It is not in the matter of education only, that misplaced notions of liberty prevent moral obligations on the part of parents from being recognised, and legal obligations from being imposed, where there are the strongest grounds for the former always, and in many cases for the latter also. The fact itself, of causing the existence of a human being, is one of the most responsible actions in the range of human life. To undertake this responsibility--to bestow a life which may be either a curse or a blessing--unless the being on whom it is to be bestowed will have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against that being. And in a country either over-peopled, or threatened with being so, to produce children, beyond a very small number, with the effect of reducing the reward of labour by their competition, is a serious offence against all who live by the remuneration of their labour. The laws which, in many countries on the Continent, forbid marriage unless the parties can show that they have the means of supporting a family, do not exceed the legitimate powers of the state: and whether such laws be expedient or not (a question mainly dependent on local circumstances and feelings), they are not objectionable as violations of liberty. Such laws are interferences of the state to prohibit a mischievous act--an act injurious to others, which ought to be a subject of reprobation, and social stigma, even when it is not deemed expedient to superadd legal punishment. Yet the current ideas of liberty, which bend so easily to real infringements of the freedom of the individual, in things which concern only himself, would repel the attempt to put any restraint upon his inclinations when the consequence of their indulgence is a life, or lives, of wretchedness and depravity to the offspring, with manifold evils to those sufficiently within reach to be in any way affected by their actions. When we compare the strange respect of mankind for liberty, with their strange want of respect for it, we might imagine that a man had an indispensable right to do harm to others, and no right at all to please himself without giving pain to any one.


I have reserved for the last place a large class of questions respecting the limits of government interference, which, though closely connected with the subject of this Essay, do not, in strictness, belong to it. These are cases in which the reasons against interference do not turn upon the principle of liberty: the question is not about restraining the actions of individuals, but about helping them: it is asked whether the government should do, or cause to be done, something for their benefit, instead of leaving it to be done by themselves, individually, or in voluntary combination.


The objections to government interference, when it is not such as to involve infringement of liberty, may be of three kinds.


The first is, when the thing to be done is likely to be better done by individuals than by the government. Speaking generally, there is no one so fit to conduct any business, or to determine how or by whom it shall be conducted, as those who are personally interested in it. This principle condemns the interferences, once so common, of the legislature, or the officers of government, with the ordinary processes of industry. But this part of the subject has been sufficiently enlarged upon by political economists, and is not particularly related to the principles of this Essay.


The second objection is more nearly allied to our subject. In many cases, though individuals may not do the particular thing so well, on the average, as the officers of government, it is nevertheless desirable that it should be done by them, rather than by the government, as a means to their own mental education--a mode of strengthening their active faculties, exercising their judgment, and giving them a familiar knowledge of the subjects with which they are thus left to deal. This is a principal, though not the sole, recommendation of jury trial (in cases not political); of free and popular local and municipal institutions; of the conduct of industrial and philanthropic enterprises by voluntary associations. These are not questions of liberty, and are connected with that subject only by remote tendencies; but they are questions of development. It belongs to a different occasion from the present to dwell on these things as parts of national education; as being, in truth, the peculiar training of a citizen, the practical part of the political education of a free people, taking them out of the narrow circle of personal and family selfishness, and accustoming them to the comprehension of joint interests, the management of joint concerns--habituating them to act from public or semi-public motives, and guide their conduct by aims which unite instead of isolating them from one another. Without these habits and powers, a free constitution can neither be worked nor preserved, as is exemplified by the too-often transitory nature of political freedom in countries where it does not rest upon a sufficient basis of local liberties. The management of purely local business by the localities, and of the great enterprises of industry by the union of those who voluntarily supply the pecuniary means, is further recommended by all the advantages which have been set forth in this Essay as belonging to individuality of development, and diversity of modes of action. Government operations tend to be everywhere alike. With individuals and voluntary associations, on the contrary, there are varied experiments, and endless diversity of experience. What the State can usefully do, is to make itself a central depository, and active circulator and diffuser, of the experience resulting from many trials. Its business is to enable each experimentalist to benefit by the experiments of others, instead of tolerating no experiments but its own.


