Maggie monologue (Act 2) — What Every Woman Knows

This is the House of Commons, and I’m John, catching the Speaker’s eye for the first time. Do you see a queer little old wifie sitting away up there in the Ladies’ Gallery? That’s me. ‘Mr. Speaker, sir, I rise to make my historic maiden speech. I am no orator, sir’; voice from Ladies’ Gallery, ‘Are you not, John? you’ll soon let them see that’; cries of ‘Silence, woman,’ and general indignation. ‘Mr. Speaker, sir, I stand here diffidently with my eyes on the Treasury Bench’; voice from the Ladies’ Gallery, ‘And you’ll soon have your coat-tails on it, John’; loud cries of ‘Remove that little old wifie,’ in which she is forcibly ejected, and the honourable gentleman resumes his seat in a torrent of admiring applause.