[_SHEBA sits at the piano and plays a bright air softly--DARBEY standing behind her--SALOME and TARVER stand in the archway._
[_Slapping THE DEAN on the back._] Look here, Augustin, George Tidd will lend you that thousand for the poor, innocent old Spire.
On one condition--that you'll admit there's no harm in our laughing at a Sporting Dean.
Tris! My brother Gus doesn't want us to be merry at his expense.
[_Trying to silence them._] No, no! I forbid it! Hush!
Why, Jedd, there's no harm in laughter, for those who laugh or those who are laughed at.
Provided always--firstly, that it is Folly that is laughed at and not Virtue; secondly, that it is our friends who laugh at us, [_to the audience_] as we hope they all will, for our pains.
This transcription is based on the scan images posted by The Internet Archive at:
http://archive.org/details/dandydickplayint00pinerich
In addition, when there was a question about the printed text, another edition posted by The Internet Archive was consulted:
http://archive.org/details/dandydickplayint00pineiala
The following changes were made to the text:
- Throughout the text, dashes at the end of lines have been normalized.
- Throughout the text, "and" in the character titles preceding dialogue has been italicized consistently and names in stage directions have been consistently either capitalized (in the text version) or set in small caps (in the html version).
- In the Introductory Note, “St. Marvells” has an apostrophe, whereas in the text of the play it almost always does not. The inconsistency has been allowed to stand in the Introductory Note, but the apostrophe has been removed in the few instances in the text.
- Pg. 25: "_THE DEAN gives DARBEY a severe look..._"--A bracket has been added to the beginning of this line.
- Pg. 97: "No, Aunt, No!"--The second "No" has been changed to lower case.
- Pg. 139: "Oh, what do you think of it. Mr. Darbey?"--The period after "it" has been changed to a comma.
- Pg. 141: "We can't shout here, go and cheer..."--The comma has been changed to a semicolon.
- Pg. 142: "That's Hatcham, I'll raise his wages."--The comma has been changed to a semicolon.
- Pg. 143: "'aint" has been changed to "ain't".
- Pg. 147: "...mutual esteem, last night..."--The comma has been changed to a semicolon.