Master Harold and the Boys

The year is 1950. Sam and Willie are both Black men. They are working as waiters at the St. George’s Park Tea Room in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. It is a quiet, rainy afternoon. Sam reads a comic book while Willie cleans and sings. Willie shows Sam how his quickstep has improved; he and Sam are both preparing for a ballroom dance competition. Sam tells him to relax his body more, though Willie struggles with Sam’s instructions. Sam thinks that Willie is trying too hard; he should make his steps look easy and imbue them with romance. Willie laments that he cannot be more romantic because he has lost romantic feelings for his dance partner, Hilda. He wants to practice with music, but he has enough money only for the bus fare home and so cannot use the jukebox.

Sam presses Willie about Hilda, and Willie accuses Hilda of sleeping around and skipping their last three dance practices. Sam asks Willie if he has hit Hilda recently. When Willie admits that he has, Sam suggests that Hilda has stopped coming to their practices because of Willie’s poor treatment of her. He says that “[b]eating her up every time she makes a mistake in the waltz” (5) will take all the fun out of ballroom