Sheila Birling

• … all last summer […] you never came near me
• I think it was a mean thing to do
• These girls aren’t cheap labour - they’re people
• I felt rotten about it at the time and now I feel a lot worse
• Why - you fool - he knows
• Mrs Birling enters […] self-confidently […] out of key with the […] scene that has just passed. Sheila feels this at once
• I’m afraid you’ll say something or do something that you’ll be sorry for afterwards
• … he’s giving us the rope so that we’ll hang ourselves
• Now I really feel engaged
• … run along
• … there isn’t the slightest reason why my daughter should be dragged into this unpleasant business
• … oh I wish you hadn’t told me
• It’s a rotten shame
• If she’d been some miserable plain little creature, I don’t suppose I’d have done it
• Were you seeing her last spring and summer […]? Were you?
• I’m supposed to be engaged to the hero of it
• If all that’s come out tonight is true, then it doesn’t much matter who it was who made us confess
• You and I aren’t the same people who sat down to dinner here
• Miss Birling has just been made to understand and what she did to this girl, she feels responsible
• They’re more impressionable […] … the young ones
• … go on, Mummy
• … all last summer, when you never came near me
• Oh - Gerald - you’ve got it - is it the one you wanted me to have?
• … sorry, Daddy
• (… Sheila is still admiring her ring.)
• Run along
• … if they didn’t get rid of that girl, I’d never go near the place again
• I’ll never, never do it again to anybody
• … you knew her very well. Otherwise, you wouldn’t look so guilty
• Mother, I think it was cruel and vile
• I behaved badly too. I know I did. I’m ashamed of it
• … it’s you two who are being childish - trying not to face the facts
• … if all that’s come out tonight is true, then it doesn’t much matter who it was who made us confess
• But you’re forgetting one thing I still can’t forget. Everything we said had happened really had happened
• I want to get out of this. It frightens me the way you talk
• No, not yet. It’s too soon. I must think