THE MAGNANIMOUS LOVER
A monologue from the
play by St. John Ervine
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from Representative One-Act Plays by British and Irish Authors.
Ed. Barrett H. Clark. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1921. |
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MAGGIE CATHER: Listen, Henry Hinde. All the time you
were away in Liverpool where nobody knew you, I was here where
everybody knew me. Do you know what that means? People staring
at me, and turning up their noses at me? There was nothing but
contempt for me at first. I was a bad woman, and I wasn't asked
nowhere. Fellows in the street treated me like dirt beneath their
feet. They spoke to me as if I was a bad woman. And all that
time you were in Liverpool, and were thought a lot of. It wasn't
fair. And it wasn't me only. I mind once I was coming down an
entry, and I saw a lot of children tormenting the child. He was
standing in the middle of them, and they were making him say
things after them. I heard them saying, "What are you, Willie?"
And then they made him say, "I'm a wee bastard!" Aw,
if I could have laid hands on you then, Henry, I would have throttled
you. An sure, you'll be saying it's all over now. Aye, they don't
treat me with contempt now. I've lived that down. They just pity
me now. Sometimes when I go past their doors, an old woman'll
hear me passing, and ask who it is, and they always say, "It's
only poor Maggie Cather." I could thole their contempt better
nor their pity, but I didn't run away from either of them. I
faced it all, and I've brought up the child as good as any of
them. And now when I've bore the hardest of it, you come back
to marry me. Maybe, you'll be ordering me about, and bossing
the child. I'm to do what you tell me. I've to love, honour and
obey you. What for, Henry, that's what I'd like to know?
MORE
MONOLOGUES BY JOHN ERVINE |