The third, and most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government, is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government, causes its influence over hopes and fears to be more widely diffused, and converts, more and more, the active and ambitious part of the public into hangers-on of the government, or of some party which aims at becoming the government. If the roads, the railways, the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies, the universities, and the public charities, were all of them branches of the government; if, in addition, the municipal corporations and local boards, with all that now devolves on them, became departments of the central administration; if the employés of all these different enterprises were appointed and paid by the government, and looked to the government for every rise in life; not all the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legislature would make this or any other country free otherwise than in name. And the evil would be greater, the more efficiently and scientifically the administrative machinery was constructed--the more skilful the arrangements for obtaining the best qualified hands and heads with which to work it. In England it has of late been proposed that all the members of the civil service of government should be selected by competitive examination, to obtain for those employments the most intelligent and instructed persons procurable; and much has been said and written for and against this proposal. One of the arguments most insisted on by its opponents, is that the occupation of a permanent official servant of the State does not hold out sufficient prospects of emolument and importance to attract the highest talents, which will always be able to find a more inviting career in the professions, or in the service of companies and other public bodies. One would not have been surprised if this argument had been used by the friends of the proposition, as an answer to its principal difficulty. Coming from the opponents it is strange enough. What is urged as an objection is the safety-valve of the proposed system. If indeed all the high talent of the country could be drawn into the service of the government, a proposal tending to bring about that result might well inspire uneasiness. If every part of the business of society which required organised concert, or large and comprehensive views, were in the hands of the government, and if government offices were universally filled by the ablest men, all the enlarged culture and practised intelligence in the country, except the purely speculative, would be concentrated in a numerous bureaucracy, to whom alone the rest of the community would look for all things: the multitude for direction and dictation in all they had to do; the able and aspiring for personal advancement. To be admitted into the ranks of this bureaucracy, and when admitted, to rise therein, would be the sole objects of ambition. Under this régime, not only is the outside public ill-qualified, for want of practical experience, to criticise or check the mode of operation of the bureaucracy, but even if the accidents of despotic or the natural working of popular institutions occasionally raise to the summit a ruler or rulers of reforming inclinations, no reform can be effected which is contrary to the interest of the bureaucracy. Such is the melancholy condition of the Russian empire, as is shown in the accounts of those who have had sufficient opportunity of observation. The Czar himself is powerless against the bureaucratic body; he can send any one of them to Siberia, but he cannot govern without them, or against their will. On every decree of his they have a tacit veto, by merely refraining from carrying it into effect. In countries of more advanced civilisation and of a more insurrectionary spirit, the public, accustomed to expect everything to be done for them by the State, or at least to do nothing for themselves without asking from the State not only leave to do it, but even how it is to be done, naturally hold the State responsible for all evil which befalls them, and when the evil exceeds their amount of patience, they rise against the government and make what is called a revolution; whereupon somebody else, with or without legitimate authority from the nation, vaults into the seat, issues his orders to the bureaucracy, and everything goes on much as it did before; the bureaucracy being unchanged, and nobody else being capable of taking their place.


A very different spectacle is exhibited among a people accustomed to transact their own business. In France, a large part of the people having been engaged in military service, many of whom have held at least the rank of non-commissioned officers, there are in every popular insurrection several persons competent to take the lead, and improvise some tolerable plan of action. What the French are in military affairs, the Americans are in every kind of civil business; let them be left without a government, every body of Americans is able to improvise one, and to carry on that or any other public business with a sufficient amount of intelligence, order, and decision. This is what every free people ought to be: and a people capable of this is certain to be free; it will never let itself be enslaved by any man or body of men because these are able to seize and pull the reins of the central administration. No bureaucracy can hope to make such a people as this do or undergo anything that they do not like. But where everything is done through the bureaucracy, nothing to which the bureaucracy is really adverse can be done at all. The constitution of such countries is an organisation of the experience and practical ability of the nation, into a disciplined body for the purpose of governing the rest; and the more perfect that organisation is in itself, the more successful in drawing to itself and educating for itself the persons of greatest capacity from all ranks of the community, the more complete is the bondage of all, the members of the bureaucracy included. For the governors are as much the slaves of their organisation and discipline, as the governed are of the governors. A Chinese mandarin is as much the tool and creature of a despotism as the humblest cultivator. An individual Jesuit is to the utmost degree of abasement the slave of his order, though the order itself exists for the collective power and importance of its members.


