Misalliance | Page 3

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Scanned & proofed by Ron Burkey ([email protected]) & Amy
Thomte

Misalliance
by George Bernard Shaw

Notes on the editing: Italicized text is delimited with underlines ("_").
Punctuation and spelling are retained as in the printed text. Shaw used a
non-standard system of spelling and punctuation. For example,
contractions usually have no apostrophe: "don't" is given as "dont",
"you've" as "youve", and so on. Abbreviated honorifics have no trailing
period: "Dr." is given as "Dr", "Mrs." as "Mrs", and so on.
"Shakespeare" is given as "Shakespear". Where several characters in
the play are speaking at once, I have indicated it with vertical bars ("|").
The pound (currency) symbol has been replaced by the word "pounds".

MISALLIANCE

BY BERNARD SHAW

_Johnny Tarleton, an ordinary young business man of thirty or less, is
taking his weekly Friday to Tuesday in the house of his father, John
Tarleton, who has made a great deal of money out of Tarleton's
Underwear. The house is in Surrey, on the slope of Hindhead; and
Johnny, reclining, novel in hand, in a swinging chair with a little
awning above it, is enshrined in a spacious half hemisphere of glass
which forms a pavilion commanding the garden, and, beyond it, a
barren but lovely landscape of hill profile with fir trees, commons of
bracken and gorse, and wonderful cloud pictures._
_The glass pavilion springs from a bridgelike arch in the wall of the
house, through which one comes into a big hall with tiled flooring,
which suggests that the proprietor's notion of domestic luxury is
founded on the lounges of week-end hotels. The arch is not quite in the
centre of the wall. There is more wall to its right than to its left, and this
space is occupied by a hat rack and umbrella stand in which tennis
rackets, white parasols, caps, Panama hats, and other summery articles
are bestowed. Just through the arch at this corner stands a new portable
Turkish bath, recently unpacked, with its crate beside it, and on the
crate the drawn nails and the hammer used in unpacking. Near the crate
are open boxes of garden games: bowls and croquet. Nearly in the
middle of the glass wall of the pavilion is a door giving on the garden,
with a couple of steps to surmount the hot-water pipes which skirt the
glass. At intervals round the pavilion are marble pillars with specimens
of Viennese pottery on them, very flamboyant in colour and florid in
design. Between them are folded garden chairs flung anyhow against
the pipes. In the side walls are two doors: one near the hat stand,
leading to the interior of the house, the other on the opposite side and at
the other end, leading to the vestibule._
_There is no solid furniture except a sideboard which stands against the
wall between the vestibule door and the pavilion, a small writing table
with a blotter, a rack for telegram forms and stationery, and a
wastepaper basket, standing out in the hall near the sideboard, and a

lady's worktable, with two chairs at it, towards the other side of the
lounge. The writing table has also two chairs at it. On the sideboard
there is a tantalus, liqueur bottles, a syphon, a glass jug of lemonade,
tumblers, and every convenience for casual drinking. Also a plate of
sponge cakes, and a highly ornate punchbowl in the same style as the
keramic display in the pavilion. Wicker chairs and little bamboo tables
with ash trays and boxes of matches on them are scattered in all
directions. In the pavilion, which is flooded with sunshine, is the
elaborate patent swing seat and awning in which Johnny reclines with
his novel. There are two wicker chairs right and left of him._
_Bentley Summerhays, one of those smallish, thinskinned youths, who
from 17 to 70 retain unaltered the mental airs of the later and the
physical appearance of the earlier age, appears in the garden and comes
through the glass door into the pavilion. He is unmistakably a grade
above Johnny socially; and though he looks sensitive enough, his
assurance and his high