, not that Byron. Lord Byron, the poet.
SAVOYARD. Oh, I beg your pardon. I thought you were talking of the Byron. So you prefer living abroad?
THE COUNT . I find England ugly and Philistine. Well, I dont live in it. I find modern houses ugly. I dont live in them: I have a palace on the grand canal. I find modern clothes prosaic. I dont wear them, except, of course, in the street. My ears are offended by the Cockney twang: I keep out of hearing of it and speak and listen to Italian. I find Beethoven's music coarse and restless, and Wagner's senseless and detestable. I do not listen to them. I listen to Cimarosa, to Pergolesi, to Gluck and Mozart. Nothing simpler, sir.
SAVOYARD. It's all right when you can afford it.
THE COUNT . Afford it! My dear Mr Savoyard, if you are a man with a sense of beauty you can make an earthly paradise for yourself in Venice on 1500 pounds a year, whilst our wretched vulgar industrial millionaires are spending twenty thousand on the amusements of billiard markers. I assure you I am a poor man according to modern ideas. But I have never had anything less than the very best that life has produced. It is my good fortune to have a beautiful and lovable daughter; and that girl, sir, has never seen an ugly sight or heard an ugly sound that I could spare her; and she has certainly never worn an ugly dress or tasted coarse food or bad wine in her life. She has lived in a palace; and her perambulator was a gondola. Now you know the sort of people we are, Mr Savoyard. You can imagine how we feel here.
SAVOYARD. Rather out of it, eh?
THE COUNT. Out of it, sir! Out of what?
SAVOYARD. Well, out of everything.
THE COUNT . Out of soot and fog and mud and east wind; out of vulgarity and ugliness, hypocrisy and greed, superstition and stupidity. Out of all this, and in the sunshine, in the enchanted region of which great artists alone have had the secret, in the sacred footsteps of Byron, of Shelley, of the Brownings, of Turner and Ruskin. Dont you envy me, Mr Savoyard?
SAVOYARD . Some of us must live in England, you know, just to keep the place going. Besides--though, mind you, I dont say it isnt all right from the high art point of view and all that--three weeks of it would drive me melancholy mad. However, I'm glad you told me, because it explains why it is you dont seem to know your way about much in England. I hope, by the way, that everything has given satisfaction to your daughter.
THE COUNT . She seems quite satisfied. She tells me that the actors you sent down are perfectly suited to their parts, and very nice people to work with. I understand she had some difficulties at the first rehearsals with the gentleman you call the producer, because he hadnt read the play; but the moment he found out what it was all about everything went smoothly.
SAVOYARD. Havnt you seen the rehearsals?
THE COUNT . Oh no. I havnt been allowed even to meet any of the company. All I can tell you is that the hero is a Frenchman [Savoyard is rather scandalized]: I asked her not to have an English hero. That is all I know. [Ruefully] I havnt been consulted even about the costumes, though there, I think, I could have been some use.
SAVOYARD. [puzzled] But there arnt any costumes.
THE COUNT. [seriously shocked] What! No costumes! Do you mean to say it is a modern play?
SAVOYARD . I dont know: I didnt read it. I handed it to Billy Burjoyce--the producer, you know--and left it to him to select the company and so on. But I should have had to order the costumes if there had been any. There wernt.
THE COUNT . [smiling as he recovers from his alarm] I understand. She has taken the costumes into her own hands. She is an expert in beautiful costumes. I venture to promise you, Mr Savoyard, that what you are about to see will be like a Louis Quatorze ballet painted by Watteau. The heroine will be an exquisite Columbine, her lover a dainty Harlequin, her father a picturesque Pantaloon, and the valet who hoodwinks the father and brings about the happiness of the lovers a grotesque but perfectly tasteful Punchinello or Mascarille or Sganarelle.
SAVOYARD . I see. That makes three men; and the clown and policeman will make five. Thats why you wanted five men in the company.
