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    Augustus Does His Bit: A True-to-Life Farce
    Augustus Does His Bit: A True-to-Life Farce
    Augustus Does His Bit: A True-to-Life Farce
    Ebook56 pages35 minutes

    Augustus Does His Bit: A True-to-Life Farce

    By Bernard Shaw

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    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 2003
    Augustus Does His Bit: A True-to-Life Farce

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      Book preview

      Augustus Does His Bit - Bernard Shaw

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of Augustus Does His Bit, by George Bernard Shaw

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: Augustus Does His Bit

      Author: George Bernard Shaw

      Release Date: January 15, 2009 [EBook #3487]

      Last Updated: December 10, 2012

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUGUSTUS DOES HIS BIT ***

      Produced by Eve Sobol, and David Widger

      AUGUSTUS DOES HIS BIT

      A TRUE-TO-LIFE FARCE

      By George Bernard Shaw

      AUGUSTUS DOES HIS BIT

      I wish to express my gratitude for certain good offices which Augustus secured for me in January, 1917. I had been invited to visit the theatre of war in Flanders by the Commander-in-Chief: an invitation which was, under the circumstances, a summons to duty. Thus I had occasion to spend some days in procuring the necessary passport and other official facilities for my journey. It happened just then that the Stage Society gave a performance of this little play. It opened the heart of every official to me. I have always been treated with distinguished consideration in my contracts with bureaucracy during the war; but on this occasion I found myself persona grata in the highest degree. There was only one word when the formalities were disposed of; and that was We are up against Augustus all day. The showing-up of Augustus scandalized one or two innocent and patriotic critics who regarded the prowess of the British army as inextricably bound up with Highcastle prestige. But our Government departments knew better: their problem was how to win the war with Augustus on their backs, well-meaning, brave, patriotic, but obstructively fussy, self-important, imbecile, and disastrous.

      Save for the satisfaction of being able to laugh at Augustus in the theatre, nothing, as far as I know, came of my dramatic reduction of him to absurdity. Generals, admirals, Prime Ministers and Controllers, not to mention Emperors, Kaisers and Tsars, were scrapped remorselessly at home and abroad, for their sins or services, as the case might be. But Augustus stood like the Eddystone in a storm, and stands so to this day. He gave us his word that he was indispensable and we took it.

      Augustus Does His Bit was performed for the first time at the Court Theatre in London by the Stage Society on the 21st January, 1917, with Lalla Vandervelde as The Lady, F. B.J. Sharp as Lord Augustus Highcastle, and Charles Rock as Horatio Floyd Beamish.

      AUGUSTUS DOES HIS BIT

      The Mayor's parlor in the Town Hall of Little Pifflington. Lord Augustus Highcastle, a distinguished member of the governing class, in the uniform of a colonel, and very well preserved at forty-five, is comfortably seated at a writing-table with his heels on it, reading The Morning Post. The door faces him, a little to his left, at the other

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