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Dadhabai Naoroji
Lascar Sally is the owner and manager of the boardinghouse where Hari and many other lascars stay when they are in London. She is also a close friend of Firoza’s and, by the end of the play, a maternal figure for Rani and baby Asha. Though Lascar Sally is brash and brazen, drinking heavily and flirting with the lascars who come to her tavern, she is also tremendously kind, generous, and protective of the young people in her life; as Firoza says, Sally has a “heart of gold.” At the same time, however, Sally is all too familiar with the dangers her clientele—and particularly her female clientele—face. She ominously remarks that “we all know what happens to pretty girls in this city,” and she acknowledges that many of the lascars she has affairs with likely have wives and children in other cities. Even Sally’s joyful, brave approach to life is therefore not immune to the harsh reality of gendered exploitation in Victorian-era Britain.
Lascar Sally Quotes in The Empress
The The Empress quotes below are all either spoken by Lascar Sally or refer to Lascar Sally. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Act 1, Scene 5 Quotes
LASCAR 1: Hey, Hari, you hear that the Britannia was wrecked off the coast of Madagascar?
HARI: No?
LASCAR 1: Almost all the lascar crew drowned. Not enough lifeboats and they were so weak, they could hardly swim, even though the shore was near.
HARI: How many?
LASCAR 2: Officially twenty-five, unofficially, one hundred and twenty-five.
HARI; But wait! Akbar was on that ship wasn’t he?
LASCAR 3: Yes…
HARI: Any word from him? […]
LASCAR 2: They were a weak and starving crew. There was dysentery and cholera on board. No food and what little there was – went to the English officers.
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Act 1, Scene 6 Quotes
HARI: I am sorry Rani. To be honest, Lascar Sally’s is the only place that would take us for the night, so I had no choice. There are many people from our land who end up living on the streets, starving, begging.
RANI: In my village, guests are treated as gods.
HARI: That is the problem. We were too nice to the foreigners and so they decided to stay and then started bossing us around our own homes.
RANI: After all these years, my mistress only saw me as the ‘offspring of her servant.’
RANI and HARI embrace.
HARI: To me, you are an Empress.
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SALLY: You men, you’re all the same.
HARI: She doesn’t know anything about this city.
SALLY: She’ll learn soon enough to fend for herself. Just pray that she doesn’t end up in the workhouse…or worse. She’s a pretty girl and we all know what happens to pretty girls in this city.
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Act 2, Scene 1 Quotes
FIROZA carefully places the baby back in Rani’s arms.
FIROZA: We should give the baby a name.
RANI: If my mother was here, she would have done that…in my village, it is always the grandmothers who name…
FIROZA: I had a best friend when I was growing up called Asha. Do you like that name? It means ‘Hope.’
RANI: I can never go back now. The shame. The dishonor.
FIROZA smiles and coos at the baby.
FIROZA: Hello little Asha. How would you like to come and live with your mother and me? I live in a big house.
The baby stops crying.
There, you see? She likes that idea.
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Lascar Sally Character Timeline in The Empress
The timeline below shows where the character Lascar Sally appears in The Empress. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Act 1, Scene 5
The scene shifts against to Lascar Sally’s boarding house, a rowdy tavern filled with lascars from all over the world. Shifting between...
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...Rani is terrified, but Hari is welcomed with open arms, and he explains that Lascar Sally’s boardinghouse is where he always goes when he is in London. Hari immediately catches up...
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Sally offers Hari a drink, but he refuses, not wanting to offend Rani. When the sailors...
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Act 1, Scene 6
The next morning, Hari wakes up to find that Rani has vanished. Lascar Sally chastises Hari for trying to take advantage of Rani and informs him that Rani has...
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Act 1, Scene 8
Rani, having just left Lascar Sally’s boardinghouse, finds her way to Tilbury dock. Once there, Rani is spotted by an ayah...
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...in London, when she slept on the streets. Despite being a little rough, Firoza explains, Sally has a “heart of gold”; no matter what, she will always take Rani in. Then,...
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Act 2, Scene 1
...sailor continuing even in the background of unrelated scenes. In the foreground, Firoza and Lascar Sally arrive at Tilbury docks, waving goodbye to a ship bound for India. For Sally, this...
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Suddenly, Sally and Firoza notice that Rani is about to abandon her newborn. The duo rushes over...
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...laments that she has been “abandoned by everyone” she has ever met in London. But Sally tells her this is false—in fact, Hari has written to Rani, and Sally has the...
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Act 2, Scene 6
As she tends to her boardinghouse, Lascar Sally receives a package of letters from Hari, most of which are addressed to Rani. In...
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Act 2, Scene 12
Time jumps forward to 1900. Lascar Sally and Hari are at last reunited, and Sally is proud to see how spiffy Hari...
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