VAUGHAN.  To me it’s perfectly plain who wrote that play.  To begin with, it’s intensely disagreeable.  Therefore it’s not by Barrie, in spite of the footman, who’s cribbed from The Admirable Crichton.  He was an earl, you may remember.  You notice, too, the author’s offensive habit of saying silly things that have no real sense in them when you come to examine them, just to set all the fools in the house giggling.  Then what does it all come to?  An attempt to expose the supposed hypocrisy of the Puritan middle class in England:  people just as good as the author, anyhow.  With, of course, the inevitable improper female:  the Mrs Tanqueray, Iris, and so forth.  Well, if you cant recognize the author of that, youve mistaken your professions:  thats all I have to say.

BANNAL.  Why are you so down on Pinero?  And what about that touch that Gunn spotted? the Frenchman’s long speech.  I believe it’s Shaw.

GUNN.  Rubbish!

VAUGHAN.  Rot!  You may put that idea out of your head, Bannal.  Poor as this play is, theres the note of passion in it.  You feel somehow that beneath all the assumed levity of that poor waif and stray, she really loves Bobby and will be a good wife to him.  Now Ive repeatedly proved that Shaw is physiologically incapable of the note of passion.

BANNAL.  Yes, I know.  Intellect without emotion.  Thats right.  I always say that myself.  A giant brain, if you ask me; but no heart.

GUNN.  Oh, shut up, Bannal.  This crude medieval psychology of heart and brain—­Shakespear would have called it liver and wits—­is really schoolboyish.  Surely weve had enough of second-hand Schopenhauer.  Even such a played-out old back number as Ibsen would have been ashamed of it.  Heart and brain, indeed!

VAUGHAN.  You have neither one nor the other, Gunn.  Youre decadent.

GUNN.  Decadent!  How I love that early Victorian word!

VAUGHAN.  Well, at all events, you cant deny that the characters in this play were quite distinguishable from one another.  That proves it’s not by Shaw, because all Shaw’s characters are himself:  mere puppets stuck up to spout Shaw.  It’s only the actors that make them seem different.

BANNAL.  There can be no doubt of that:  everybody knows it.  But Shaw doesnt write his plays as plays.  All he wants to do is to insult everybody all round and set us talking about him.

TROTTER. [wearily] And naturally, here we are all talking about him.  For heaven’s sake, let us change the subject

VAUGHAN.  Still, my articles about Shaw—­

GUNN.  Oh, stow it, Vaughan.  Drop it.  What Ive always told you about
Shaw is—­

BANNAL.  There you go, Shaw, Shaw, Shaw!  Do chuck it.  If you want to know my opinion about Shaw—­

TROTTER.    |   No, please, we dont.    |
|                           |
VAUGHAN.    |   Shut your head, Bannal. | [yelling]
|                           |
GUNN.       |   Oh, do drop it.         |

The deafened Count puts his fingers in his ears and flies from the centre of the group to its outskirts, behind Vaughan.