“Drinking like a fish, as usual?”
Hardy, Act One (the handover, before Stanhope appears)
Stanhope’s reputation reaches us before he does, and it arrives as gossip. Hardy’s tone is cheerful, as if heavy drinking were an entertaining trick, and the cliché “like a fish” makes it comic. Osborne’s reply, that Stanhope has stuck it until “his nerves have got battered to bits”, reframes the drinking as a symptom of strain rather than a vice. Sherriff builds the exposition so that the audience holds both images before Stanhope enters, and the rest of the play asks which one is true.
“I love that fellow. I’d go to hell with him.”
Osborne to Hardy, Act One
Osborne speaks with a directness the other officers avoid, and the plain monosyllables make the declaration sound certain. The phrase “go to hell” is a common idiom, but in the trenches it is also close to literal, and by Act Three Osborne has gone up the steps for Stanhope and not come back. The line establishes loyalty between men as the play’s strongest bond, stronger than rank, and Hardy’s teasing reply shows how unusual it was to say so aloud.
“Think of it all as – as romantic. It helps.”
Osborne to Raleigh, Act One
Osborne is gently teaching Raleigh a way to cope, not describing the war. The hesitation before “romantic” shows he is choosing the word with care, and the short final sentence admits it is a strategy: the romance is useful, not true. The line quietly exposes the idealised picture of war that sent young men like Raleigh to France, while showing sympathy for anyone who needs it. The rest of the play strips that picture away scene by scene.
“Despite his stars of rank he is no more than a boy”
Stage direction, Act One (Stanhope’s first entrance)
Sherriff’s stage directions read like a novelist’s, and this one tells the reader what to feel. The contrast between the “stars of rank”, the badges of a captain, and “no more than a boy” sets out the tragedy of Stanhope in a single sentence: a young man carrying a load meant for someone older. The direction goes on to describe the pallor and dark shadows under his eyes, so that before he says a word we see the strain.
“Damn the soup! Bring some whisky!”
Stanhope, Act One (calling to Mason just after he comes down into the dugout)
Two short exclamations, one dismissing food and one demanding drink, and the audience learns at once what Hardy’s gossip meant. The imperatives show a man used to command and running on nerves. Placed straight after the comic business about pineapple chunks and apricots, the line jolts the tone, and it also shows whisky as something Stanhope needs before he can face anything, including the boy standing in the corner whom he has not yet seen.
“Another little worm trying to wriggle home.”
Stanhope to Osborne, Act One (after Hibbert goes to bed)
Stanhope reduces Hibbert to a worm, the lowest creature in the earth, and the verb “wriggle” suggests escape that is both cowardly and undignified. The contempt is so sharp that it invites suspicion, and a few minutes later Stanhope confesses his own terror, which suggests he despises in Hibbert the escape he refuses himself. Worms return in Act Two, when Stanhope wonders how a worm knows whether it is going up or down, an image of his own disorientation.
“without being doped with whisky – I’d go mad with fright.”
Stanhope to Osborne, Act One (after supper)
This is the play’s central confession. The verb “doped” is medical: whisky is an anaesthetic, taken to survive, not for pleasure. The dash creates a pause before the admission, and “go mad with fright” is stark after so much understatement. Stanhope points up the steps into the line as he says it, tying the steps to fear for the rest of the play. The line explains his drinking, his fear of Raleigh’s letter and his harshness to Hibbert all at once.
“you know, red, white, and blue.”
Trotter to Osborne, Act Two, Scene 1 (breakfast)
Trotter is describing the flower borders of his front garden, geraniums, lobelia and calceolaria, and this proud aside turns them into a patriotic flag. The list of flower names is lovingly exact, a suburban Englishman’s pleasure, and the colours tie that ordinary home to the nation. Sherriff lets the audience see what the war is being fought for, as Trotter would understand it: not an idea but a garden. The comedy is affectionate, and the image is quietly moving in the mouth of a man waiting for an attack. The casual “you know” also shows Trotter assuming Osborne shares his picture of home, a small sign of the bond between the officers.
“And we shall be in the front row of the stalls.”
Stanhope to Osborne, Act Two, Scene 1 (after learning the date of the attack)
Stanhope turns the coming attack into a theatre show, and the joke is full of dread: the front row is where you see everything and cannot leave. The image also points at the real audience in the real stalls, who are watching these men and know what will happen on the 21st. It is typical of the play’s understatement, where the worst news is carried by a light phrase, and of its awareness of itself as theatre.
“Don’t ‘Dennis’ me! Stanhope’s my name! You’re not at school!”
