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    O'Flaherty V.C. and Overruled
    O'Flaherty V.C. and Overruled
    O'Flaherty V.C. and Overruled
    Ebook60 pages59 minutes

    O'Flaherty V.C. and Overruled

    By George Bernard Shaw

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    George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) is revered as one of the great British dramatists, credited not only with memorable works, but the revival of the then-suffering English theatre. Shaw was born in Dublin, Ireland, left mostly to his own devices after his mother ran off to London to pursue a musical career. He educated himself for the most part, and eventually worked for a real estate agent. This experience founded in him a concern for social injustices, seeing poverty and general unfairness afoot, and would go on to address this in many of his works. In 1876, Shaw joined his mother in London where he would finally attain literary success. He used the stage to deliver messages to his audiences in the hope of bettering society. Shaw's vision was not just to reconcile issues within his society, but to encourage mankind to strive for a sort of perfection close to divinity. He did not ask questions about the present, but envisioned an alternate reality altogether. Contained in this volume are two of Shaw's lesser known works: "O'Flaherty V. C." and "Overruled".
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2011
    ISBN9781596749290
    O'Flaherty V.C. and Overruled
    Author

    George Bernard Shaw

    George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856 and moved to London in 1876. He initially wrote novels then went on to achieve fame through his career as a journalist, critic and public speaker. A committed and active socialist, he was one of the leaders of the Fabian Society. He was a prolific and much lauded playwright and was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He died in 1950.

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      Book preview

      O'Flaherty V.C. and Overruled - George Bernard Shaw

      O'FLAHERTY V.C.

      AND

      OVERRULED

      BY GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

      A Digireads.com Book

      Digireads.com Publishing

      Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-4128-9

      Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-59674-929-0

      This edition copyright © 2011

      Please visit www.digireads.com

      CONTENTS

      O'FLAHERTY V.C.

      OVERRULED

      O'FLAHERTY V.C.

      A RECRUITING PAMPHLET

      At the door of an Irish country house in a park. Fine, summer weather; the summer of 1916. The porch, painted white, projects into the drive: but the door is at the side and the front has a window. The porch faces east: and the door is in the north side of it. On the south side is a tree in which a thrush is singing. Under the window is a garden seat with an iron chair at each end of it.

      The last four bars of God Save the King are heard in the distance, followed by three cheers. Then the band strikes up It's a Long Way to Tipperary and recedes until it is out of hearing.

      Private O'Flaherty V.C. comes wearily southward along the drive, and falls exhausted into the garden seat. The thrush utters a note of alarm and flies away. The tramp of a horse is heard.

      A GENTLEMAN'S VOICE. Tim! Hi! Tim! [He is heard dismounting.]

      A LABORER'S VOICE. Yes, your honor.

      THE GENTLEMAN'S VOICE. Take this horse to the stables, will you?

      A LABORER'S VOICE. Right, your honor. Yup there. Gwan now. Gwan. [The horse is led away.]

      [General Sir Pearce Madigan, an elderly baronet in khaki, beaming with enthusiasm, arrives. O'Flaherty rises and stands at attention.]

      SIR PEARCE. No, no, O'Flaherty: none of that now. You're off duty. Remember that though I am a general of forty years service, that little Cross of yours gives you a higher rank in the roll of glory than I can pretend to.

      O'FLAHERTY [relaxing.] I'm thankful to you, Sir Pearce; but I wouldn't have anyone think that the baronet of my native place would let a common soldier like me sit down in his presence without leave.

      SIR PEARCE. Well, you're not a common soldier, O'Flaherty: you're a very uncommon one; and I'm proud to have you for my guest here today.

      O'FLAHERTY. Sure I know, sir. You have to put up with a lot from the like of me for the sake of the recruiting. All the quality shakes hands with me and says they're proud to know me, just the way the king said when he pinned the Cross on me. And it's as true as I'm standing here, sir, the queen said to me: I hear you were born on the estate of General Madigan, she says; and the General himself tells me you were always a fine young fellow. Bedad, Mam, I says to her, if the General knew all the rabbits I snared on him, and all the salmon I snatched on him, and all the cows I milked on him, he'd think me the finest ornament for the county jail he ever sent there for poaching.

      SIR PEARCE [Laughing.] You're welcome to them all, my lad. Come [he makes him sit down again on the garden seat]! sit down and enjoy your holiday [he sits down on one of the iron chairs; the one at the doorless side of the porch.]

      O'FLAHERTY. Holiday, is it? I'd give five shillings to be back in the trenches for the sake of a little rest and quiet. I never knew what hard work was till I took to recruiting. What with the standing on my legs all day, and the shaking hands, and the making speeches, and—what's worse—the listening to them and the calling for cheers for king and country, and the saluting the flag till I'm stiff with it, and the listening to them playing God Save the King and Tipperary, and the trying to make my eyes look moist like a man in a picture book, I'm that bet that I hardly get a wink of sleep. I give you my word, Sir Pearce, that I never heard the tune of Tipperary in my life till I came back from Flanders; and already it's drove me to that pitch of tiredness of it that when a poor little innocent slip of a boy in the street the other night drew himself up and saluted and began whistling it at me, I clouted his head for him, God forgive me.

      SIR PEARCE [soothingly.] Yes, yes: I know. I know. One does get fed up with it: I've been dog tired myself on parade many a time. But still, you know, there's a gratifying side to it, too. After all, he is our king; and it's our own country, isn't it?

      O'FLAHERTY. Well, sir, to you that have an estate in it, it would feel like your country. But the divil a perch of it ever I owned. And as to the king: God help him, my mother would have taken the skin off

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