Four Plays

by John Osborne

  As the music ends abruptly, so do the lights come up and the OLDER LADY continues with her next recitative)

  OLDER LADY: (Reading) ‘“Dog Scene.” Not wishing to get into trouble with you animal lovers let me state right here, that although this is a very good action film with two girls a man and a dog it is by no means all action with the dog. He does, however, do a very good job of

  fucking both the girls then the man takes over for the screwing while the dog watches. A GOODY!’

  (On the projection screen a long view of a densely trafficked motorway. On the loudspeakers a few bars of ‘Dorabella’from the’Enigma Variations’.

  Once again the music stops in almost mid bar as the lights snap on.)

  GRANDFATHER: A man on his own in the car,

  Is revenging himself on his wife;

  He opens the throttle and bubbles with dottle

  And puffs at his pitiful life.

  “She’s losing her looks very fast,

  She loses her temper all day;

  That lorry won’t let me get past,

  This Mini is blocking my way.

  Why can’t you step on it and shift her!

  I can’t go on crawling like this!

  At breakfast she said that she wished I was dead –

  Thank heavens we don’t have to kiss.

  I’d like a nice blonde on my knee

  And one who won’t argue or nag.

  Who dares to come hooting at me?

  I only give way to a Jag.’”

  CHAP: Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed;

  A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,

  A rosy garland and a weary head.’

  OLDER LADY: ‘“Anal Fuck.” If you have ever had a

  snooty girl working for YOU, perhaps you have felt like doing to her what these two bosses did to this girl; after she had destroyed several hours’s hard work, they grabbed her and tore her clothes off and while one fucked her in her cunt the other stuck his prick up her arse. A very good film with excellent colour work.’

  (During the OLDER LADY’s gentle declamation appears a fairly pretty contemporary young girl on the projection screen. Immediately this is finished, the loudspeakers play a few bars of The Nimrod variation’ of Elgar. Stop.)

  CHAP: ‘Her pretty feet

  Like snails did creep

  A little out, and then,

  As if they started at Bo-Peep,

  Did soon draw in agen.’

  CHAIRMAN: ‘Bid me to weep, and I will weep,

  While I have eyes to see.

  Bid me despair, and I’ll despair,

  Under that cypress tree;

  Or hid me die, and I will dare

  E’en Death, to die for thee.’

  CHAP: ‘Thou art my life, my love, my heart,

  The very eyes of me:

  And hast command of every part,

  To live and die for thee.’

  OLDER LADY: (Reading.) ‘“The Diver.” Skin-diving enthusiasts will like this approach. Two girls bathing on a lonely beach suddenly find that they are being observed from beneath by a diver with an aqualung. He takes off one of the girls’ bras and chases her up the beach for her pants; the other girl tries to help but she is soon stripped as well. Then lots of fucking. GREAT.’

  (During this sequence, skin-divers, male and female, appear on the projection screen)

  BOX MAN: I know where I’m going for my holidays next year.

  CHAIRMAN: ‘That sweet enemy, France.’

  CHAP: ‘They love indeed who quake to say they love.

  Oh heav’nly fool, thy most kiss-worthy face

  Anger invests with such lovely grace,

  That Anger’s self I needs must kiss again.’

  OLDER LADY: (Reading) This one’s called ‘Straight Wife Swap’.

  (On projection screen lone piper in kilt, possibly Ghurka. Plays’ The Flowers of the Forest’.)

  INTERRUPTER: (As lights snap back on) What’s all this thing about the Scots?

  CHAIRMAN: ‘No! The lough and the mountain, the ruins and rain

  And purple blue distances bound your demesne,

  For the tunes to the elegant measures you trod

  Have chords of deep longing for Ireland and God.’

  INTERRUPTER: Is this ever going to end?

  BOX MAN: Sing us another song!

  (The stage lights darken and on the projection screen a picture of miners emerging from the pit appears. On the loudspeakers is played’ Cwm Rhonddd’.

  The entire cast on stage stands with the exception of the GIRL. However, the BOX MAN stands up as reverently as he can with a bottle of beer to his lips.)

  INTERRUPTER: Oh, it’s the Welsh now, is it?

  GIRL: (To BOX MAN.) What are you standing up for? You’re not even Welsh.

