Three plays for Puritans
Book Description
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: which you (severely) have apparently not heard. How soon do you get news from your supports here ?- in the course of a month, eh ? Swindon (turning sulky). I suppose the reports have been taken to you, sir, inst...
MorePurchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: which you (severely) have apparently not heard. How soon do you get news from your supports here ?- in the course of a month, eh ? Swindon (turning sulky). I suppose the reports have been taken to you, sir, instead of to me. Is there anything serious ? Burgoyne (taking a report from his pocket and holding it up). Springtown's in the hands of the rebels. (He throws the report on the table.) Swindon (aghast). Since yesterday! Burgoyne. Since two o'clock this morning. Perhaps w e shall be in their hands before two o'clock to-morrow morning. Have you thought of that? Swindon (confidently). As to that, General, the British soldier will give a good account of himself. Burgoyne (bitterly). And therefore, I suppose, sir, the British officer need not know his business: the British soldier will get him out of all his blunders with the bayonet. In future, sir, I must ask you to be a little less generous with the blood of your men, and a little more generous with your own brains. Swindon. I am sorry I cannot pretend to your intellectual eminence, sir. I can only do my best, and rely on the devotion of my countrymen. Burgoyne (suddenly becoming suavely sarcastic). May I ask are you writing a melodrama, Major Swindon ? Swindon (flushing). No, sir. Burgoyne. What a pity! What a pity! (Dropping his sarcastic tone and facing him suddenly and seriously) Do you at all realize, sir, that we have nothing standing between us and destruction but our own bluff and the sheepishness of these colonists ? They are men of the same English stock as ourselves: six to one of us (repeating it emphatically), six to one, sir; and nearly half our troops are Hessians, Brunswick- ers, German dragoons, and Indians with scalping knives. These are the countrymen on whose devotion you rely! Su...
You must be a member of JacketFlap to add a video to this page. Please
Log In or
Register.
View Bernard Shaw's profile