The Circle: A Comedy in Three ActsMaugham, W. Somerset (William Somerset)
General
The Circle: A Comedy in Three Acts
Maugham, W. Somerset (William Somerset)
Adultery -- Drama; England -- Social life and customs -- Drama; Intergenerational relations -- Drama
TEDDIE. [_Putting the cloak on ELIZABETH._] And we'll buy you a
tooth-brush in London in the morning.
LADY KITTY. She must write a note for Arnold. I'll put it on her
pincushion.
TEDDIE. Pincushion be blowed! Come, darling. We'll drive through the
dawn and through the sunrise.
ELIZABETH. [_Kissing LADY KITTY and PORTEOUS._] Good-bye. Good-bye.
[_TEDDIE stretches out his hand and she takes it. Hand in hand they go
out into the night._
LADY KITTY. Oh, Hughie, how it all comes back to me! Will they suffer
all we suffered? And have we suffered all in vain?
PORTEOUS. My dear, I don't know that in life it matters so much what
you do as what you are. No one can learn by the experience of another
because no circumstances are quite the same. If we made rather a hash
of things perhaps it was because we were rather trivial people. You
can do anything in this world if you're prepared to take the
consequences, and consequences depend on character.
[_Enter CHAMPION-CHENEY, rubbing his hands. He is as pleased as
Punch._
C.-C. Well, I think I've settled the hash of that young man.
LADY KITTY. Oh!
C.-C. You have to get up very early in the morning to get the better
of your humble servant.
[_There is the sound of a car starting._
LADY KITTY. What is that?
C.-C. It sounds like a car. I expect it's your chauffeur taking one of
the maids for a joy-ride.
PORTEOUS. Whose hash are you talking about?
C.-C. Mr. Edward Luton's, my dear Hughie. I told Arnold exactly what
to do and he's done it. What makes a prison? Why, bars and bolts.
Remove them and a prisoner won't want to escape. Clever, I flatter
myself.
PORTEOUS. You were always that, Clive, but at the moment you're
obscure.
C.-C. I told Arnold to go to Elizabeth and tell her she could have her
freedom. I told him to sacrifice himself all along the line. I know
what women are. The moment every obstacle was removed to her marriage
with Teddie Luton, half the allurement was gone.
LADY KITTY. Arnold did that?
C.-C. He followed my instructions to the letter. I've just seen him.
She's shaken. I'm willing to bet five hundred pounds to a penny that
she won't bolt. A downy old bird, eh? Downy's the word. Downy.
[_He begins to laugh. They laugh, too. Presently they are all three in
fits of laughter._
[The Curtain Falls]
THE END
Transcriber's Note
This transcription is based on scanned images posted by the Internet
Archive from a copy in the University of California, Santa Barbara
Library:
archive.org/details/circlecomedyinth00maug
The following changes were noted:
- In the original text, titles for each act (e.g., "THE FIRST ACT")
were printed on otherwise blank pages. In addition, the associated
versos were blank, as were two of the pages facing these pages. These
pages were not included or otherwise identified in the transcription,
and thus in the html version of this transcription pp. 6-8, pp. 34-35,
and pp. 64-66 are missing from the page count.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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