Overruled | Page 7

some specific
quality present in a murderer and lacking in me. And, if so, what that
quality is.
In just the same way, I want the unfaithful husband or the unfaithful
wife in a farcical comedy not to bother me with their divorce cases or
the stratagems they employ to avoid a divorce case, but to tell me how
and why married couples are unfaithful. I don't want to hear the lies
they tell one another to conceal what they have done, but the truths they
tell one another when they have to face what they have done without
concealment or excuse. No doubt prudent and considerate people
conceal such adventures, when they can, from those who are most
likely to be wounded by them; but it is not to be presumed that, when
found out, they necessarily disgrace themselves by irritating lies and
transparent subterfuges.
My playlet, which I offer as a model to all future writers of farcical
comedy, may now, I hope, be read without shock. I may just add that
Mr. Sibthorpe Juno's view that morality demands, not that we should
behave morally (an impossibility to our sinful nature) but that we shall
not attempt to defend our immoralities, is a standard view in England,
and was advanced in all seriousness by an earnest and distinguished

British moralist shortly after the first performance of Overruled. My
objection to that aspect of the doctrine of original sin is that no
necessary and inevitable operation of human nature can reasonably be
regarded as sinful at all, and that a morality which assumes the contrary
is an absurd morality, and can be kept in countenance only by
hypocrisy. When people were ashamed of sanitary problems, and
refused to face them, leaving them to solve themselves clandestinely in
dirt and secrecy, the solution arrived at was the Black Death. A similar
policy as to sex problems has solved itself by an even worse plague
than the Black Death; and the remedy for that is not Salvarsan, but
sound moral hygiene, the first foundation of which is the
discontinuance of our habit of telling not only the comparatively
harmless lies that we know we ought not to tell, but the ruinous lies that
we foolishly think we ought to tell.

OVERRULED.
A lady and gentleman are sitting together on a chesterfield in a retired
corner of the lounge of a seaside hotel. It is a summer night: the French
window behind them stands open. The terrace without overlooks a
moonlit harbor. The lounge is dark. The chesterfield, upholstered in
silver grey, and the two figures on it in evening dress, catch the light
from an arc lamp somewhere; but the walls, covered with a dark green
paper, are in gloom. There are two stray chairs, one on each side. On
the gentleman's right, behind him up near the window, is an unused
fireplace. Opposite it on the lady's left is a door. The gentleman is on
the lady's right.
The lady is very attractive, with a musical voice and soft appealing
manners. She is young: that is, one feels sure that she is under
thirty-five and over twenty-four. The gentleman does not look much
older. He is rather handsome, and has ventured as far in the direction of
poetic dandyism in the arrangement of his hair as any man who is not a
professional artist can afford to in England. He is obviously very much
in love with the lady, and is, in fact, yielding to an irresistible impulse
to throw his arms around her.

THE LADY. Don't--oh don't be horrid. Please, Mr. Lunn [she rises
from the lounge and retreats behind it]! Promise me you won't be
horrid.
GREGORY LUNN. I'm not being horrid, Mrs. Juno. I'm not going to
be horrid. I love you: that's all. I'm extraordinarily happy.
MRS. JUNO. You will really be good?
GREGORY. I'll be whatever you wish me to be. I tell you I love you. I
love loving you. I don't want to be tired and sorry, as I should be if I
were to be horrid. I don't want you to be tired and sorry. Do come and
sit down again.
MRS. JUNO [coming back to her seat]. You're sure you don't want
anything you oughtn't to?
GREGORY. Quite sure. I only want you [she recoils]. Don't be alarmed.
I like wanting you. As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living.
Satisfaction is death.
MRS. JUNO. Yes; but the impulse to commit suicide is sometimes
irresistible.
GREGORY. Not with you.
MRS. JUNO. What!
GREGORY. Oh, it sounds uncomplimentary; but it isn't really. Do you
know why half the couples who find themselves situated as we are now
behave horridly?
MRS. JUNO. Because they can't help it if they