It is not, also, to be forgotten, that the absorption of all the principal ability of the country into the governing body is fatal, sooner or later, to the mental activity and progressiveness of the body itself. Banded together as they are--working a system which, like all systems, necessarily proceeds in a great measure by fixed rules--the official body are under the constant temptation of sinking into indolent routine, or, if they now and then desert that mill-horse round, of rushing into some half-examined crudity which has struck the fancy of some leading member of the corps: and the sole check to these closely allied, though seemingly opposite, tendencies, the only stimulus which can keep the ability of the body itself up to a high standard, is liability to the watchful criticism of equal ability outside the body. It is indispensable, therefore, that the means should exist, independently of the government, of forming such ability, and furnishing it with the opportunities and experience necessary for a correct judgment of great practical affairs. If we would possess permanently a skilful and efficient body of functionaries--above all, a body able to originate and willing to adopt improvements; if we would not have our bureaucracy degenerate into a pedantocracy, this body must not engross all the occupations which form and cultivate the faculties required for the government of mankind.


To determine the point at which evils, so formidable to human freedom and advancement, begin, or rather at which they begin to predominate over the benefits attending the collective application of the force of society, under its recognised chiefs, for the removal of the obstacles which stand in the way of its well-being; to secure as much of the advantages of centralised power and intelligence, as can be had without turning into governmental channels too great a proportion of the general activity, is one of the most difficult and complicated questions in the art of government. It is, in a great measure, a question of detail, in which many and various considerations must be kept in view, and no absolute rule can be laid down. But I believe that the practical principle in which safety resides, the ideal to be kept in view, the standard by which to test all arrangements intended for overcoming the difficulty, may be conveyed in these words: the greatest dissemination of power consistent with efficiency; but the greatest possible centralisation of information, and diffusion of it from the centre. Thus, in municipal administration, there would be, as in the New England States, a very minute division among separate officers, chosen by the localities, of all business which is not better left to the persons directly interested; but besides this, there would be, in each department of local affairs, a central superintendence, forming a branch of the general government. The organ of this superintendence would concentrate, as in a focus, the variety of information and experience derived from the conduct of that branch of public business in all the localities, from everything analogous which is done in foreign countries, and from the general principles of political science. This central organ should have a right to know all that is done, and its special duty should be that of making the knowledge acquired in one place available for others. Emancipated from the petty prejudices and narrow views of a locality by its elevated position and comprehensive sphere of observation, its advice would naturally carry much authority; but its actual power, as a permanent institution, should, I conceive, be limited to compelling the local officers to obey the laws laid down for their guidance. In all things not provided for by general rules, those officers should be left to their own judgment, under responsibility to their constituents. For the violation of rules, they should be responsible to law, and the rules themselves should be laid down by the legislature; the central administrative authority only watching over their execution, and if they were not properly carried into effect, appealing, according to the nature of the case, to the tribunal to enforce the law, or to the constituencies to dismiss the functionaries who had not executed it according to its spirit. Such, in its general conception, is the central superintendence which the Poor Law Board is intended to exercise over the administrators of the Poor Rate throughout the country. Whatever powers the Board exercises beyond this limit, were right and necessary in that peculiar case, for the cure of rooted habits of maladministration in matters deeply affecting not the localities merely, but the whole community; since no locality has a moral right to make itself by mismanagement a nest of pauperism, necessarily overflowing into other localities, and impairing the moral and physical condition of the whole labouring community. The powers of administrative coercion and subordinate legislation possessed by the Poor Law Board (but which, owing to the state of opinion on the subject, are very scantily exercised by them), though perfectly justifiable in a case of first-rate national interest, would be wholly out of place in the superintendence of interests purely local. But a central organ of information and instruction for all the localities, would be equally valuable in all departments of administration. A government cannot have too much of the kind of activity which does not impede, but aids and stimulates, individual exertion and development. The mischief begins when, instead of calling forth the activity and powers of individuals and bodies, it substitutes its own activity for theirs; when, instead of informing, advising, and, upon occasion, denouncing, it makes them work in fetters, or bids them stand aside and does their work instead of them. The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a State which postpones the interests of their mental expansion and elevation, to a little more of administrative skill, or of that semblance of it which practice gives, in the details of business; a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.