Stanhope to Raleigh, Act Two, Scene 1 (the letter)
Raleigh uses Stanhope’s first name, as he did at home, and Stanhope rejects it in three furious exclamations. Using his surname is a way of insisting on rank and distance, and “You’re not at school” tries to cut Raleigh off from the past they share. The irony is that Stanhope is the one clinging to the school image, the one Madge holds, and he is attacking Raleigh because of it. When he calls Raleigh Jimmy in the last scene, the naming reverses.
“I’m awfully proud to think he’s my friend.”
Raleigh’s letter, read aloud by Osborne, Act Two, Scene 1
The letter Stanhope feared says the opposite of what he expected. Raleigh has seen him drunk and been snubbed, yet he writes that Stanhope is tired only because he works so hard, and ends on pride. The schoolboy adverb “awfully” shows how young he is. Dramatically, the moment is a reversal: Stanhope has snatched the letter to protect himself and is shamed by its kindness. It also shows how letters shielded home from the truth.
“Better die of the pain than be shot for deserting.”
Stanhope to Hibbert, Act Two, Scene 2
Stanhope turns Hibbert’s excuse against him with a cold comparison between two deaths. The line makes plain the real stakes of going sick without cause: desertion could end in a firing squad. It leads to the most frightening moment in the play, when Stanhope, revolver in hand, gives Hibbert half a minute to decide. Sherriff lets the scene look like bullying before turning it, which makes the change that follows all the more striking.
“Shall we see if we can stick it together?”
Stanhope to Hibbert, Act Two, Scene 2
After admitting he feels exactly as Hibbert does, Stanhope changes from threat to partnership. The question form invites instead of commanding, and the repeated “we” includes Stanhope in the weakness he has just confessed. “Stick it” is the soldiers’ word for endurance, and here courage means going on alongside someone else. Pearson used this line as a stimulus for a question on support for others, which shows how central the moment is to the play’s idea of comradeship.
“Exactly. That’s just the point.”
Osborne to Trotter, Act Two, Scene 2 (after reading from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)
Trotter says he sees no point in Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem about the crocodile, and Osborne’s weary reply makes that pointlessness the attraction. Nonsense is an escape from the logic of the war, and it also mirrors it: Osborne reads the poem minutes after telling Trotter that he and Raleigh must lead a raid, and just after Trotter has described a similar raid, made when the Germans were ready for it, as murder. Osborne uses Carroll again in Act Three, quoting the Walrus to stop Raleigh talking about the raid.
“How awfully nice – if the brigadier’s pleased.”
Stanhope to the Colonel, Act Three, Scene 1 (after the raid)
The Colonel has just called the capture “a feather in our cap” without asking about the men. Stanhope echoes the Colonel’s words back to him in what the stage direction calls a dead voice, and the polite adverb “awfully” becomes savage irony. The dash isolates the conditional, as if the brigadier’s pleasure were the only measure of success. This is the play’s sharpest criticism of command, and it lands because the Colonel has already been shown to be a decent man.
“Must you sit on Osborne’s bed?”
Stanhope to Raleigh, Act Three, Scene 1 (the end of the scene)
Six words, spoken, the stage direction says, in a voice “still expressionless and dead”, and they carry all of Stanhope’s grief. He cannot speak of Osborne’s death, so he displaces it onto a piece of furniture. The bed has become a relic. It matters structurally too: in the final scene Stanhope himself has Raleigh laid on Osborne’s bed, where he dies, so the line prepares the reconciliation that closes the play.
“To forget, you little fool – to forget!”
Stanhope to Raleigh, Act Three, Scene 2
Raleigh has accused Stanhope of not caring about Osborne, and Stanhope’s answer is the key to the whole play. The repetition of “to forget” shows he has been asked the one question he cannot bear, and the insult “little fool” is really despair. The champagne, cigars and jokes are shown to be a defence. He goes on to ask whether Raleigh thinks there is no limit to what a man can bear, which is the play’s most direct statement about strain.
“You’ve got a Blighty one, Jimmy.”
Stanhope to Raleigh, Act Three, Scene 3
A “Blighty one” was a wound serious enough to send a man home, and soldiers hoped for one. Stanhope has just been told that Raleigh’s spine is probably broken, so the cheerful slang is a loving lie that lets Raleigh believe he is going home. The first name “Jimmy”, which Stanhope uses only in this final scene, reverses the scene with the letter and marks the end of the distance between them. The understatement is almost unbearable because the audience knows the truth.
“the red dawn glows through the jagged holes of the broken doorway”
Final stage direction, Act Three, Scene 3
The play ends with no speech, only an image. Dawn usually promises a new day, but this dawn is red, the colour of blood and of the bombardment, and it can be seen only through “jagged holes” after a shell has collapsed the entrance. The dugout that has been the whole world of the play is broken open, and Raleigh’s body lies in the darkness inside. The final sound, the rattle of machine-guns, tells us that the attack the men waited for has arrived.