The Complaisant Lover

A Play

Graham Greene

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781504054256
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

A "delicious... champagne cocktail" of a stage comedy about a sporting British couple's marital—and extramarital—propositions ( New York Herald Tribune ). Victor Rhodes, a hearty and amiable dentist in North London, has what he thinks is a happy marriage. It's stable, routine, and comfortably platonic. Five years and counting, his wife, Mary, feels the same way. That's why she's taken a secret lover—their good friend, Clive Root, an antiquarian bookseller for whom relieving complaisant husbands of their duty is a pleasure. But when Mary and Clive connive a rendezvous in Amsterdam, their getaway takes a surprising turn with a visit from Victor. What's now at risk for Mary is more than a marriage to a man she genuinely loves but also a perfectly fulfilling affair with a man she truly desires. In this "sin-and-tonic work of art, " Mary isn't about to give up either of them ( Spectator ). "An expert at badinage full of quiet English verve, Mr. Greene writes with smooth sophistication" in his last play—a comedy of lies, cheats, and betrayals—produced by Sir John Gielgud at the Globe Theatre, London, in 1959 ( The New York Times ). Two years later, it debuted on Broadway, with a cast including Sandy Dennis, Michael Redgrave, and Gene Wilder.

Act One

SCENE I

The living room of a house in North London. It is designed to serve as both dining room and drawing room, the walls slanting in the centre towards the footlights and back again, so as to form an inner room rather than an alcove, where the men in the party now in progress are sitting over the wine. There is a sideboard and upstage from the sideboard a door. The men are in dinner jackets.

At the back of the living room tall windows open on to a small garden, but the curtains are drawn. A door opposite the dining room leads to the hall and stairs.

The host, Victor Rhodes, is a man in his middle forties. He has a plump round face, now a little flushed with wine, an air of happiness and good nature. Throughout the scene we are a little haunted by the thought that we have encountered him somewhere before; his anecdotes, of which he has so many, have surely at one time fallen into our own ears. He is on his feet half-way between sideboard and table.

On the right of his empty chair sits William Howard, a local bank manager, a man in his late fifties. The third man, the youngest there, is in his late thirties, with sullen good looks and an air of being intellectually a little more interesting than his companions. He runs, as we soon learn, a local antiquarian bookshop: his name is Clive Root; but the profession of Victor Rhodes—and it is perhaps a professional air which we are trying to identify—remains unknown until later in the scene.

The women are upstairs, but they will soon drift down to the drawing room. There is Mrs. Howard, a woman in her early fifties, quiet and kindly; her daughter Ann, a girl of nineteen, pretty and immature, and Mary Rhodes, a woman in the middle thirties, who moves quickly, nervously, with unconscious beauty.

When the curtain rises only the men are there. From the attitude of the men Victor is obviously concluding a long address.

VICTOR: Off on the wrong foot, arse over tip, and there I was looking up at the stars—I mean Oxford Circus. And what did my wife say—“That word in nine letters was escalator.” Ha, ha, ha. If there’s one thing I thank God for, Mr. Root, it’s a sense of humour. I’ve attained a certain position in life. There are not many men in my profession I would acknowledge as my masters, but I would sacrifice all that—this house and garden, that chair you are sitting on, Mr. Root—it cost me no mean figure at Christie’s, I like beautiful things around me—what was I saying, William?

HOWARD: You were telling Mr. Root and me about your sense of humour.

VICTOR: That’s right. A sense of humour is more important than a balance at the bank—whatever William may say.

HOWARD: I don’t say anything, Victor, you never let me.

VICTOR: Ah-ha, William has a sense of humour too, you see. Perhaps it’s not so important in a bank manager as in a man of my profession, but it’s not our professions that I have in mind. Mr. Root, you are looking tonight at a very rare phenomenon—two men who are happily married. And why are we happily married?

HOWARD: Because we happen to like our wives.

VICTOR: That’s not enough. It’s because we’ve got a sense of humour. A sense of humour means a happy marriage.

CLIVE: Is it as simple as that, Mr. Rhodes?

VICTOR: I can assure you there are very few situations in life that a joke won’t ease.

HOWARD: You were going to let us have some port, Victor.

VICTOR: Port? (He looks at the decanter.) Oh yes. (He sits down.) You, William?

HOWARD: Thanks. You, Mr. Root?

CLIVE: Thanks.

VICTOR: Do you know how this business of passing the port clockwise originated?

HOWARD: Yes, Victor. I learnt it from you. Last week.

VICTOR (unabashed): Ha, ha, that’s good. I’ll remember that to tell my victims.

HOWARD: How are the second-hand books, Root?

VICTOR: You ought to call them antiquarian, William. It’s more expensive. Do you know the first thing Dr. Fuchs found in the Antarctic?

HOWARD (wearily): No, Victor.

VICTOR: A second-hand Penguin.

He looks from one to the other, but nobody laughs.

CLIVE: The second-hand books would gather a lot more dust, Mr. Howard, if it wasn’t for your daughter.

HOWARD: I never thought of Ann as a great reader.

Ann has come down first of the women. She stands a moment as though listening and then picks up a magazine.

CLIVE: Her interests are specialized. The early Western. We are talking of you, Ann.

ANN: Only Zane Greys.

VICTOR: Not highbrow, anyway. She’s too pretty, William, to be highbrow.

CLIVE (who obviously has some hidden antipathy to Rhodes): Brows are a matter of opinion, Mr. Rhodes. The early Zane Greys cost quite a lot already and they are a good investment.

VICTOR: Investment? That’s an idea. A man says to me—they often do if I give them the chance—“I’m buying tobacco now for a rise. What do you say?” And now of course I’ll tell him “Put your money into Zane Greys.”

CLIVE: You’d be giving perfectly good advice. Unless someone discovers that books are a cause of cancer.

HOWARD: At the bank I tell my customers, “Hold on to gold.”

VICTOR: Send the port round again, Root.

Mrs. Howard has come down, closely followed by Mary Rhodes.

MARY: She will bring in the coffee before I ring. I suppose it’s nearly cold.

MRS. HOWARD (feeling the pot): Oh, no.

MARY (with her eyes on the other part of the room): I wish you’d pour out.

MRS. HOWARD: Of course I will. Sugar?

MARY: Please.

ANN: Oh, Mother—not in mine.

MRS. HOWARD: I forgot she’s on a diet. Look up what time the Larkins are on, dear. Your father won’t want to miss them. (Handing Mary her cup.) Thank God I’m past dieting. I’ve got my man.

MARY: We both have, haven’t we? (She takes her cup and goes to watch the men.)

Her ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Act One
• Act Two
• About the Author
• Copyright