NAGG: Do you hear him? A heart in his head! (He chuckles cautiously.)

NELL: One mustn’t laugh at those things, Nagg. Why must you always laugh at them?

NAGG: Not so loud!

NELL (without lowering her voice): Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that.

But—

NAGG (shocked): Oh!

NELL: Yes, yes, it’s the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it’s always the same thing. Yes, it’s like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don’t laugh any more.

Frances Cuka as Nell and Richard Goolden as Nagg in the first English-language production in 1958.