The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde

• First Act
• ALGERNON. Good heavens! Is marriage so demoralizing as that?
  LANE. I believe it is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person.
• ALGERNON. Lane's view of marriage seem somewhat lax. Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility.
• JACK. I am in love with Gwendolen. I have come up to town expressly to propose to her.
  ALGERNON. I thought you had come up for pleasure? ... I call that business.
  JACK. How utterly unromantic you are!
• ALGERNON. I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If I ever get married, I'll certainly try to forget that fact.
• ALGERNON. Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right.
• ALGERNON. [Retreating to back of sofa.] But why does she call herself little Cecily if she is your aunt and lives at Tunbridge Wells? [Reading.] 'From little Cecily with her fondest love.'
• ALGERNON. You have invented a useful younger brother called Ernest, in order that you may be abel to come up to town as often as you like. I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose. Bunbury is perfectly invaluable. If it wasn't for Bunbury's extraordinary bad health, for instance, I wouldn't be able to dine with you at Willis's to-night, for I have been really engaged to Aunt Augusta for more than a week.
• ALGERNON. ... The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public.
• ALGERNON. Nothing will induce me to part with Bunbury, and if you ever get married, which seems to me extremely problematic, you will be very glad to know Bunbury. A man who marries without know Bunbury has a very tedious time of it.
• ALGERNON. Then your wife will. You don't seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.
• ALGERNON. Yes and that the happy English home has proved in half the time.
• ALGERNON. [Picking up an empty plate in horror.] Good heavens! Lane! Why are there no cucumber sandwiches? I ordered them specially.
• JACK. But you don't really mean to say that you couldn't love me if my name wasn't Ernest?
• JACK. Yes, I know it is. But supposing it was something else? Do you mean to say you couldn't love me then?
• GWENDOLEN. ... And I pity any woman who is married to a man called John.
• LADY BRACKNELL. Pardon me, you are not engaged to any one. When you do become engaged to some one, I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact.
• LADY BRACKNELL. ... I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing. Which do you know?
• LADY BRACKNELL. That is satisfactory. What between the duties expected of one during one's lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one's death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it. That's all that can be said about land.
• LADY BRACKNELL. Me, sir! What has it to do with me? You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter--a girl brought up with the utmost care--to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel?
• ALGERNON. My dear boy, I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
• ALGERNON. All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
• ALGERNON. The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to some one else, if she is plain.
• JACK. I will take very good care you never do. She is excessively pretty, and she is only just eighteen.
• [Algernon, who has been carefully listening, smiles to himself, and writes the address on his shirt-cuff. Then picks up the Railway Guide.]
• [Lane presents several letters on a salver to Algernon. It is to be surmised that they are bills, as Algernon, after looking at the envelopes, tears them up.]
• Second Act
• CECILY. I wish Uncle Jack would allow that unfortunate young man, his brother, to come down here sometimes. We might have a good influence over him, Miss Prism. I am sure you certainly would.
• CECILY. I have never may any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.
  [Enter Algernon, very gay and debonair.] He does!
• CECILY. ... But I am your cousin Cecily. You, I see from your card, are Uncle Jack's brother, my cousin Ernest, my wicked cousin Ernest.
• CECILY. If you are not, then you have certainly been deceiving us all in a very inexcusable manner. I have you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
• ALGERNON. Oh, well! The accounts I have received of Australia and the next world, are not particularly encouraging. This world is good enough for me, cousin Cecily.
• ALGERNON. Then Miss Prism is a short-sighted old lady. [Cecily puts the rose in his buttonhole.] You are the prettiest girl I ever saw.
• MISS PRISM. No married man is ever attractive except to his wife.
  CHASUABLE. And often, I've been told, not even to her.
• JACKL. [Shaking his head.] Dead!
  CHASUABLE. Your brother Ernest dead?
• MISS PRISM. [Bitterly.] People who live entirely for pleasure usually are.
• CECILY. Your brother Ernest. He arrived about half an hour ago.
• JACK. Nothing will induce me to take his hand. I think his coming down here disgraceful. He knows perfectly well why.
• CECILY. Uncle Jack, if you don't shake hands with Ernest I will never forgive you.
• JACK. Merriman, order the dog-cart at once. Mr. Ernest has been suddenly called back to town.
• ALGERNON. My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.
• ALGERNON. If I am occasionally over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.
• ALGERNON. I think it has been a great success. I'm in love with Cecily, and that is everything.
• CECILY. It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable.
• CECILY. ... I delight in taking down from dictation. I have reached 'absolute perfection'. You can go on. I am quite ready for more.
• CECILY. Well, ever since dear Uncle Jack first confessed to us that he had a younger brother who was very wicked and bad, you of course have formed the chief topic of conversation between myself and Miss Prism. And of course a man who is much talked about is always very attractive. One feels there must be something in him, after all. I daresay it was foolish of me, but I fell in love with you, Ernest.
• CECILY. You need hardly remind me of that, Ernest. I remember only too well that I was forced to write your letters for you. I wrote always three times a week, and sometimes oftener.
• CECILY. It would hardly have been a really serious engagement if it hadn't been broken off at least once. But I forgave you before the week was out.
