The Admirable Bashville E-Book

Bernard Shaw

• Herausgeber: muhammad ali
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) is revered as one of the great British dramatists, credited not only with memorable works, but the revival of the then-suffering English theatre. Shaw was born in Dublin, Ireland, left mostly to his own devices after his mother ran off to London to pursue a musical career. He educated himself for the most part, and eventually worked for a real estate agent. This experience founded in him a concern for social injustices, seeing poverty and general unfairness afoot, and would go on to address this in many of his works. In 1876, Shaw joined his mother in London where he would finally attain literary success. "The Admirable Bashville" is a short play based on Shaw's fourth novel "Cashel Byron's Profession", which was written in 1882 and later serialized. Though the novel was generally overlooked in England, it became surprisingly successful in the United States some years later. The novel and the play tell the story of Cashel Byron, a world champion prizefighter and his attempts to woo wealthy aristocrat Lydia Carew while hiding his illegal profession from her.

Leseprobe

Bernard Shaw

 

 

 

 

ACT I

A glade in Wiltstoken Park

Enter Lydia

Lydia. Ye leafy breasts and warm protecting wings

Of mother trees that hatch our tender souls,

And from the well of Nature in our hearts

Thaw the intolerable inch of ice

That bears the weight of all the stamping world.

Hear ye me sing to solitude that I,

Lydia Carew, the owner of these lands,

Albeit most rich, most learned, and most wise,

Am yet most lonely. What are riches worth

When wisdom with them comes to show the purse bearer

That life remains unpurchasable? Learning

Learns but one lesson: doubt! To excel all

Is, to be lonely. Oh, ye busy birds,

Engrossed with real needs, ye shameless trees

With arms outspread in welcome of the sun,

Your minds, bent singly to enlarge your lives,

Have given you wings and raised your delicate heads

High heavens above us crawlers.

[A rook sets up a great cawing; and the other birds

chatter loudly as a gust of wind sets the branches

swaying. She makes as though she would shew them

her sleeves.

Lo, the leaves

That hide my drooping boughs! Mock me—poor maid!—

Deride with joyous comfortable chatter

These stolen feathers. Laugh at me, the clothed one.

Laugh at the mind fed on foul air and books.

Books! Art! And Culture! Oh, I shall go mad.

Give me a mate that never heard of these,

A sylvan god, tree born in heart and sap;

Or else, eternal maidhood be my hap.

[Another gust of wind and bird-chatter. She sits on

the mossy root of an oak and buries her face in her

hands. Cashel Byron, in a white singlet and

breeches, comes through the trees.

CASHEL. What's this? Whom have we here? A woman!

LYDIA [looking up]. Yes.

CASHEL. You have no business here. I have. Away!

Women distract me. Hence!

LYDIA. Bid you me hence?

I am upon mine own ground. Who are you?

I take you for a god, a sylvan god.

This place is mine: I share it with the birds,

The trees, the sylvan gods, the lovely company

Of haunted solitudes.

CASHEL. A sylvan god!

A goat-eared image! Do your statues speak?

Walk? heave the chest with breath? or like a feather

Lift you—like this? [He sets her on her feet.

LYDIA [panting]. You take away my breath!

You're strong. Your hands off, please. Thank you. Farewell.

CASHEL. Before you go: when shall we meet again?

LYDIA. Why should we meet again?

CASHEL. Who knows? We shall.

That much I know by instinct. What's your name?

LYDIA. Lydia Carew.

CASHEL. Lydia's a pretty name.

Where do you live?

LYDIA. I' the castle.

CASHEL [thunderstruck]. Do not say

You are the lady of this great domain.

LYDIA. I am.

CASHEL. Accursed luck! I took you for

The daughter of some farmer. Well, your pardon.

I came too close: I looked too deep. Farewell.

LYDIA. I pardon that. Now tell me who you are.

CASHEL. Ask me not whence I come, nor what I am.

You are the lady of the castle. I

Have but this hard and blackened hand to live by.

LYDIA. I have felt its strength and envied you. Your name?

I have told you mine.

CASHEL. My name is Cashel Byron.

LYDIA. I never heard the name; and yet you utter it

As men announce a celebrated name.

Forgive my ignorance.

CASHEL. I bless it, Lydia.

I have forgot your other name.

LYDIA. Carew.

Cashel's a pretty name, too.

MELLISH [calling through the wood]. Coo-ee! Byron!

CASHEL. A thousand curses! Oh, I beg you, go.

This is a man you must not meet.

MELLISH [further off]. Coo-ee!

LYDIA. He's losing us. What does he in my woods?

CASHEL. He is a part of what I am. What that is

You must not know. It would end all between us.

And yet there's no dishonor in't: your lawyer,

Who let your lodge to me, will vouch me honest.

I am ashamed to tell you what I am—

At least, as yet. Some day, perhaps.

MELLISH [nearer]. Coo-ee!

LYDIA. His voice is nearer. Fare you well, my tenant.

When next your rent falls due, come to the castle.

Pay me in person. Sir: your most obedient. [She curtsies and goes.

CASHEL. Lives in this castle! Owns this park! A lady

Marry a prizefighter! Impossible.

And yet the prizefighter must marry her.

Enter Mellish

Ensanguined swine, whelped by a doggish dam,

Is this thy park, that thou, with voice obscene,

Fillst it with yodeled yells, and screamst my name

For all the world to know that Cashel Byron

Is training here for combat.

MELLISH. Swine you me?

I've caught you, have I? You have found a woman.

Let her shew here again, I'll set the dog on her.

I will. I say it. And my name's Bob Mellish.

CASHEL. Change thy initial and be truly hight

Hellish. As for thy dog, why dost thou keep one

And bark thyself? Begone.

MELLISH. I'll not begone.

You shall come back with me and do your duty—

Your duty to your backers, do you hear?

You have not punched the bag this blessed day.

CASHEL. The putrid bag engirdled by thy belt

Invites my fist.

MELLISH [weeping]. Ingrate! O wretched lot!

Who would a trainer be? O Mellish, Mellish,

Trainer of heroes, builder-up of brawn,

Vicarious victor, thou createst champions

That quickly turn thy tyrants. But beware:

Without me thou art nothing. Disobey me,

And all thy boasted strength shall fall from thee.

With flaccid muscles and with failing breath

Facing the fist of thy more faithful foe,

I'll see thee on the grass cursing the day

Thou didst forswear thy training.

CASHEL. Noisome quack

That canst not from thine own abhorrent visage

Take one carbuncle, thou contaminat'st

Even with thy presence my untainted blood

Preach abstinence to rascals like thyself

Rotten with surfeiting. Leave me in peace.

This grove is sacred: thou profanest it.

Hence! I have business that concerns thee not.

MELLISH. Ay, with your woman. You will lose your fight.

Have you forgot your duty to your backers?

Oh, what a sacred thing your duty is!