Dolly at the Dentist

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was a legendary Irish playwright, critic and passionate socialist who wrote over fifty celebrated plays, including Arms and the Man, Pygmalion, Man and Superman and Saint Joan, replacing romantic melodrama with intellectual debate, social criticism and biting wit. This chapter is an extract from the opening scene of You Never Can Tell, a Shavian comedy of manners set in a dentist's operating room on a fine August morning in 1896, highlighting the clash between rigid Victorian morality and the free-spirited new generation.

The extraction and Dolly's cold insolence

The scene opens in the operating room of Mr. Valentine, a young dentist of thirty who has recently started private practice. His patient is Dolly Clandon, a 'very pretty woman in miniature', barely eighteen. As her face clears from the 'tense patience under pain' of a tooth extraction, Valentine proudly puts the tooth down, declaring, 'That was my first tooth.'

Aghast to realise she was his very first private patient, Dolly asks why he practised on her; Valentine laughs that every dentist must begin with somebody. She retorts, 'Yes: somebody in a hospital, not people who pay!' When he asks why she refused the pain-relieving gas, Dolly shows her characteristic 'cool insolence', she refused simply because his system charged five shillings extra for it.

Shaking up the dentist's professional pride

Dolly walks around the room, inspecting everything and making sharp remarks that shake Valentine's pride. She notes the furniture looks cheap and outdated, and he admits it belongs to his landlord. She asks if he owns the expensive operating chair, and he confesses he bought it on the hire-purchase (instalment) system.

Paying her bill of five shillings with a large crown piece, Dolly tells him that since this was his very first fee he should drill a hole in the coin and wear it on his watch-chain as a lucky charm.

The entrance of Philip and the hurricane of conversation

The comic pace quickens with the entrance of Philip Clandon, Dolly's twin brother, described as 'promptitude itself', entering with rapid, confident energy. The twins launch into a swift, continuous, highly coordinated conversation that completely overwhelms the quiet dentist, and without giving him time to think, invite him to lunch at the Marine Hotel at half-past one.

When Valentine hesitates, pointing out that they are perfect strangers, the twins dismiss his objections as 'bosh' (nonsense). Philip explains that Valentine's knowledge of human nature should confirm they are perfectly respectable, revealing that they have just arrived in London from Madeira.

Escaping the 'Twentieth Century Treatises'

The twins reveal the hilarious reason for their journey: they have fled Madeira to escape their mother, Mrs. Lanfrey Clandon, a celebrated authoress of modern educational and moral books known as the 'Twentieth Century Treatises', covering Cooking, Creeds, Conduct, Children and Parents. Philip proudly says they came to London to live their own lives because their minds 'successfully resisted all our mother's efforts to improve them.'

They advise Valentine to read the books to improve his own mind, though Dolly quickly adds, 'but not till we've gone, please.' The scene ends in high spirits as the twins prepare to introduce Valentine to their elder sister, Gloria, 'The Woman of the Twentieth Century', leaving the young dentist completely bewildered by the family's energy, wit and defiance.