From The Admirable Bashville; Or, Constancy Unrewarded Being the Novel of Cashel Byron's Profession Done into a Stage Play in Three Acts and in Blank Verse, with a Note on Modern Prize Fighting by Bernard Shaw

Thou dost arraign the inattentive Fates That weave my thread of life in ruder patterns Than these that lie, antimacassarly, Asprent thy drawingroom. As well demand Why I at birth chose to begin my life A speechless babe, hairless, incontinent, Hobbling upon all fours, a nurse's nuisance? Or why I do propose to lose my strength, To blanch my hair, to let the gums recede Far up my yellowing teeth, and finally Lie down and moulder in a rotten grave? Only one thing more foolish could have been, And that was to be born, not man, but woman. This was thy folly, why rebuk'st thou mine? (LYDIA: These are not things of choice.) And did I choose My quick divining eye, my lightning hand, My springing muscle and untiring heart? Did I implant the instinct in the race That found a use for these, and said to me, Fight for us, and be fame and fortune thine? (LYDIA: But there are other callings in the world.) Go tell thy painters to turn stockbrokers, Thy poet friends to stoop o'er merchants' desks And pen prose records of the gains of greed. Tell bishops that religion is outworn, And that the Pampa to the horsebreaker Opes new careers. Bid the professor quit His fraudulent pedantries, and do i' the world The thing he would teach others. Then return To me and say: Cashel: they have obeyed; And on that pyre of sacrifice I, too, Will throw my championship.

Cashel Monologue from The Admirable Bashville; Or, Constancy Unrewarded Being the Novel of Cashel Byron's Profession Done into a Stage Play in Three Acts and in Blank Verse, with a Note on Modern Prize Fighting

Rehearse Cashel's monologue