THE COUNT. My dear sir, you dont suppose I mean that vulgar, ugly, silly, senseless, malicious and destructive thing, the harlequinade of a nineteenth century English Christmas pantomime! What was it after all but a stupid attempt to imitate the success made by the genius of Grimaldi a hundred years ago? My daughter does not know of the existence of such a thing. I refer to the graceful and charming fantasies of the Italian and French stages of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
SAVOYARD . Oh, I beg pardon. I quite agree that harlequinades are rot. Theyve been dropped at all smart theatres. But from what Billy Burjoyce told me I got the idea that your daughter knew her way about here, and had seen a lot of plays. He had no idea she'd been away in Venice all the time.
THE COUNT . Oh, she has not been. I should have explained that two years ago my daughter left me to complete her education at Cambridge. Cambridge was my own University; and though of course there were no women there in my time, I felt confident that if the atmosphere of the eighteenth century still existed anywhere in England, it would be at Cambridge. About three months ago she wrote to me and asked whether I wished to give her a present on her next birthday. Of course I said yes; and she then astonished and delighted me by telling me that she had written a play, and that the present she wanted was a private performance of it with real actors and real critics.
SAVOYARD . Yes: thats what staggered me. It was easy enough to engage a company for a private performance: it's done often enough. But the notion of having critics was new. I hardly knew how to set about it. They dont expect private engagements; and so they have no agents. Besides, I didnt know what to offer them. I knew that they were cheaper than actors, because they get long engagements: forty years sometimes; but thats no rule for a single job. Then theres such a lot of them: on first nights they run away with all your stalls: you cant find a decent place for your own mother. It would have cost a fortune to bring the lot.
THE COUNT. Of course I never dreamt of having them all. Only a few first-rate representative men.
SAVOYARD . Just so. All you want is a few sample opinions. Out of a hundred notices you wont find more than four at the outside that say anything different. Well, Ive got just the right four for you. And what do you think it has cost me?
THE COUNT. [shrugging his shoulders] I cannot guess.
SAVOYARD . Ten guineas, and expenses. I had to give Flawner Bannal ten. He wouldnt come for less; and he asked fifty. I had to give it, because if we hadnt had him we might just as well have had nobody at all.
THE COUNT. But what about the others, if Mr Flannel--
SAVOYARD. [shocked] Flawner Bannal.
THE COUNT. --if Mr Bannal got the whole ten?
SAVOYARD. Oh, I managed that. As this is a high-class sort of thing, the first man I went for was Trotter.
THE COUNT. Oh indeed. I am very glad you have secured Mr Trotter. I have read his Playful Impressions.
SAVOYARD . Well, I was rather in a funk about him. Hes not exactly what I call approachable; and he was a bit stand-off at first. But when I explained and told him your daughter--
THE COUNT. [interrupting in alarm] You did not say that the play was by her, I hope?
SAVOYARD . No: thats been kept a dead secret. I just said your daughter has asked for a real play with a real author and a real critic and all the rest of it. The moment I mentioned the daughter I had him. He has a daughter of his own. Wouldnt hear of payment! Offered to come just to please her! Quite human. I was surprised.
THE COUNT. Extremely kind of him.
SAVOYARD . Then I went to Vaughan, because he does music as well as the drama: and you said you thought there would be music. I told him Trotter would feel lonely without him; so he promised like a bird. Then I thought youd like one of the latest sort: the chaps that go for the newest things and swear theyre oldfashioned. So I nailed Gilbert Gunn. The four will give you a representative team. By the way [looking at his watch] theyll be here presently.
THE COUNT . Before they come, Mr Savoyard, could you give me any hints about them that would help me to make a little conversation with them? I am, as you said, rather out of it in England; and I might unwittingly say something tactless.
SAVOYARD . Well, let me see. As you dont like English people, I dont know that youll get on with Trotter, because hes thoroughly English: never happy except when hes in Paris, and speaks French so unnecessarily well that everybody there spots him as an Englishman the moment he opens his mouth. Very witty and all that. Pretends to turn up his nose at the theatre and says people make too much fuss about art [the Count is extremely indignant]. But thats only his modesty, because art is his own line, you understand. Mind you dont chaff him about Aristotle.
