Shaw / Cooke Mrs. Warren's Profession

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-78850-904-6
Verlag: Nick Hern Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 72 Seiten

Reihe: NHB Classic Plays

'I am my mother's daughter. I am like you. But my work is not your work, and my way is not your way.' Vivie Warren is a woman ahead of her time. Estranged from her wealthy mother, she delights in a glass of whisky and a good detective story, and is determined to carve herself a sparkling legal career in an age ruled by men. Her mother, however, is a part of that old patriarchal order. Exploiting it has earned Mrs. Warren a fortune and paid for her daughter's expensive education - but at what cost? Bernard Shaw's incendiary moral classic was written in 1893, but, after being banned by the Lord Chamberlain, didn't receive a full public production in London until 1925. This version of the play, edited and introduced by director Dominic Cooke, was produced at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End in 2025, starring real-life mother and daughter Imelda Staunton and Bessie Carter.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), who preferred to be known as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). He was the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Shaw, Bernard

Cooke, Dominic

Leseproben

ACT ONE

YOUNG LADY GENTLEMAN

YOUNG LADY

PRAED. I beg your pardon – can you direct me to Hindhead View?

VIVIE. This is Hindhead View.

PRAED. Indeed perhaps – may I ask are you Miss Vivie Warren?

VIVIE. Yes.

PRAED. I’m afraid I appear intrusive. My name is Praed. Oh, pray don’t let me disturb you.

VIVIE. Mr. Praed. Glad to see you.

PRAED. Very kind of you indeed, Miss Warren. Has your mother arrived?

VIVIE. Is she coming?

PRAED. I hope I’ve not mistaken the day. That would be just like me, you know. Your mother arranged that she was to come down from London and that I was to come over from Horsham to be introduced to you.

VIVIE. Did she? Hm! My mother has rather a trick of taking me by surprise – to see how I behave myself while she’s away, I suppose. I fancy I shall take my mother very much by surprise one of these days, if she makes arrangements that concern me without consulting me beforehand. She hasn’t come.

PRAED. I’m really very sorry.

VIVIE. It’s not your fault, Mr. Praed, is it? And I’m very glad you’ve come. You are the only one of my mother’s friends I have ever asked her to bring to see me.

PRAED. Oh, now this is really very good of you, Miss Warren!

VIVIE. Will you come indoors; or would you rather sit out here and talk?

PRAED. It will be nicer out here, don’t you think?

VIVIE. Then I’ll go and get you a chair.

PRAED (). Oh, pray, pray! Allow me.

VIVIE (). Take care of your fingers; they’re rather dodgy things, those chairs.

PRAED (). Oh, now do let me take that hard chair. I like hard chairs.

VIVIE. So do I. Sit down, Mr. Praed.

PRAED. Hadn’t we better go to the station to meet your mother?

VIVIE. Why? She knows the way.

PRAED. Er – I suppose she does.

VIVIE. Do you know, you are just like what I expected. I hope you are disposed to be friends with me.

PRAED. Thank you, my dear Miss Warren; thank you. Dear me! I’m so glad your mother hasn’t spoilt you!

VIVIE. How?

PRAED. Well, in making you too conventional. You know, my dear Miss Warren, I am a born anarchist. I hate authority. It spoils the relations between parent and child; even between mother and daughter. Now I was always afraid that your mother would strain her authority to make you very conventional. It’s such a relief to find that she hasn’t.

VIVIE. Oh! Have I been behaving unconventionally?

PRAED. Oh no, oh dear no. At least, not conventionally unconventionally, you understand. But it was so charming of you to say that you were disposed to be friends with me! You modern young ladies are splendid: perfectly splendid!

VIVIE. Eh?

PRAED. When I was your age, young men and women were afraid of each other: there was no good fellowship. Nothing real. Only gallantry copied out of novels, and as vulgar and affected as it could be. Maidenly reserve! Gentlemanly chivalry! Always saying no when you meant yes! Simple purgatory for shy and sincere souls.

VIVIE. Yes, I imagine there must have been a frightful waste of time. Especially women’s time.

PRAED. Oh, waste of life, waste of everything. But things are improving. Do you know, I have been in a positive state of excitement about meeting you ever since your magnificent achievements at Cambridge: a thing unheard of in my day. It was perfectly splendid, your tieing in third place.

VIVIE. It doesn’t pay. I wouldn’t do it again for the same money.

PRAED. The same money!

