say trivial? valentine: It's a technical term. Bernard: Not where I come from, it isn't. valentine: The questions you're asking don't matter, you see.
It's like arguing who got there first with the calculus. The
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English say Newton, the Germans say Leibnitz. But it doesn't matter. Personalities. What matters is the calculus. Scientific progress. Knowledge.
Bernard: Really? Why?
valentine: Why what?
BERNARD: Why does scientific progress matter more than personalities?
valentine: Is he serious?
Hannah: No, he's trivial. Bernard-
valentine: (Interrupting, to BERNARD) Do yourself a favour, you're on a loser.
BERNARD: Oh, you're going to zap me with penicillin and pesticides. Spare me that and I'll spare you the bomb and aerosols. But don't confuse progress with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need. There's no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotle's cosmos. Personally, I preferred it. Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God's crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can't think of anything more trivial than the speed of light. Quarks, quasars - big bangs, black holes - who gives a shit? How did you people con us out of all that status? All that money? And why are you so pleased with yourselves?
CHLOE: Are you against penicillin, Bernard?
Bernard: Don't feed the animals. (Back to valentine) I'd push the lot of you over a cliff myself. Except the one in the wheelchair, I think I'd lose the sympathy vote before people had time to think it through.
hannah: (Loudly) What the hell do you mean, the dust-jacket?
Bernard: (Ignoring her) If knowledge isn't self-knowledge it isn't doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing 'When Father Painted the Parlour'? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you. 'She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.' There you are, he wrote it after coming home from a party. (With offensive politeness.) What is it that you're doing with
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grouse, Valentine, I'd love to know?
(valentine stands up and it is suddenly apparent that he is
shaking and close to tears.) valentine: (To chloE) He's not against penicillin, and he knows
I'm not against poetry. (To Bernard) I've given up on the
grouse. hannah: You haven't, Valentine! valentine: (Leaving) I can't do it. HANNAH: Why? valentine: Too much noise. There's just too much bloody noisel
(On which, valentine leaves the room. chloE, upset and in
tears, jumps up and briefly pummels BERNARD ineffectually with
her fists.) chloE: You bastard, Bernard!
(She follows valentine out and is followed at a run by GUS.
Pause.) HANNAH: Well, I think that's everybody. You can leave now, give
Lightning a kick on your way out. Bernard: Yes, I'm sorry about that. It's no fun when it's not
among pros, is it? hannah: No. BERNARD: Oh, well. . . (he begins to put his lecture sheets away in his
briefcase, and is thus reminded. . .) do you want to know about
your book jacket? 'Lord Byron and Caroline Lamb at the
Royal Academy'? Ink study by Henry Fuseli? hannah: What about it? Bernard: It's not them. HANNAH: (She explodes) Who says!?
(BERNARD brings the Byron Society Journal/rom his briefcase.) BERNARD: This Fuseli expert in the Byron Society Journal. They
sent me the latest... as a distinguished guest speaker. HANNAH: But of course it's them! Everyone knows - BERNARD: Popular tradition only. (He is finding the place in the
journal.) Here we are. 'No earlier than 1820'. He's analysed it.
(Offers it to her.) Read at your leisure. HANNAH: (She sounds like BERNARD jeering) Analysed it? BERNARD: Charming sketch, of course, but Byron was in
Italy. . .
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HANNAH: But, Bernard -1 know it's them.
BERNARD: How?
hannah: How? It just is. 'Analysed it', my big toe!
Bernard: Language!
hannah: He's wrong.
BERNARD: Oh, gut instinct, you mean?
hannah: (Flatly) He's wrong.
(BERNARD snaps shut his briefcase.) Bernard: Well, it's all trivial, isn't it? Why don't you come? hannah: Where? Bernard: With me. hannah: To London? What for? Bernard: What for. hannah: Oh, your lecture. Bernard: No, no, bugger that. Sex. hannah: Oh . . . No. Thanks . . . (then, protesting) Bernardl BERNARD: You should try it. It's very underrated. hannah: Nothing against it. BERNARD: Yes, you have. You should let yourself go a bit. You
might have written a better book. Or at any rate the right
book. hannah: Sex and literature. Literature and sex. Your
conversation, left to itself, doesn't have many places to go.
Like two marbles rolling around a pudding basin. One of
them is always sex. Bernard: Ah well, yes. Men all over. hannah: No doubt. Einstein - relativity and sex. Chippendale -
sex and furniture. Galileo - 'Did the earth move?' What the
hell is it with you people? Chaps sometimes wanted to marry
me, and I don't know a worse bargain. Available sex against
not being allowed to fart in bed. What do you mean the right
book? BERNARD: It takes a romantic to make a heroine of Caroline
Lamb. You were cut out for Byron.
(Pause.) hannah: So, cheerio. Bernard: Oh, I'm coming back for the dance, you know. Chloe
asked me.
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hannah: She meant well, but I don't dance.
Bernard: No, no - I'm going with her.
hannah: Oh, I see. I don't, actually.
Bernard: I'm her date. Sub rosa. Don't tell Mother.
hannah: She doesn't want her mother to know?
BERNARD: No - / don't want her mother to know. This is my first experience of the landed aristocracy. I tell you, I'm boggle-eyed.
hannah: Bernard! - you haven't seduced that girl?
Bernard: Seduced her? Every time I turned round she was up a library ladder. In the end I gave in. That reminds me -1 spotted something between her legs that made me think of you. (He instantly receives a sharp stinging slap on the face but manages to remain completely unperturbed by it. He is already producing from his pocket a small book. His voice has hardly hesitated.)
The Peaks Traveller and Gazetteer -James Godolphin 1832 -unillustrated, I'm afraid. (He has opened the book to a marked place.) Sidley Park in Derbyshire, property of the Earl of Croom...'
hannah: (Numbly) The world is going to hell in a handcart.
Bernard: 'Five hundred acres including forty of lake - the Park by Brown and Noakes has pleasing features in the horrid style - viaduct, grotto, etc - a hermitage occupied by a lunatic since twenty years without discourse or companion save for a pet tortoise, Plautus by name, which he suffers children to touch on request.' (He holds out
