BRIGGS: We’re old friends, Jack and myself. We met at a street corner. I should tell you he’ll deny this account. His story will be different. I was standing at a street corner. A car drew up. It was him. He asked me the way to Bolsover Street. I told him Bolsover Street was in the middle of an intricate one-way system. It was a one-way system easy enough to get into. The only trouble was that, once in, you couldn’t get out. I told him his best bet, if he really wanted to get to Bolsover Street, was to take the first left, first right, second right, third on the left, keep his eye open for a hardware shop, go right round the square, keeping to the inside lane, take the second Mews on the right and then stop. He will find himself facing a very tall office block, with a crescent courtyard. He can take advantage of this office block. He can go round the crescent, come out the other way, follow the arrows, go past two sets of traffic lights and take the next left indicated by the first green filter he comes across. He’s got the Post Office Tower in his vision the whole time. All he’s got to do is to reverse into the underground car park, change gear, go straight on, and he’ll find himself in Bolsover Street with no trouble at all. I did warn him, though, that he’ll still be faced with the problem, having found Bolsover Street, of losing it. I told him I knew one or two people who’d been wandering up and down Bolsover Street for years. They’d wasted their bloody youth there. The people who live there, their faces are grey, they’re in a state of despair, but nobody pays any attention, you see. All people are worried about is their ill-gotten gains. I wrote to The Times about it. Life At A Dead End, I called it. Went for nothing. Anyway, I told him that probably the best thing he could do was to forget the whole idea of getting to Bolsover Street. I remember saying to him: This trip you’ve got in mind, drop it, it could prove fatal. But he said he had to deliver a parcel.
British playwright (1930–2008)
DEELEY: Myself I was a student then, juggling with my future, wondering should I bejasus saddle myself with a slip of a girl not long out of her swaddling clothes whose only claim to virtue was silence but who lacked any sense of fixedness, any sense of decisiveness, but was compliant only to the shifting winds, with which she went, but not the winds, and certainly not my winds, such as they are, but I suppose winds that only she understood, and that of course with no understanding whatsoever, at least as I understand the word, at least that’s the way I figured it. A classic female figure, I said to myself, or is it a classic female posture, one way or the other long outworn.
Don’t be too sure though. You’ve forgotten something. Look at me. I… move my leg. That’s all it is. But I wear… underwear… which moves with me… it… captures your attention. Perhaps you misinterpret. The action is simple. It’s a leg… moving. My lips move. Why don’t you restrict… your observations to that? Perhaps the fact that they move is more significant… than the words which come through them. You must bear that… possibility… in mind.
I was born quite near here.
Then… six years ago, I went to America. It’s all rock. And sand. It stretches… so far… everywhere you look. And there’s lots of insects there. And there’s lots of insects there.
How's Emily? What a woman. [Pouring,] Black? Here you are. What a woman. Have to tell you I fell in love with her once upon a time. Have to confess it to you. Took her out to tea, in Dorchester. Told her of my yearning. Decided to take the bull by the horns. Proposed that she betray you. Admitted you were a damn fine chap, but pointed out I would be taking nothing that belonged to you, simply that portion of herself all women keep in reserve, for a rainy day. Had an infernal job persuading her. She said she adored you, her life would be meaningless were she to be false. Plied her with buttered scones, Wiltshire cream, crumpets and strawberries. Eventually she succumbed. Don't suppose you ever knew about it, what? Oh, we're too old now for it to matter, don't you agree?
Stanley cannot perceive his only valid justification - which is he is what he is - therefore he certainly can never be articulate about it...
We’ve agreed: the hierarchy, The Establishment, the arbiters, the socio-religious monsters arrive to affect censure and alteration upon a member of the club who has discarded responsibility (that word again) towards himself and others. (What is your opinion, by the way, of the act of suicide?) He does possess, however, for my money, a certain fibre – he fights for his life. It doesn’t last long, this fight. His core being a quagmire of delusion, his mind a tenuous fuse box, he collapses under the weight of their accusation – an accusation compounded of the shit-stained strictures of centuries of ‘tradition’.
God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden’s God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam’s God was bad, except he didn’t have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don’t chop people’s heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don’t you forget it.
STANLEY: How would you like to go away with me?
LULU: Where?
STANLEY: Nowhere. Still, we could go.
LULU: But where could we go?
STANLEY: Nowhere. There's nowhere to go. So we could just go. It wouldn't matter.
LULU: We might as well stay here.
STANLEY: No. It's no good here.
LULU: Well, where else is there?
STANLEY: Nowhere.
There never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art, there are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.