  BOX MAN: No, but they’re the best rugby players we’ve got.

  CHAIRMAN: Have you ever watched rugby?

  BOX MAN: No, have you?

  CHAIRMAN: No, but I went to Rugby school.

  GIRL: You would. BOX MAN: Up Chelsea!

  OLDER LADY: (Reading.) ‘A very good yarn about straight sex, lesbianism, feminine domination and flagellation.’ (On screen, a picture of a young couple kissing one another, somewhat chastely, but with undoubted passion. During this, the FATHER plays on the piano and sings.)

  FATHER: ‘I like a nice cup of tea in the morning

  And a nice cup of tea with my tea,

  And at half past eleven

  My idea of heaven is a nice cup of tea.’

  CHAIRMAN: (Singing) And when it’s time for bed,

  There’s a lot to be said

  For a nice cup of tea!’ BOX MAN: ‘For a nice cup of tea!’

  (He downs some more brown ale.)

  CHAP: ‘Leave me, O love, which reacheth but to dust;

  And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things;

  Grown rich in that which never taketh rust;

  Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.’

  GRANDFATHER: ‘Never love was so abused.’

  (To himself.) I seem to remember that somewhere…

  GIRL: (To CHAP.) ‘O fair! O sweet! When I do look on thee,

  In whom all joys so well agree,…’

  CHAP: Lying bitch!

  GIRL: Yes!

  ‘Heart and soul do sing in me,

  Just accord all music makes.’

  OLDER LADY: (Reading.) ‘“The Rustlers’”! This one appears to be, what does it say, oh yes, ‘lesbian and straight, this story is about cowboys’.

  (On the screen a picture of blind and gassed British soldiers from the First World War. The music is ‘The British Grenadiers’. After the usual harsh snap-out the

  GRANDFATHER rises again and talks almost to himself) GRANDFATHER: It was seven-thirty a.m. on July the First, 1916. That’s when we went over the top.

  INTERRUPTER: Yes, we know all that, ‘sixty thousand casualties and two for every yard of the front’.

  CHAP: Not bad for all that.

  GRANDFATHER: More like the end, if you like to say so.

  CHAP: Obvious.

  CHAIRMAN: True, nonetheless.

  BOX MAN: We don’t want to hear all about that.

  CHAIRMAN: I think that’s pretty clear.

  FATHER: (Sings) ‘I’m on a seesaw;’ ‘Room five-o-four,’

  OLDER LADY: (Reads again.) ‘“Slave Girl.” Two stories of whipping, spanking and sex.’

  GIRL: ‘Won’t you change partners and dance…’ (They all sit and listen rather dejectedly to’ Variations on a Theme of Thomas Tallis’, at some time during which the BOX MAN, in a fit of generosity, starts to throw down bottles of brown ale to the CHAIRMAN, who distributes them among the actors and actresses)

  BOX MAN: Here, have a drink on me.

  (To the audience) Well, what are you all doing? Just fuck all. I think they need a drink.

  INTERRUPTER: We need something.

  GIRL: We all do.

  CHAP:
I do… If I don’t get it soon, I’ll go potty.

  GRANDFATHER: (To BOX MAN) Your very good health, sir.

  (All the actors on the stage rise and toast the BOX MAN.)

  BOX MAN: Jolly good luck. What about a bit more of that stuff?

  CHAP: (Sings) ‘They’re writing songs of love, But not for me.’

  GIRL: (Sings) ‘Every time we say goodbye, I die a little…’

  OLDER LADY: Yes, of course. Where are my glasses?

  BOX MAN: Someone kindly give this old lady her glasses. (The CHAP does so.)

  OLDER LADY: (Reads.) ‘In time with the heaving of her own hips, Miss Twitch moderately beat the youth’s bottom. The movement of her body increased –’

  GIRL: Well, it would –

  OLDER LADY: ‘ – increased in its intensity with the strapping until she stiffened and sighed.’ I think this one’s rather dull. It just says ‘Two Stories of whipping, spanking and sex.’

  BOX MAN: Nothing wrong with that. Takes all sorts, you know.

  CHAIRMAN: (Leaning over to OLDER LADY.) May I have a quick butchers?

  OLDER LADY: Of course. My eyes are getting tired anyway.

