Playwrights From England

"Usual messages from the heads of the establishment. The Queen from Windsor, the Pope from Rome: Pilate and Caiaphas celebrating the birth of Christ."

"Prentice: What this young woman claims is a tissue of lies. Match: This is a boy, sir. Not a girl. If you're baffled by the difference it might be as well to approach both with caution."

"Mrs Prentice: Are you ashamed of the fact that you write to strange men? Prentice: There's nothing furtive in my relationship with the editor of The Guardian."

"Nick: I'm sorry if my behaviour last night caused your wife anxiety, but I've a burning desire to sleep with every woman I meet. Prentice: That's a filthy habit and, in my opinion, very injurious to the health. Nick: It is, sir. My health's never been the same since I went off stamp-collecting. Prentice: We have an overall moral policy in this clinic from which even I am not exempt. Whilst you're with us I shall expect you to show an interest in no one's sexual organs but your own. Nick: I would miss a lot of fun that way. Prentice: That is the object of the exercise."

"Rance: How shocking! His abnormal condition has driven him to seek refuge in religion. Always the last ditch stand of a man on the brink of disaster."

"Geraldine: We must tell the truth! Prentice: That's a thoroughly defeatist attitude."

"Prentice: It's a fascinating theory, sir, and cleverly put together. Does it tie in with known facts? Rance: That need not cause us undue anxiety. Civilizations have been founded and maintained on theories which refused to obey facts."

"Geraldine: At least give me back my clothes. I feel naked without them."

"On the bus going home I heard a most fascinating conversation between an old man and woman. "What a thing, though," the old woman said. "You'd hardly credit it." "She's always made a fuss of the whole family, but never me," the old man said. "Does she have a fire when the young people go to see her?" "Fire?" "She won't get people seeing her without warmth." "I know why she's doing it. Don't think I don't," the old man said. "My sister she said to me, 'I wish I had your easy life.' Now that upset me. I was upset by the way she phrased herself. 'Don't talk to me like that,' I said. 'I've only got to get on the phone and ring a certain number,' I said, 'to have you stopped.'" "Yes," the old woman said, "And you can, can't you?" "Were they always the same?" she said. "When you was a child? Can you throw yourself back? How was they years ago?" "The same," the old man said. "Wicked, isn't it?" the old woman said. "Take care, now" she said, as the old man left her. He didn't say a word but got off the bus looking disgruntled."

"Rance: A search party must be organized. What have you in the way of dogs? Prentice: A spaniel and a miniature poodle. Rance: Let them be unleashed!"

"Mrs Prentice: My uterine contractions have been bogus for some time! Prentice: What a discovery! Married to the mistress of the fraudulent climax."

"Mrs Prentice: Have you taken up transvestism? I'd no idea our marriage teetered on the edge of fashion."

"Mrs Prentice: You put me in an impossible position. Nick: No position is impossible when you're young and healthy."

"Rance: You may speak freely in front of me. I represent Her Majesty's Government. Your immediate superiors in madness. I'm from the Commissioners. Prentice: Which branch? Rance: The mental branch. Prentice: Do you cover asylums proper? Or just houses of tentative madness? Rance: My brief is infinite. I'd have sway over a rabbit hutch if the inmates were mentally disturbed."

"McLeavy: I'm innocent. (A little unsure of himself, the beginnings of panic) Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"Geraldine: I've no idea who my father was. Prentice: I'd better be frank, Miss Barclay. I can't employ you if you're in any way miraculous. It would be contrary to established practice. You did have a father? Geraldine: Oh, I'm sure I did. My mother was frugal in her habits, but she'd never economize unwisely."

"Geraldine: I'm quite sane! Rance: Pull yourself together. Why have you been certified if you're sane? Even for a madwoman you're unusually dense."

"Nick: I've also found someone to take an option on the photographs. Mrs Prentice: What photographs? Nick: I had a camera concealed in the room. Mrs Prentice: When I gave myself to you the contract didn't include cinematic rights. Nick: I'd like a hundred quid for the negatives. You've got until lunchtime. Mrs Prentice: I shall complain to the manager. Nick: It will do you no good. He took the photographs. Mrs. Prentice: Oh, this is scandalous! I'm a married woman. Nick: You didn't behave like a married woman last night."

"Truscott: How dare you involve me in a situation for which no memo has been issued."

"McLeavy: Has no one considered my feelings in all this? Truscott: What percentage do you want? McLeavy: I don't want money. I'm an honest man. Truscott: You'll have to mend your ways then."

"McLeavy: Where did I go wrong? His upbringing was faultless. Did you lead him astray? Dennis: I was innocent till I met him. Hal: You met me when you were three days old."

"Fay: Have you given a thought to the priest? Truscott: We can't have him in on it, miss. Our percentage wouldn't be worth having. Fay: Mr McLeavy threatened to expose us. Truscott: I've been exposed before. Fay: What happened? Truscott: I arrested the man. He's doing twelve years."

"Truscott: You're fucking nicked, my old beauty. You've found to your cost that the standards of the British police force are as high as ever. McLeavy: What am I charged with? Truscott: That needn't concern you for the moment. We'll fill in the details later. McLeavy: You can't do this. I've always been a law-abiding citizen. The police are for the protection of ordinary people. Truscott: I don't know where you pick up these slogans, sir. You must read them on hoardings."

"Rance: Were your relations with your secretary normal? Prentice: Yes. Rance: Well, Prentice, your private life is your own affair. I find it shocking none the less."

