George Bernard Shaw a penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

She draws the captain’s arm through hers, and pats his hand.
The captain remains fast asleep.
MRS HUSHABYE
. Oh, that’s very clever of you, pettikins.
Very clever. Alfred, you could never have lived up to Ellie.
You must be content with a little share of me.
MANGAN 
[snifflng and wiping his eyes]. It isn’t kind—[his
emotion chokes him].
LADY UTTERWORD
. You are well out of it, Mr Mangan.
Miss Dunn is the most conceited young woman I have met
since I came back to England.
MRS HUSHABYE
. Oh, Ellie isn’t conceited. Are you,
pettikins?
ELLIE
. I know my strength now, Hesione.
MANGAN
. Brazen, I call you. Brazen.
MRS HUSHABYE
. Tut, tut, Alfred: don’t be rude. Don’t
you feel how lovely this marriage night is, made in heaven?
Aren’t you happy, you and Hector? Open your eyes: Addy
and Ellie look beautiful enough to please the most fastidious
man: we live and love and have not a care in the world. We
women have managed all that for you. Why in the name of

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Heartbreak House
common sense do you go on as if you were two miserable
wretches?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. I tell you happiness is no good.
You can be happy when you are only half alive. I am happier
now I am half dead than ever I was in my prime. But there is
no blessing on my happiness.
ELLIE 
[her face lighting up]. Life with a blessing! that is what
I want. Now I know the real reason why I couldn’t marry Mr
Mangan: there would be no blessing on our marriage. There
is a blessing on my broken heart. There is a blessing on your
beauty, Hesione. There is a blessing on your father’s spirit.
Even on the lies of Marcus there is a blessing; but on Mr
Mangan’s money there is none.
MANGAN
. I don’t understand a word of that.
ELLIE
. Neither do I. But I know it means something.
MANGAN
. Don’t say there was any difficulty about the bless-
ing. I was ready to get a bishop to marry us.
MRS HUSHABYE
. Isn’t he a fool, pettikins?
HECTOR 
[fiercely]. Do not scorn the man. We are all fools.
Mazzini, in pyjamas and a richly colored silk dressing gown,
comes from the house, on Lady Utterword’s side.
MRS HUSHABYE
. Oh! here comes the only man who ever
resisted me. What’s the matter, Mr Dunn? Is the house on
fire?
MAZZINI
. Oh, no: nothing’s the matter: but really it’s im-
possible to go to sleep with such an interesting conversation
going on under one’s window, and on such a beautiful night
too. I just had to come down and join you all. What has it all
been about?
MRS HUSHABYE
. Oh, wonderful things, soldier of free-
dom.
HECTOR
. For example, Mangan, as a practical business
man, has tried to undress himself and has failed ignomini-
ously; whilst you, as an idealist, have succeeded brilliantly.
MAZZINI
. I hope you don’t mind my being like this, Mrs
Hushabye. [He sits down on the campstool].
MRS HUSHABYE
. On the contrary, I could wish you al-
ways like that.
LADY UTTERWORD
. Your daughter’s match is off, Mr

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GB Shaw
Dunn. It seems that Mr Mangan, whom we all supposed to
be a man of property, owns absolutely nothing.
MAZZINI
. Well, of course I knew that, Lady Utterword.
But if people believe in him and are always giving him money,
whereas they don’t believe in me and never give me any, how
can I ask poor Ellie to depend on what I can do for her?
MANGAN
. Don’t you run away with this idea that I have
nothing. I—
HECTOR
. Oh, don’t explain. We understand. You have a
couple of thousand pounds in exchequer bills, 50,000 shares
worth tenpence a dozen, and half a dozen tabloids of cya-
nide of potassium to poison yourself with when you are found
out. That’s the reality of your millions.
MAZZINI
. Oh no, no, no. He is quite honest: the busi-
nesses are genuine and perfectly legal.
HECTOR 
[disgusted]. Yah! Not even a great swindler!
MANGAN
. So you think. But I’ve been too many for some
honest men, for all that.
LADY UTTERWORD
. There is no pleasing you, Mr
Mangan. You are determined to be neither rich nor poor,
honest nor dishonest.
MANGAN
. There you go again. Ever since I came into this
silly house I have been made to look like a fool, though I’m
as good a man in this house as in the city.
ELLIE 
[musically]. Yes: this silly house, this strangely happy
house, this agonizing house, this house without foundations.
I shall call it Heartbreak House.
MRS HUSHABYE
. Stop, Ellie; or I shall howl like an ani-
mal.
MANGAN 
[breaks into a low snivelling]!!!
MRS HUSAHBYE
. There! you have set Alfred off.
ELLIE
. I like him best when he is howling.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. Silence! [Mangan subsides into si-
lence]. I say, let the heart break in silence.
HECTOR
. Do you accept that name for your house?
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. It is not my house: it is only my
kennel.

