YHB was thinking, today, about the differences between Rich Alfie and Poor Alfie. Poor Alfie comes in with the potential of causing real trouble. It’s a plot point: before we can really settle down to Eliza’s education, we have to know that the Old Life won’t be rearing it’s head. As you might expect it to, if you didn’t know the show. In fact, that would be the more usual sort of thing, with the battle between her Old Life and her New Life, reconciling the two, blah blah blah, we’ve seen that movie before. No, Shaw isn’t interested in that as a character study. He wants Eliza thrown into the new life with a clean break. Poor Alfie’s scene, where he is bought off with a five pound note, makes that clear.
Rich Alfie, on the other hand, is closer to comic relief. It’s pointed comic relief—everything Shaw does is pointed, even when it’s dull—but it isn’t necessary from the plot point of view. Oh, I suppose it clears up whether Eliza will be forced to stay with Higgins, but there are so many options available to her that I doubt any theatergoer, even if unfamiliar with the play in any of its forms, would get to Rich Alfie’s scene with any question about that.
So he serves different purposes in the two scenes. And he has also changed quite a bit. He’s had a harrowing experience, and although Shaw’s interminable who-does-what-afterwards essay indicates that he recovers from his sudden prosperity, I am not playing it that way, and I don’t think you need to. I think Alfie really is broken by middle-class morality, and he spends the rest of his years, probably not many of them, straightjacketed and morose. “Happier men than me will call for my dust, and touch me for their tip; and I’ll look on helpless, and envy them.” That’s one of the lines that’s been cut from our playing script, but that’s my image of his life after the play.
During the play, however, he’s still kicking against the pricks, which is what makes the scene funny. Or, rather, he’s caught between his rage and his helplessness, and he’s wearing respectability like a choking necktie. My favorite bits are where he tries, pathetically, to adopt the middle-class mannerisms that are now incumbent on him. I’m itching to get my hands on the hat. That’ll be the real focus. What do you do with a top hat? He won’t have worn one in his life (not whilst sober, anyway, although he may have pinched one from a pre-dawn staggering Algie or Rupert at some point), and he’ll vague know about taking it off indoors and tipping it to ladies, and all, but it’ll all be new. And besides, he’s got to keep it clean and tidy for the wedding. If I can manage it, that hat will be his cage and handcuffs and his red rubber nose, all in one.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.