"McLeavy: My duty is clear. Truscott: Only the authorities can decide when your duty is clear. Wild guesses by persons like yourself can only cause confusion."

"On our way home we were waiting for the bus when a very fat, pompous-looking woman reeled out of a pub shouting, "Melancholia? Ad nauseam.""

"Truscott (shouting, knocking Hal to the floor): Under any other political system I'd have you on the floor in tears! Hal (crying): You've got me on the floor in tears!"

"Truscott: And you complain you were beaten? Dennis: Yes. Truscott: Did you tell anyone? Dennis: Yes. Truscott: Who? Dennis: The officer in charge. Truscott: What did he say? Dennis: Nothing. Truscott: Why not? Dennis: He was out of breath with kicking."

"Truscott: Why aren't you both at the funeral? I thought you were mourners. Fay: We decided not to go. We were afraid we might break down. Truscott: That's a selfish attitude to take. The dead can't bury themselves, you know."

"Truscott: Do you realize what I'm doing here? McLeavy: No. Your every action has been a mystery to me. Truscott: That is as it should be. The process by which the police arrive at the solution to a mystery is, in itself, a mystery."

"Fay: The Ten Commandments. She was a great believer in some of them."

"Dennis: She's turned me down. She's broken my heart. Hal: She doesn't know what she is missing, baby. Dennis: But she does! That's what's so humiliating."

"Fay: I'm innocent till I'm proved guilty. This is a free country. The law is impartial. Truscott: Who's been filling your head with that rubbish? Fay: I can't be had for anything. You've no proof. Truscott: When I make out my report I shall say you've given me a confession. It could prejudice your case if I have to forge one."

"Fay: Your explanation had the ring of truth about it.. Naturally I disbelieved every word."

"Fay: The priest at St Kilda's has asked me to speak to you. He's very worried. He says you spend your time thieving from slot machines and deflowering the daughters of better men than yourself. Is this a fact? Hal: Yes. Fay: And even the sex you were born into isn't safe from your marauding. Father Mac is popular for the remission of sins, as you know. But clearing up after you is a full-time job. He simply cannot be in the confessional twenty-four hours a day. That's reasonable, isn't it? You do see his point?"

"Fay: Have you known him long? Hal: We shared the same cradle. Fay: Was that economy or malpractice? Hal: We were too young then to practice and economics still defeat us."

"Fay: You've been a widower for three days. Have you considered remarrying yet? McLeavy: No. Fay: Why not? McLeavy: I've been so busy with the funeral."

"Fay: What will you do when you're old? Hal: I shall die. Fay: I see you're determined to run the gamut of all experience."

"Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by Grove Press, and this fictional account of the day-by-day life of an English gamekeeper is still of considerable interest to outdoor-minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour these sidelights on the management of a Midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion this book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's Practical Gamekeeping."

"Hal: Bury her naked? My own mum? It's a Freudian nightmare. Dennis: I won't disagree. Hal: Aren't we committing some kind of unforgivable sin? Dennis: Only if you're a Catholic. Hal: I am a Catholic. I can't undress her. She's a relative. I can go to Hell for it. Dennis: I'll undress her then. I don't believe in Hell. Hal: That's typical of your upbringing, baby. Every luxury was lavished on you - atheism, breast-feeding, circumcision. I had to make my own way."

"Hal: God is a gentleman. He prefers blondes."

"I was approached to do a film script for the Beatles. I said it would have to be an absolutely original script. Paul McCartney said do whatever you like. I said that means you'll never be able to do it."

"I had a feeling that Pandora's box contained the mysteries of woman's sensuality, so different from man's and for which man's language was inadequate. The language of sex had yet to be invented. The language of the senses was yet to be explored. D. H. Lawrence began to give instinct a language, he tried to escape the clinical, the scientific, which only captures what the body feels."

"You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death."

"These women discerned in Lawrence something primitive, something akin to their own nature. Like them, he had a taste for magic. His wife has said that he alone could teach human beings the art of living. Frail as he was, and so near to death, he had a religious awareness of moments of happiness. Before living with him, she declared, she had not lived at all. Those are the words of a woman whole-heartedly in love... Above all, he offered them that mixture of strength and weakness which satisfies women more than any other trait, because it rouses at once the maternal and the lover's passion."

"The way he writes about flowers and birds and turtles always gets me. I like it much better than when he writes about sex in people. It's much less self-serving (You don't want that orgasm, Frieda, really you don't) and rooted in empathy."

"Lawrence was a powerful early influence on me, Forster a more enduring one."

"The number of people who can copulate properly may be few; the number who can write well are infinitely fewer."

"He had a mystical philosophy of "blood" which I disliked. "There is," he said, "another seat of consciousness than the brain and nerves. There is a blood consciousness which exists in us independently of the ordinary mental consciousness. One lives, knows and has one's being in the blood, without any reference to nerves and brain. This is one half of life belonging to the darkness. When I take a woman, then the blood percept is supreme. My blood knowing is overwhelming. We should realize that we have a blood being, a blood consciousness, a blood soul complete and apart from a mental and nerve consciousness." This seemed to me frankly rubbish, and I rejected it vehemently, though I did not then know that it led straight to Auschwitz."

"What was the secret of this power which Lawrence had over women? The art of pleasing? But he was brutal and often offensive. He forced Frieda, accustomed to a life of comfort, to wash clothes, do the kitchen work, carry bedroom pails. In moments of anger he would throw crockery about. Sometimes he struck her, and she struck back. To some of his friends who had difficulty in getting on with their wives, he would advise them to use physical force."