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126
Heartbreak House
HECTOR
. We have been too long here. We do not live in
this house: we haunt it.
LADY UTTERWORD 
[heart torn]. It is dreadful to think
how you have been here all these years while I have gone
round the world. I escaped young; but it has drawn me back.
It wants to break my heart too. But it shan’t. I have left you
and it behind. It was silly of me to come back. I felt senti-
mental about papa and Hesione and the old place. I felt them
calling to me.
MAZZINI
. But what a very natural and kindly and charm-
ing human feeling, Lady Utterword!
LADY UTTERWORD
. So I thought, Mr Dunn. But I know
now that it was only the last of my influenza. I found that I
was not remembered and not wanted.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. You left because you did not want
us. Was there no heartbreak in that for your father? You tore
yourself up by the roots; and the ground healed up and
brought forth fresh plants and forgot you. What right had
you to come back and probe old wounds?
MRS HUSHABYE
. You were a complete stranger to me at
first, Addy; but now I feel as if you had never been away.
LADY UTTERWORD
. Thank you, Hesione; but the in-
fluenza is quite cured. The place may be Heartbreak House
to you, Miss Dunn, and to this gentleman from the city who
seems to have so little self-control; but to me it is only a very
ill-regulated and rather untidy villa without any stables.
HECTOR
. Inhabited by—?
ELLIE
. A crazy old sea captain and a young singer who adores
him.
MRS HUSHABYE
. A sluttish female, trying to stave off a
double chin and an elderly spread, vainly wooing a born sol-
dier of freedom.
MAZZINI
. Oh, really, Mrs Hushabye—
MANGAN
. A member of His Majesty’s Government that
everybody sets down as a nincompoop: don’t forget him, Lady
Utterword.
LADY UTTERWORD
. And a very fascinating gentleman
whose chief occupation is to be married to my sister.
HECTOR
. All heartbroken imbeciles.
MAZZINI
. Oh no. Surely, if I may say so, rather a favorable

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GB Shaw
specimen of what is best in our English culture. You are very
charming people, most advanced, unprejudiced, frank, hu-
mane, unconventional, democratic, free-thinking, and ev-
erything that is delightful to thoughtful people.
MRS HUSHABYE
. You do us proud, Mazzini.
MAZZINI
. I am not flattering, really. Where else could I
feel perfectly at ease in my pyjamas? I sometimes dream that
I am in very distinguished society, and suddenly I have noth-
ing on but my pyjamas! Sometimes I haven’t even pyjamas.
And I always feel overwhelmed with confusion. But here, I
don’t mind in the least: it seems quite natural.
LADY UTTERWORD
. An infallible sign that you are now
not in really distinguished society, Mr Dunn. If you were in
my house, you would feel embarrassed.
MAZZINI
. I shall take particular care to keep out of your
house, Lady Utterword.
LADY UTTERWORD
. You will be quite wrong, Mr Dunn.
I should make you very comfortable; and you would not
have the trouble and anxiety of wondering whether you
should wear your purple and gold or your green and crim-
son dressing-gown at dinner. You complicate life instead of
simplifying it by doing these ridiculous things.
ELLIE
. Your house is not Heartbreak House: is it, Lady
Utterword?
HECTOR
. Yet she breaks hearts, easy as her house is. That
poor devil upstairs with his flute howls when she twists his
heart, just as Mangan howls when my wife twists his.
LADY UTTERWORD
. That is because Randall has noth-
ing to do but have his heart broken. It is a change from hav-
ing his head shampooed. Catch anyone breaking Hastings’
heart!
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. The numskull wins, after all.
LADY UTTERWORD
. I shall go back to my numskull with
the greatest satisfaction when I am tired of you all, clever as
you are.
MANGAN 
[huffily]. I never set up to be clever.
LADY UTTERWORD
. I forgot you, Mr Mangan.
MANGAN
. Well, I don’t see that quite, either.
LADY UTTERWORD
. You may not be clever, Mr Mangan;
but you are successful.

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128
Heartbreak House
MANGAN
. But I don’t want to be regarded merely as a suc-
cessful man. I have an imagination like anyone else. I have a
presentiment
MRS HUSHABYE
. Oh, you are impossible, Alfred. Here I
am devoting myself to you; and you think of nothing but
your ridiculous presentiment. You bore me. Come and talk
poetry to me under the stars. [She drags him away into the