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unearths some literary gems.
From Fanny's First Play, by Bernard Shaw:
[The apostropheless contractions, according to the Gutenberg notes, are how Shaw published it.]
*** SAVOYARD. As you dont like English people, I dont know that youll get on with Trotter, because hes thoroughly English: never happy except when hes in Paris, and speaks French so unnecessarily well that everybody there spots him as an Englishman the moment he opens his mouth. [This bookends a passage I recall from a Delano Ames novel.]
*** SAVOYARD. Mind you dont chaff him about Aristotle. THE COUNT. Why should I chaff him about Aristotle? SAVOYARD. Well, I dont know; but its one of the recognized ways of chaffing him.
*** TROTTER. Well, I must say! FANNY. Just so. Thats one of our classifications in the Cambridge Fabian Society. TROTTER. Classifications? I dont understand. FANNY. We classify our aunts into different sorts. And one of the sorts is the "I must says."
*** TROTTER. If you had been classically educated— FANNY. But I have. TROTTER. Pooh! Cambridge! If you had been educated at Oxford, you would know that the definition of a play has been settled exactly and scientifically for two thousand two hundred and sixty years.
*** BANNAL. [sulkily] Oh, very well. Sorry I spoke, I'm sure. [Ha, it's Kenneth Williams in Round the Horne.] ***
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