  GIRL: I was just hoping he wouldn’t use rhyming slang. It’s so fatiguing to listen to.

  (CHAIRMAN reads from the piece of paper)

  CHAIRMAN: (Reading) “To Each His Own. He paused, waiting, and – sure enough, as with his finger Robin’s bottom accepted this new degree of dilation; and the lad relaxed – so that he could thrust again – and force half the length… Another gasp and a temporary tensing resulted from this thrust – but this sudden clenching of Robin’s rectum only added to the thrills that David was getting from the opening of this virginal bottom.”

  HOMOSEXUAL WITH A TINY BIT OF ‘BIT.’

  INTERRUPTER: Some of us, you know, did go out at the time and try and do something about all that and it did get done, like it or not.

  BOX MAN: Quite right.

  CHAP: Some of your best friends are pouves.

  INTERRUPTER: And it ill behoves –

  GIRL: I do like ‘it ill behoves’.

  CHAP: Not bad.

  GIRL: (To INTERRUPTER.) Shut up, revue artist.

  CHAP: Bullshit artist.

  ‘Too long a sacrifice

  Can make a stone of the heart.

  O when may it suffice?

  That is Heaven’s part, our part

  To murmur name upon name –’

  GRANDFATHER: ‘They must to keep their certainty accuse

  All that are different of a base intent;

  Pull down established honour; hawk for news

  Whatever their loose fantasy invent

  And murmured with bated breath, as though

  The abounding gutter had been Helicon

  Or calumny a song. How can they know

  Truth flourishes where the student’s lamp has shone,

  And there alone, that have no solitude?

  So the crowd come they care not what may come.

  They have loud music, hope every day renewed

  And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb.’

  CHAIRMAN: I think we’re mostly agreed about that.

  INTERRUPTER: We most certainly are not.

  BOX MAN: Give him another drink.

  (He throws down another bottle of beer to the CHAIRMAN who does his best to catch it skilfully)

  CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

  (As he drinks from the bottle, the Union Jack appears on the screen and the loudest, most rousing version is heard of Blake’s Jerusalem’.) INTERRUPTER: Oh God!

  (He groans and moves off to the bar. The music snaps off again and the CHAIRMAN addresses the audience)

  CHAIRMAN: Well, it’s a sort of agreement.

  ‘No, no, not night but death;

  Was it needless death after all?’

  CHAP: Cheers.

  BOX MAN: God bless you. Is that poetry? Or just talking?

  CHAIRMAN: Just talking.

  ‘For England may keep faith

  For all that is done and said.’

  BOX MAN: Don’t you worry. I said it was the World Cup this time. And I’ll take on anybody!

  CHAIRMAN: ‘We know their dream; enough

  To know they dreamed and are dead;

  And what if excess of love

  Bewildered them till they died?’

  CHAP: Just a minute before you sit down.

  (He hails the STAGE MANAGER and he and the CHAIRMAN help to wheel on a pulpit. As they do so, the panatrope plays the Prisoners’song ‘Durch Nacht Zum Licht’ from ‘Fidelio’. As soon as the pulpit is in place, the music stops, the STAGE MANAGER goes off and the CHAP

  addresses the GIRL.)

  CHAP: You, I think.

  GIRL: Oh no, you. I can’t do imitations.

  CHAP: Well, you can, actually. Impressions, really. Which are much better. However. –

  (He ascends the pulpit and addresses the theatre in a thick Belfast accent. As he does so, the projection screen shows a group of extremely tough-looking British troops in flak kit and riot masks etc, facing a crowd of Irish civilians. LC.) And I say to you, the British people, and by that I mean the people of Northern Ireland, that not only myself but all decent proper-thinking people throughout the world, whether Protestant or Catholic, are shocked daily and troubled by the tragic sight of our troops who must be the best, as well as the most disciplined in the world, being incited physically, to say nothing of them morally and spiritually, of seeing them, having to stand inactive behind their shields while a lot of ignorant thugs and hooligans are pelting at them with their bombs and guns!

  INTERRUPTER: There should be an Independent Inquiry.

  BOX MAN: Quite right. Bloody hooligans.

  GIRL: (Turning on audience.) Murdering British soldiers,

  they’re all bloody murderers! You’re all bloody murderers.

  BOX MAN: Why don’t you get back to Ireland and let us unemployed British get on with the job!?

