by Tom Stoppard
CARR: Oh, Cecily. I wish I’d known then that you’d turn out to be a pedant! (Getting angry) Wasn’t this – Didn’t do that – 1916 – 1917 – What of it? I was here. They were here. They went on. I went on. We all went on.
OLD CECILY: No, we didn’t. We stayed. Sophia married that artist. I married you. You played Algernon. They all went on.
(Most of the fading light is on CARR now.)
CARR: Great days … Zurich during the war. Refugees, spies, exiles, painters, poets, writers, radicals of all kinds. I knew them all. Used to argue far into the night… at the Odeon, the Terrasse … I learned three things in Zurich during the war. I wrote them down. Firstly, you’re either a revolutionary or you’re not, and if you’re not you might as well be an artist as anything else. Secondly, if you can’t be an artist, you might as well be a revolutionary …
I forget the third thing.
(BLACKOUT.)
