All as old and stale as a fried fish
shop on a winter morning.
THE COUNT. But--
GUNN [interrupting him] I know what youre going to say, Count.
Youre going to say that the whole thing seems to you to be quite new
and unusual and original. The naval lieutenant is a Frenchman who
cracks up the English and runs down the French: the hackneyed old
Shaw touch. The characters are second-rate middle class, instead of
being dukes and millionaires. The heroine gets kicked through the
mud: real mud. Theres no plot. All the old stage conventions and
puppets without the old ingenuity and the old enjoyment. And a feeble
air of intellectual pretentiousness kept up all through to persuade
you that if the author hasnt written a good play it's because hes too
clever to stoop to anything so commonplace. And you three experienced
men have sat through all this, and cant tell me who wrote it! Why,
the play bears the author's signature in every line.
BANNAL. Who?
GUNN. Granville Barker, of course. Why, old Gilbey is straight out
of The Madras House.
BANNAL. Poor old Barker!
VAUGHAN. Utter nonsense! Cant you see the difference in style?
BANNAL. No.
VAUGHAN. [contemptuously] Do you know what style is?
BANNAL. Well, I suppose youd call Trotter's uniform style. But it's
not my style--since you ask me.
VAUGHAN. To me it's perfectly plain who wrote that play. To begin
with, it's intensely disagreeable.
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