  GIRL: Who needs England?

  BOX MAN: You do for a start.

  CHAP: (Descending from the pulpit.) Right. Someone else carry on. I was running out of steam anyway.

  GIRL: That was clear.

  (The CHAP assists the GIRL into the pulpit. During this, the Irish tricolour waves on the screen to an appropriate Gallic tune. The GIRL addresses the audience from the pulpit.) You all know what I think –

  BOX MAN: I should say we do, we’ve heard it enough times.

  GIRL: Well, it needs repeating to get into concrete skulls

  like yours. Get out of Ireland!

  BOX MAN: Get out of England!

  GIRL: Don’t think I won’t!

  BOX MAN: Good!

  GIRL: You’ve oppressed us for three centuries.

  BOX MAN: What about it? Bloody idle lot. Think you’re all poets and dreamers, I know. Shall I tell you something, mate? The only thing that ever came out of Ireland –

  GIRL: I know, is horses and writers.

  BOX MAN: And who said that?

  GIRL: A lot of Horse Protestants. And I’ll bet you didn’t know who said that.

  BOX MAN: Some bloody Catholic IRA man.

  GIRL: You’re damn right.

  BOX MAN: Well, I bet he did a damn sight better in London than in Dublin.

  GIRL: You’re right –

  BOX MAN: Do you want a brown ale? Of course I suppose you only drink bleeding Guinness.

  GIRL: Stick your brown ale.

  BOX MAN: And you stick your Guinness, and I hope –

  GIRL: The ship goes down in Galway Bay.’ That’s the way with the lot of you.

  CHAIRMAN: Oh dear, would anyone else like to say something?

  INTERRUPTER: Yes.

  BOX MAN: Shut your gob.

  CHAIRMAN: Well, we do at least know that that’s an Irish expression.

  INTERRUPTER: I think it’s all very well –

  BOX MAN: Taking the piss out of the Irish –

  INTERRUPTER: If you
like. But what I object to, and I don’t just say this on behalf of my wife –

  GIRL: (Descending from pulpit.) You wouldn’t.

  INTERRUPTER: But, as I was going to say before you

  interrupted me, all these jibes about bigotry are all very

  well but personally I find the implicit condescension

  inherent –

  CHAP: Inherent!

  INTERRUPTER: Yes, sir, inherent. It’s a perfectly proper word and expresses what I mean to say.

  CHAP: Which is – ?

  INTERRUPTER: That using a woman –

  CHAP: As an object? Or were you going to say stereotype?

  INTERRUPTER: Simply that you are being snide and coarse at the expense of a great many highly able and misused Women. Fortunately, you will no longer be able to get away with it.

  CHAP: I didn’t think I had got away with it. Perhaps I didn’t try hard enough.

  OLDER LADY: I quite agree with that gentleman. He is rather bad-mannered and silly, but, in this case, I think he’s quite right. (To the CHAIRMAN) May I say a few words?

  CHAIRMAN: By all means do. You’ll probably say something sensible.

  OLDER LADY: Thank you. (She has already ascended the pulpit) May I say first that I have no particular personal

  complaint. In some ways, I was born into a good time. And because of my natural intelligence, have managed to cope with what to most men would be an intolerable situation. My young friend here has complained, if I heard him correctly, of one of his earlier girlfriends being sick in the grounds of Norwich Cathedral. However, I would just say to him and others like him that it is a mere fact of life that women at all times and at all ages have suffered from, and in many cases died from, not merely childbirth but from what you would no doubt call the inbuilt tedium of organs such as the cervix, the vulvae, the vagina and the womb.

  BOX MAN: Disgusting.

  OLDER LADY: If men had to undergo what they so cheerfully call ‘the curse’ –

  BOX MAN: Period pains –

  OLDER LADY: – They would have long ago invented some alleviation.

  BOX MAN: Invent it yourself. Sing us a song.

  OLDER LADY: I’m afraid our young friend here has let him delude himself into dreaming about something he thinks of as ‘Eternal Woman’. BOX MAN: Who doesn’t?

  OLDER LADY: That is because she is only valued by the excitement she may or may not arouse.

  BOX MAN: Get off out of it, you old bag.

  OLDER LADY: In short, she has to be desirable.