The Winslow Boy

Terence Rattigan

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781854594679
• eBook ISBN: 9781780012155
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Based on the real-life court case of a young naval cadet unjustly accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order and first staged in 1946, The Winslow Boy has been revived many times since.

Ronnie Winslow is expelled from naval college, having been accused of petty theft. Enraged, his father Arthur engages a lawyer to challenge the Admiralty to prove the charges in court – but public opinion is very much against the Winslows, and each member of the family is suffering...

Terence Rattigan's play The Winslow Boy was first produced (after a brief pre-London tour) at the Lyric Theatre, London, in May 1946.

This edition includes an authoritative introduction by Dan Rebellato, a biographical sketch and a chronology.

Act One

Scene: The drawing-room of a house in Courtfield Gardens, South Kensington, on a morning in July, at some period not long before the war of 1914-1918.

The furnishings betoken solid but not undecorative upper middle-class comfort.

On the rise of the curtain A BOY of about fourteen, dressed in the uniform of an Osborne naval cadet, is discovered. There is something rigid and tense in his attitude, and his face is blank and without expression.

There is the sound of someone in the hall. As the sound comes nearer, he looks despairingly round, as if contemplating flight. An elderly maid (VIOLET) comes in, and stops in astonishment at sight of him.

VIOLET. Master Ronnie!

RONNIE. (With ill-managed sang-froid.) Hello, Violet.

VIOLET. Why, good gracious! We weren’t expecting you back till Tuesday.

RONNIE. Yes, I know.

VIOLET. Why ever didn’t you let us know you were coming, you silly boy? Your mother should have been at the station to meet you. The idea of a child like you wandering all over London by yourself. I never did. However did you get in? By the garden, I suppose.

RONNIE. No. The front-door. I rang and cook opened it.

VIOLET. And where’s your trunk and your tuck box?

RONNIE. Upstairs. The taximan carried them up –

VIOLET. Taximan? You took a taxi?

RONNIE nods.

All by yourself? Well, I don’t know what little boys are coming to, I’m sure. What your father and mother will say, I don’t know

RONNIE. Where are they, Violet?

VIOLET. Church, of course.

RONNIE. (Vacantly.) Oh, yes. It’s Sunday, isn’t it?

VIOLET. What’s the matter with you? What have they been doing to you at Osborne?

RONNIE. (Sharply.) What do you mean?

VIOLET. They seem to have made you a bit soft in the head, or something. Well – I suppose I’d better get your unpacking done – Mr. Dickie’s been using your chest of drawers for all his dress clothes and things. I’ll just clear ’em out and put ’em on his bed – that’s what I’ll do. He can find room for ’em somewhere else.

RONNIE. Shall I help you?

VIOLET. (Scornfully.) I know your help. With your help I’ll be at it all day. No, you just wait down here for your mother and father. They’ll be back in a minute.

RONNIE nods and turns hopelessly away. VIOLET looks at his retreating back, puzzled.

Well?

RONNIE. (Turning.) Yes?

VIOLET. Don’t I get a kiss or are you too grown up for that now?

RONNIE. Sorry, Violet.

He goes up to her and is enveloped in her ample bosom.

VIOLET. That’s better. My, what a big boy you’re getting!

She holds him at arm’s length and inspects him.

Quite the little naval officer, aren’t you?

RONNIE. (Smiling forlornly.) Yes. That’s right.

VIOLET. Well, well – I must be getting on –

She goes out. RONNIE, left alone, resumes his attitude of utter dejection. He takes out of his pocket a letter in a sealed envelope. After a second’s hesitation, he opens it, and reads the contents. The perusal appears to increase his misery.

He makes for a moment as if to tear it up; then changes his mind again, and puts it back in his pocket. He gets up and takes two or three quick steps towards the hall door. Then he stops, uncertainly.

There is the sound of voices in the hall. RONNIE jumps to his feet; then, with a strangled sob runs to the garden door, and down the iron steps into the garden.

The hall door opens and the rest of the Winslow family file in. They are ARTHUR and GRACE – Ronnie’s father and mother – and DICKIE and CATHERINE – his brother and sister. All are carrying prayerbooks, and wear that faintly unctuous after-church air.

ARTHUR leans heavily on a stick. He is a man of about sixty, with a rather deliberately cultured patriarchal air. GRACE is about ten years younger, with the faded remnants of prettiness. DICKIE is an Oxford undergraduate, large, noisy, and cheerful. CATHERINE, approaching thirty, has an air of masculinity about her which is at odd variance with her mother’s intense femininity.

GRACE. (As she enters.) – But he’s so old, dear. From the back of the church you really can’t hear a word he says –

ARTHUR. He’s a good man, Grace.

GRACE. But what’s the use of being good, if you’re inaudible?

CATHERINE. A problem in ethics for you, Father.

ARTHUR is standing with his back to fireplace. He looks round at the open garden door.

ARTHUR. There’s a draught, Grace.

GRACE goes to the door and closes it.

GRACE. Oh, dear – it’s coming on to rain.

DICKIE. I’m on Mother’s side. The old boy’s so doddery now he can hardly finish the course at all. I timed him today. It took him seventy-five seconds dead from a flying start to reach the pulpit, and then he needed the whip coming round the bend. I call that pretty bad going.

ARTHUR. I don’t think that’s very funny, Richard.

DICKIE. Oh, don’t you, Father?

ARTHUR. Doddery though Mr. Jackson may seem now, I very much doubt if he failed in his pass mods. when he was at Oxford.

DICKIE. (Aggrieved.) Dash it – Father – you promised not to mention that again this vac –

GRACE. You did, you know, Arthur.

ARTHUR. There was a condition to my promise – if you remember – that Dickie should provide me with reasonable evidence of his intentions to work.

DICKIE. Well, haven’t I, Father? Didn’t I stay in all last night – a Saturday night – and work?

ARTHUR. You stayed in, Dickie. I would be the last to deny that.

GRACE. You were making rather a noise, dear, with that old gramophone of yours. I really can’t believe you could have been doing much work with that going on all the time –

DICKIE. Funnily enough, Mother, it helps me to concentrate –

ARTHUR. Concentrate on what?

DICKIE. Work, of course.

ARTHUR. That was not what you appeared to be concentrating on when I came down to fetch a book – sleep, may I say, having been rendered out of the question by the hideous sounds emanating from this room.

DICKIE. Edwina and her father had just looked in on their way to the Graham’s dance – they only stayed a minute –

GRACE. What an idiotic girl that is! Oh, sorry, Dickie – I was forgetting. You’re rather keen on her, aren’t you?

ARTHUR. You would have had ample proof of that fact, Grace, if you had seen them in the attitude I caught them in last night.

DICKIE. We were practising the Bunny Hug.

GRACE. The what, dear?

DICKIE. The Bunny Hug. It’s the new dance.

CATHERINE. (Helpfully.) It’s like the Turkey Trot – only more dignified.

GRACE. I thought that was the tango.

DICKIE. No. More like a Fox Trot, really. Something between a Boston Glide and a Kangaroo Hop.

ARTHUR. We appear to be straying from the point. Whatever animal was responsible for the posture I found you in does not alter the fact that you have not done one single stroke of work this vacat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• Introduction to Terence Rattigan
• Introduction to The Winslow Boy
• List of Rattigan’s Produced Plays
• Characters & Original Production
• The Winslow Boy
• About the Author
• By the Same Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information