THE COUNT. Why should I chaff him about Aristotle?
SAVOYARD . Well, I dont know; but its one of the recognized ways of chaffing him. However, youll get on with him all right: hes a man of the world and a man of sense. The one youll have to be careful about is Vaughan.
THE COUNT. In what way, may I ask?
SAVOYARD . Well, Vaughan has no sense of humor; and if you joke with him he'll think youre insulting him on purpose. Mind: it's not that he doesnt see a joke: he does; and it hurts him. A comedy scene makes him sore all over: he goes away black and blue, and pitches into the play for all hes worth.
THE COUNT. But surely that is a very serious defect in a man of his profession?
SAVOYARD . Yes it is, and no mistake. But Vaughan is honest, and dont care a brass farthing what he says, or whether it pleases anybody or not; and you must have one man of that sort to say the things that nobody else will say.
THE COUNT . It seems to me to carry the principle of division of labor too far, this keeping of the honesty and the other qualities in separate compartments. What is Mr Gunn's speciality, if I may ask?
SAVOYARD. Gunn is one of the intellectuals.
THE COUNT. But arnt they all intellectuals?
SAVOYARD . Lord! no: heaven forbid! You must be careful what you say about that: I shouldnt like anyone to call me an Intellectual: I dont think any Englishman would! They dont count really, you know; but still it's rather the thing to have them. Gunn is one of the young intellectuals: he writes plays himself. Hes useful because he pitches into the older intellectuals who are standing in his way. But you may take it from me that none of these chaps really matter. Flawner Bannal's your man. Bannal really represents the British playgoer. When he likes a thing, you may take your oath there are a hundred thousand people in London thatll like it if they can only be got to know about it. Besides, Bannal's knowledge of the theatre is an inside knowledge. We know him; and he knows us. He knows the ropes: he knows his way about: he knows what hes talking about.
THE COUNT. [with a little sigh] Age and experience, I suppose?
SAVOYARD . Age! I should put him at twenty at the very outside, myself. It's not an old man's job after all, is it? Bannal may not ride the literary high horse like Trotter and the rest; but I'd take his opinion before any other in London. Hes the man in the street; and thats what you want.
THE COUNT. I am almost sorry you didnt give the gentleman his full terms. I should not have grudged the fifty guineas for a sound opinion. He may feel shabbily treated.
SAVOYARD . Well, let him. It was a bit of side, his asking fifty. After all, what is he? Only a pressman. Jolly good business for him to earn ten guineas: hes done the same job often enough for half a quid, I expect.
Fanny O'Dowda comes precipitately through the curtains, excited and nervous. A girl of nineteen in a dress synchronous with her father's.
FANNY. Papa, papa, the critics have come. And one of them has a cocked hat and sword like a-- [she notices Savoyard] Oh, I beg your pardon.
THE COUNT. This is Mr Savoyard, your impresario, my dear.
FANNY. [shaking hands] How do you do?
SAVOYARD . Pleased to meet you, Miss O'Dowda. The cocked hat is all right. Trotter is a member of the new Academic Committee. He induced them to go in for a uniform like the French Academy; and I asked him to wear it.
THE FOOTMAN . [announcing] Mr Trotter, Mr Vaughan, Mr Gunn, Mr Flawner Bannal. [The four critics enter. Trotter wears a diplomatic dress, with sword and three-cornered hat. His age is about 50. Vaughan is 40. Gunn is 30. Flawner Bannal is 20 and is quite unlike the others. They can be classed at sight as professional men: Bannal is obviously one of those unemployables of the business class who manage to pick up a living by a sort of courage which gives him cheerfulness, conviviality, and bounce, and is helped out positively by a slight turn for writing, and negatively by a comfortable ignorance and lack of intuition which hides from him all the dangers and disgraces that keep men of finer perception in check. The Count approaches them hospitably].
SAVOYARD. Count O'Dowda, gentlemen. Mr Trotter.