VIVIE. Yes. Fifty pounds. Mrs. Latham, my tutor at Newnham, told my mother that I could distinguish myself in the mathematical tripos if I went in for it in earnest. I said flatly that it was not worth my while to face the grind since I was not going in for teaching; but I offered to try for fourth place or thereabouts for fifty pounds. My mother closed with me at that, after a little grumbling; and I was better than my bargain. But I wouldn’t do it again for that. Two hundred would have been nearer the mark.

PRAED. Lord, bless me! That’s a very practical way of looking at it.

VIVIE. Did you expect to find me an unpractical person?

PRAED. But surely it’s practical to consider not only the work these honours cost, but also the culture they bring.

VIVIE. Culture! My dear Mr. Praed: do you know what the mathematical tripos means? It means grind, grind, grind for six to eight hours a day at mathematics, and nothing but mathematics. I’m supposed to know something about science; but I know nothing except the mathematics it involves. I can make calculations for engineers, electricians, insurance companies, and so on; but I know next to nothing about engineering or electricity or insurance. I don’t even know arithmetic well. Outside mathematics, lawn tennis, eating, sleeping, cycling, and walking, I’m a more ignorant barbarian than any woman could possibly be who hadn’t gone in for the tripos.

PRAED. What a monstrous, wicked, rascally system! I knew it! I felt at once that it meant destroying all that makes womanhood beautiful!

VIVIE. I don’t object to it on that score in the least. I shall turn it to very good account, I assure you.

PRAED. In what way?

VIVIE. I shall set up chambers in the City, and work at actuarial calculations and conveyancing. Under cover of that I shall do some law, with one eye on the Stock Exchange all the time. I’ve come down here by myself to read law: not for a holiday, as my mother imagines. I hate holidays.

PRAED. You make my blood run cold. Are you to have no romance, no beauty in your life?

VIVIE. I don’t care for either, I assure you.

PRAED. You can’t mean that.

VIVIE. Oh yes I do. I like working and getting paid for it.

PRAED. I don’t believe it. I refuse to believe it. It’s only that you haven’t discovered yet what a wonderful world art can open up to you.

VIVIE. Yes I have. Last May I spent six weeks in London with Honoria Fraser. Mamma thought we were doing a round of sightseeing together; but I was really at Honoria’s chambers in Chancery Lane every day, working away at actuarial calculations for her, and helping her as well as a greenhorn could. In the evenings we smoked and talked, and never dreamt of going out except for exercise. And I never enjoyed myself more in my life. I cleared all my expenses and got initiated into the business without a fee in the bargain.

PRAED. But, bless my heart and soul, Miss Warren, do you call that discovering art?

VIVIE. Wait a bit. That wasn’t the beginning. I went up to town on an invitation from some artistic people in Hampstead: one of the girls was a Newnham chum. They took me to the National Gallery, to the opera and to a concert where the band played all the evening: I wouldn’t go through that experience again for anything you could offer me. I held out for civility’s sake until the third day; and then I said that I couldn’t stand any more of it, and went off to Chancery Lane. Now you know the sort of perfectly splendid modern young lady I am. How do you think I shall get on with my mother?

PRAED. Well, frankly, I am afraid your mother will be a little disappointed. Not from any shortcoming on your part, you know: I don’t mean that. But you are so different from her ideal.

VIVIE. Her what?!

PRAED. Her ideal.

VIVIE. Do you mean her ideal of ME?

PRAED. Yes.

VIVIE. What on earth is it like?

PRAED. Well, you must have observed, Miss Warren, that people who are dissatisfied with their own bringing-up generally think that the world would be all right if everybody were to be brought up quite differently. Now your mother’s life has been – er – I suppose you know –

VIVIE. Don’t suppose anything, Mr. Praed. I hardly know my mother. Since I was a child I have lived in England, at school or at college, or with people paid to take charge of me. I have been boarded out all my life. My mother has lived in Brussels or Vienna and never let me go to her. I only see her when she visits England for a few days. I don’t complain: it’s been very pleasant; for people have been very good to me; and there has always been plenty of money to make things smooth. But don’t imagine I know anything about my mother. I know far less than you do.

PRAED. In that case – But what nonsense we are talking! Of course you and your mother will get on capitally. What a charming little place you have here!

VIVIE. Rather a violent change of subject, Mr. Praed. Why won’t my mother’s life bear being talked about?

PRAED. Oh, you...