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. Therefore it's not by Barrie, in spite of
the footman, who's cribbed from The Admirable Crichton. He was an earl,
you may remember. You notice, too, the author's offensive habit of
saying silly things that have no real sense in them when you come to
examine them, just to set all the fools in the house giggling. Then what
does it all come to? An attempt to expose the supposed hypocrisy of
the Puritan middle class in England: people just as good as the author,
anyhow. With, of course, the inevitable improper female: the Mrs
Tanqueray, Iris, and so forth. Well, if you cant recognize the author of
that, youve mistaken your professions: thats all I have to say.

BANNAL. Why are you so down on Pinero? And what about that touch that
Gunn spotted? the Frenchman's long speech. I believe it's Shaw.

GUNN. Rubbish!

VAUGHAN. Rot! You may put that idea out of your head, Bannal. Poor as
this play is, theres the note of passion in it. You feel somehow that
beneath all the assumed levity of that poor waif and stray, she really
loves Bobby and will be a good wife to him. Now Ive repeatedly proved
that Shaw is physiologically incapable of the note of passion.

BANNAL. Yes, I know. Intellect without emotion. Thats right. I always
say that myself. A giant brain, if you ask me; but no heart.

GUNN. Oh, shut up, Bannal. This crude medieval psychology