TROTTER. [looking at the Count's costume] Have I the pleasure of meeting a confrere?
THE COUNT . No, sir: I have no right to my costume except the right of a lover of the arts to dress myself handsomely. You are most welcome, Mr Trotter. [Trotter bows in the French manner].
SAVOYARD. Mr Vaughan.
THE COUNT. How do you do, Mr Vaughan?
VAUGHAN. Quite well, thanks.
SAVOYARD. Mr Gunn.
THE COUNT. Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr Gunn.
GUNN. Very pleased.
SAVOYARD. Mr Flawner Bannal.
THE COUNT. Very kind of you to come, Mr Bannal.
BANNAL. Dont mention it.
THE COUNT . Gentlemen, my daughter. [They all bow]. We are very greatly indebted to you, gentlemen, for so kindly indulging her whim. [The dressing bell sounds. The Count looks at his watch]. Ah! The dressing bell, gentlemen. As our play begins at nine, I have had to put forward the dinner hour a little. May I shew you to your rooms? [He goes out, followed by all the men, except Trotter, who, going last, is detained by Fanny].
FANNY. Mr Trotter: I want to say something to you about this play.
TROTTER. No: thats forbidden. You must not attempt to souffler the critic.
FANNY. Oh, I would not for the world try to influence your opinion.
TROTTER . But you do: you are influencing me very shockingly. You invite me to this charming house, where I'm about to enjoy a charming dinner. And just before the dinner I'm taken aside by a charming young lady to be talked to about the play. How can you expect me to be impartial? God forbid that I should set up to be a judge, or do more than record an impression; but my impressions can be influenced; and in this case youre influencing them shamelessly all the time.
FANNY. Dont make me more nervous than I am already, Mr Trotter. If you knew how I feel!
TROTTER. Naturally: your first party: your first appearance in England as hostess. But youre doing it beautifully. Dont be afraid. Every nuance is perfect.
FANNY . It's so kind of you to say so, Mr Trotter. But that isnt whats the matter. The truth is, this play is going to give my father a dreadful shock.
TROTTER. Nothing unusual in that, I'm sorry to say. Half the young ladies in London spend their evenings making their fathers take them to plays that are not fit for elderly people to see.
FANNY. Oh, I know all about that; but you cant understand what it means to Papa. Youre not so innocent as he is.
TROTTER. [remonstrating] My dear young lady--
FANNY. I dont mean morally innocent: everybody who reads your articles knows youre as innocent as a lamb.
TROTTER. What!
FANNY . Yes, Mr Trotter: Ive seen a good deal of life since I came to England; and I assure you that to me youre a mere baby: a dear, good, well-meaning, delightful, witty, charming baby; but still just a wee lamb in a world of wolves. Cambridge is not what it was in my father's time.
TROTTER. Well, I must say!
FANNY. Just so. Thats one of our classifications in the Cambridge Fabian Society.
TROTTER. Classifications? I dont understand.
FANNY. We classify our aunts into different sorts. And one of the sorts is the "I must says."
TROTTER . I withdraw "I must say." I substitute "Blame my cats!" No: I substitute "Blame my kittens!" Observe, Miss O'Dowda: kittens. I say again in the teeth of the whole Cambridge Fabian Society, kittens. Impertinent little kittens. Blame them. Smack them. I guess what is on your conscience. This play to which you have lured me is one of those in which members of Fabian Societies instruct their grandmothers in the art of milking ducks. And you are afraid it will shock your father. Well, I hope it will. And if he consults me about it I shall recommend him to smack you soundly and pack you off to bed.
FANNY . Thats one of your prettiest literary attitudes, Mr Trotter; but it doesnt take me in. You see, I'm much more conscious of what you really are than you are yourself, because weve discussed you thoroughly at Cambridge; and youve never discussed yourself, have you?
TROTTER. I-
FANNY. Of course you havnt; so you see it's no good Trottering at me.
TROTTER. Trottering!
FANNY. Thats what we call it at Cambridge.
