START: Mrs. Smith: There, it’s nine o’cl...

START: Mrs. Smith: There, it’s nine o’clock. We’ve drunk the soup, and eaten the fish and chips, and the English salad. The children have drunk English water. We’ve eaten well this evening. That’s because we live in the suburbs of London and our name is Smith.

Mr. Smith: (Continues to read, clicks his tongue)

Mrs. Smith: Potatoes are very good fried in fat; the salad oil was not rancid. The oil from the grocer at the corner is better quality than the oil from the grocer across the street. It is even better than the oil from the grocer at the bottom of the street. However, I prefer not to tell them that their oil is bad.

Mr. Smith: (Continues to read, clicks his tongue)

[... … …]

END: Mrs. Smith: Men are all alike! You sit there all day long, a cigarette in your mouth, or you powder your nose and rouge your lips, fifty times a day, or else you drink like a fish.

Mr. Smith: But what would you say if you saw men acting like women do, smoking all day long, powdering, rouging their lips, drinking whiskey?

Mrs. Smith: It’s nothing to me! But if you’re only saying that to annoy me . . . I don’t care for that kind of joking, you know that very well!

(She hurls the socks across the stage and shows her teeth. She gets up.)

Mr. Smith: (Also getting up and going towards his wife, tenderly) Oh my little ducky daddles, what a little spitfire you are! You know that I only said it as a joke! (He takes her by the waist and kisses her.) What a ridiculous pair of old lovers we are! Come, let’s put out the lights and go bye-byes.

For full scene, please refer to the clip or the script edition cited here: Ionesco, Eugène, The Bald Soprano & Other Plays, “The Bald Soprano”, Grover Press, 1958, pp. 8-14.