Title: The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People


Release date: March 1, 1997 [eBook #844] Most recently updated: February 13, 2021


The Importance of Being Earnest


A Trivial Comedy for Serious People


John Worthing, J.P. Algernon Moncrieff Rev. Canon Chasuble, D.D. Merriman, Butler Lane, Manservant Lady Bracknell Hon. Gwendolen Fairfax Cecily Cardew Miss Prism, Governess


ACT I. Algernon Moncrieff's Flat in Half-Moon Street, W.


ACT II. The Garden at the Manor House, Woolton.


ACT III. Drawing-Room at the Manor House, Woolton.


TIME: The Present.


February 14th, 1895


John Worthing, J.P.: Mr. George Alexander. Algernon Moncrieff: Mr. Allen Aynesworth. Rev. Canon Chasuble, D.D.: Mr. H. H. Vincent. Merriman: Mr. Frank Dyall. Lane: Mr. F. Kinsey Peile. Lady Bracknell: Miss Rose Leclercq. Hon. Gwendolen Fairfax: Miss Irene Vanbrugh. Cecily Cardew: Miss Evelyn Millard. Miss Prism: Mrs. George Canninge.


Morning-room in Algernon's flat in Half-Moon Street. The room is luxuriously and artistically furnished. The sound of a piano is heard in the adjoining room.


[Lane is arranging afternoon tea on the table, and after the music has ceased, Algernon enters.]


ALGERNON. Did you hear what I was playing, Lane?


LANE. I didn't think it polite to listen, sir.


ALGERNON. I'm sorry for that, for your sake. I don't play accurately—any one can play accurately—but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life.


ALGERNON. And, speaking of the science of Life, have you got the cucumber sandwiches cut for Lady Bracknell?


LANE. Yes, sir. [Hands them on a salver.]


ALGERNON. [Inspects them, takes two, and sits down on the sofa.] Oh! . . . by the way, Lane, I see from your book that on Thursday night, when Lord Shoreman and Mr. Worthing were dining with me, eight bottles of champagne are entered as having been consumed.


LANE. Yes, sir; eight bottles and a pint.


ALGERNON. Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask merely for information.


LANE. I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand.


ALGERNON. Good heavens! Is marriage so demoralising 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. [Languidly.] I don't know that I am much interested in your family life, Lane.


LANE. No, sir; it is not a very interesting subject. I never think of it myself.


ALGERNON. Very natural, I am sure. That will do, Lane, thank you.


LANE. Thank you, sir. [Lane goes out.]


ALGERNON. Lane's views on 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.


LANE. Mr. Ernest Worthing.


ALGERNON. How are you, my dear Ernest? What brings you up to town?


JACK. Oh, pleasure, pleasure! What else should bring one anywhere? Eating as usual, I see, Algy!


ALGERNON. [Stiffly.] I believe it is customary in good society to take some slight refreshment at five o'clock. Where have you been since last Thursday?


JACK. [Sitting down on the sofa.] In the country.


ALGERNON. What on earth do you do there?


JACK. [Pulling off his gloves.] When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.


ALGERNON. And who are the people you amuse?


JACK. [Airily.] Oh, neighbours, neighbours.


ALGERNON. Got nice neighbours in your part of Shropshire?


