GARSIDE'S CAREER
A Comedy In Four Acts
By Harold Brighouse
London: Constable And Company Ltd.
1914
TO
A. N. MONKHOUSE
CONTENTS
GARSIDE'S CAREER
ACT I
Interior of an artisan cottage. Door centre, leading direct to street, door right to house. Fireplace with kitchen range left. Table centre, with print cloth. Two plain chairs under it, one left, one centre, facing audience. Rocking-chair by fireplace. Two chairs against wall right, above door. Dresser right, below door. Small hanging bookcase on wall, left centre. Window right centre. On walls plainly framed photographs of Socialist leaders—Blatchford, Hyndman, Hardie. The time is 7.0 p.m. on a June evening.
Mrs. Garside is a working-class woman of 50, greyhaired, slight, with red toil-worn hands and a face expressive of resignation marred by occasional petulance, dressed in a rough serge skirt, dark print blouse, elastic-sided boots, and a white apron. She sits in the rocking-chair, watching the cheap alarm-clock fretfully. Outside a boy is heard calling "Last Edishun." She rises hastily, feels on the mantelpiece for her purse, opens the door centre and buys a paper from the boy who appears through the doorway. She closes door, sits centre and spreads the paper on the table, rises again and gets spectacle-case from mantelpiece. She sits with spectacles on and rapidly goes through the paper seeking some particular item.
The door centre opens and Margaret Shawcross enters. She is young, dark, with a face beautiful in expression rather than feature. It is the face of an idealist, one who would go through fire and water for the faith that is in her.
She is a school teacher, speaking with an educated voice in a slightly apparent northern accent, dressed neatly and serviceably.
Mrs. G...