• CECILY. You must not laugh at me, darling, but it had always been a girlish dream of mine to love some one whose name was Ernest.
• ALGERNON. I must see him at once on a most important christening--I mean on most important business.
• GWENDOLEN. Cecily Cardew? [Moving to her and shaking hands.] What a very sweet name! Something tells me that we are going to be great friends. I like you already more than I can say. My first impressions of people are never wrong.
• GWENDOLEN. ... But I am bound to state the now that I know you are Mr. Worthing's ward, I cannot help expressing a wish you were--well, just a little older than you seem to be--and not quite so very alluring in appearance.
• CECILY. ... Our little county newspaper is sure to chronicle the fact next week. Mr. Ernest Worthing and I are engaged to be married.
• GWENDOLEN. [Quite politely, rising.] My darling, Cecily, I think there must be some slight error. Mr. Ernest Worthing is engaged to me.
• CECILY. [Very sweetly.] I knew there must be some misunderstanding, Miss Fairfax. The gentleman whose arem is present round your waist is my guarding, Mr. John Worthing.
• GWENDOLEN. I felt there was some slight error, Miss Cardew. The gentleman who is now embracing you is my cousin, Mr. Algernon Moncrieff.
• CECILY. [To Gwendolen.] A gross deception has been practiced on both of us.
• GWENDOLEN. An admirable idea! Mr. Worthing, there is just one question I would like to be permitted to put to you. Where is your brother Ernest? We are both engaged to be married to your brother Ernest, so it is a matter of some importance to us to know where your brother Ernest is at present.
• ALGERNON. Yes, and a perfectly wonderful Bunbury it is. The most wonderful Bunbury I have every had in my life.
• ALGERNON. That is absurd. One has a right to Bunbury anywhere one chooses. Every serious Buburyist knows that.
• JACK. ... We can't both be christened Ernest. It's absurd.
• ALGERNON. Why on earth then do you allow tea-cake to be served up for your guests? What ideas you have of hospitality!
• Third Act
• CECILY. Gwendolen, your common sense is invaluable. Mr. Montcrieff, kindly answer me the following question. Why did you pretend to be my guardian's brother?
• CECILY. [To Gwendolen.] That certainly seems a satisfactory explanation, does it not?
• GWENDOLEN. True. In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing.
• GWENDOLEN and CECILY. [Speaking together.] Your Christian names are still an insuperable barrier. That is all!
• GWENDOLEN. How absurd to talk of the equality of sexes! Where questions of self-sacrifice are concerned, men are infinitely beyond us.
• LADY BRACKNELL. You are nothing of the kind, sir. And now, as regards Algernon! ... Algernon!
• ALGERNON. [Stammering.] Oh! No! Bunbury doesn't live here. Bunbury is elsewhere at present. In fact, Bunbury is dead.
• LADY BRACKNELL. To speak frankly, I am not in favor of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of find out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.
• JACK. It pains me very much to have to speak frankly to you, Lady Bracknell, about your nephew, but the fact is that I do not approve at all of his moral character. I suspect him of being untruthful. [Algernon and Cecily look at him in indignant amazement.]
• JACK. ... Under an assumed name he drank, I've just been informed by my butler, an entire pint bottle of my Perrier-Jouet, Brut, '89; wine I was specially reserving for myself. Continuing his disgraceful deception, he succeeded in the course of the afternoon in alienating the affections of my only ward. He subsequently stayed to tea, and devoured every single muffin.
• LADY BRACKNELL. You are perfectly right in making some slight alteration. Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age.
• JACK. ... The moment you consent to my marriage with Gwendolen, I will most gladly allow your nephew to form an alliance with my ward.
• CHASUABLE. Am I to understand then that there are to be no christenings at all this afternoon?
• LADY BRACKNELL. ... Twenty-eight years ago, Prism, you left Lord Bracknell's house, Number 104, Upper Grosvenor Street, in charge of a perambulator that contained a baby of the male sex. You never returned. A few weeks later, through the elaborate investigations of the Metropolitan police, the perambulator was discovered at midnight, standing by itself in a remote corner of Bayswater. It contained the manuscript of a three-volume novel of more than usually revolting sentimentality. [Miss Prism starts in involuntary indignation.] But the baby was not there! [Every one looks at Miss Prism.] Prism! Where is the baby? [A pause.]
• MISS PRISM. ... In a moment of mental abstraction, for which I never can forgive myself, I deposited the manuscript in the basinette, and placed the baby in the hand-bag.
• JACK. What railway station?
  MISS PRISM. [Quite crushed.] Victoria. The Brighton line. [Sinks into a chair.]
• JACK. [In a pathetic voice.] Miss Prism, more is restored to you than this hand-bag. I was the baby you placed in it.
• LADY BRACKNELL. I am afraid that the news I have to give you will not altogether please you. You are the son of my poor sister, Mrs. Montcrieff, and consequently Algernon's elder brother.
• LADY BRACKNELL. Being the eldest son yo were naturally christened after you father.
• JACK. ... I always told you, Gwendolen, my name is Ernest, did I? Well, it is Ernest after all. I mean it naturally is Ernest.
• JACK. Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?