TROTTER . If it were not so obviously a stage cliche, I should say Damn Cambridge. As it is, I blame my kittens. And now let me warn you. If youre going to be a charming healthy young English girl, you may coax me. If youre going to be an unsexed Cambridge Fabian virago, I'll treat you as my intellectual equal, as I would treat a man.
FANNY. [adoringly] But how few men are your intellectual equals, Mr Trotter!
TROTTER. I'm getting the worst of this.
FANNY. Oh no. Why do you say that?
TROTTER. May I remind you that the dinner-bell will ring presently?
FANNY. What does it matter? We're both ready. I havnt told you yet what I want you to do for me.
TROTTER. Nor have you particularly predisposed me to do it, except out of pure magnanimity. What is it?
FANNY . I dont mind this play shocking my father morally. It's good for him to be shocked morally. It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date. But I know that this play will shock him artistically; and that terrifies me. No moral consideration could make a breach between us: he would forgive me for anything of that kind sooner or later; but he never gives way on a point of art. I darent let him know that I love Beethoven and Wagner; and as to Strauss, if he heard three bars of Elektra, it'd part us for ever. Now what I want you to do is this. If hes very angry--if he hates the play, because it's a modern play--will you tell him that it's not my fault; that its style and construction, and so forth, are considered the very highest art nowadays; that the author wrote it in the proper way for repertory theatres of the most superior kind--you know the kind of plays I mean?
TROTTER . [emphatically] I think I know the sort of entertainments you mean. But please do not beg a vital question by calling them plays. I dont pretend to be an authority; but I have at least established the fact that these productions, whatever else they may be, are certainly not plays.
FANNY. The authors dont say they are.
TROTTER . [warmly] I am aware that one author, who is, I blush to say, a personal friend of mine, resorts freely to the dastardly subterfuge of calling them conversations, discussions, and so forth, with the express object of evading criticism. But I'm not to be disarmed by such tricks. I say they are not plays. Dialogues, if you will. Exhibitions of character, perhaps: especially the character of the author. Fictions, possibly, though a little decent reticence as to introducing actual persons, and thus violating the sanctity of private life, might not be amiss. But plays, no. I say NO. Not plays. If you will not concede this point I cant continue our conversation. I take this seriously. It's a matter of principle. I must ask you, Miss O'Dowda, before we go a step further, Do you or do you not claim that these works are plays?
FANNY. I assure you I dont.
TROTTER. Not in any sense of the word?
FANNY. Not in any sense of the word. I loathe plays.
TROTTER. [disappointed] That last remark destroys all the value of your admission. You admire these--these theatrical nondescripts? You enjoy them?
FANNY. Dont you?
TROTTER . Of course I do. Do you take me for a fool? Do you suppose I prefer popular melodramas? Have I not written most appreciative notices of them? But I say theyre not plays. Theyre not plays. I cant consent to remain in this house another minute if anything remotely resembling them is to be foisted on me as a play.
FANNY. I fully admit that theyre not plays. I only want you to tell my father that plays are not plays nowadays--not in your sense of the word.
TROTTER. Ah, there you go again! In my sense of the word! You believe that my criticism is merely a personal impression; that--
FANNY. You always said it was.
TROTTER. Pardon me: not on this point. If you had been classically educated--
FANNY. But I have.
TROTTER . Pooh! Cambridge! If you had been educated at Oxford, you would know that the definition of a play has been settled exactly and scientifically for two thousand two hundred and sixty years. When I say that these entertainments are not plays, I dont mean in my sense of the word, but in the sense given to it for all time by the immortal Stagirite.
FANNY. Who is the Stagirite?
TROTTER. [shocked] You dont know who the Stagirite was?
FANNY. Sorry. Never heard of him.
TROTTER . And this is Cambridge education! Well, my dear young lady, I'm delighted to find theres something you don't know; and I shant spoil you by dispelling an ignorance which, in my opinion, is highly becoming to your age and sex. So we'll leave it at that.
FANNY. But you will promise to tell my father that lots of people write plays just like this one--that I havnt selected it out of mere heartlessness?
TROTTER . I c