JACK. Perfectly horrid! Never speak to one of them.


ALGERNON. How immensely you must amuse them! [Goes over and takes sandwich.] By the way, Shropshire is your county, is it not?


JACK. Eh? Shropshire? Yes, of course. Hallo! Why all these cups? Why cucumber sandwiches? Why such reckless extravagance in one so young? Who is coming to tea?


ALGERNON. Oh! merely Aunt Augusta and Gwendolen.


JACK. How perfectly delightful!


ALGERNON. Yes, that is all very well; but I am afraid Aunt Augusta won't quite approve of your being here.


JACK. May I ask why?


ALGERNON. My dear fellow, the way you flirt with Gwendolen is perfectly disgraceful. It is almost as bad as the way Gwendolen flirts with you.


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 ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.


JACK. I have no doubt about that, dear Algy. The Divorce Court was specially invented for people whose memories are so curiously constituted.


ALGERNON. Oh! there is no use speculating on that subject. Divorces are made in Heaven—[Jack puts out his hand to take a sandwich. Algernon at once interferes.] Please don't touch the cucumber sandwiches. They are ordered specially for Aunt Augusta. [Takes one and eats it.]


JACK. Well, you have been eating them all the time.


ALGERNON. That is quite a different matter. She is my aunt. [Takes plate from below.] Have some bread and butter. The bread and butter is for Gwendolen. Gwendolen is devoted to bread and butter.


JACK. [Advancing to table and helping himself.] And very good bread and butter it is too.


ALGERNON. Well, my dear fellow, you need not eat as if you were going to eat it all. You behave as if you were married to her already. You are not married to her already, and I don't think you ever will be.


JACK. Why on earth do you say that?


ALGERNON. Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right.


JACK. Oh, that is nonsense!


ALGERNON. It isn't. It is a great truth. It accounts for the extraordinary number of bachelors that one sees all over the place. In the second place, I don't give my consent.


ALGERNON. My dear fellow, Gwendolen is my first cousin. And before I allow you to marry her, you will have to clear up the whole question of Cecily. [Rings bell.]


JACK. Cecily! What on earth do you mean? What do you mean, Algy, by Cecily! I don't know any one of the name of Cecily.


ALGERNON. Bring me that cigarette case Mr. Worthing left in the smoking-room the last time he dined here.


JACK. Do you mean to say you have had my cigarette case all this time? I wish to goodness you had let me know. I have been writing frantic letters to Scotland Yard about it. I was very nearly offering a large reward.


ALGERNON. Well, I wish you would offer one. I happen to be more than usually hard up.


JACK. There is no good offering a large reward now that the thing is found.


[Enter Lane with the cigarette case on a salver. Algernon takes it at once. Lane goes out.]


ALGERNON. I think that is rather mean of you, Ernest, I must say. [Opens case and examines it.] However, it makes no matter, for, now that I look at the inscription inside, I find that the thing isn't yours after all.


JACK. Of course it's mine. [Moving to him.] You have seen me with it a hundred times, and you have no right whatsoever to read what is written inside. It is a very ungentlemanly thing to read a private cigarette case.


ALGERNON. Oh! it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.


JACK. I am quite aware of the fact, and I don't propose to discuss modern culture. It isn't the sort of thing one should talk of in private. I simply want my cigarette case back.


ALGERNON. Yes; but this isn't your cigarette case. This cigarette case is a present from some one of the name of Cecily, and you said you didn't know any one of that name.


JACK. Well, if you want to know, Cecily happens to be my aunt.


JACK. Yes. Charming old lady she is, too. Lives at Tunbridge Wells. Just give it back to me, Algy.


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.'


JACK. [Moving to sofa and kneeling upon it.] My dear fellow, what on earth is there in that? Some aunts are tall, some aunts are not tall. That is a matter that surely an aunt may be allowed to decide for herself. You seem to think that every aunt should be exactly like your aunt! That is absurd! For Heaven's sake give me back my cigarette case. [Follows Algernon round the room.]


ALGERNON. Yes. But why does your aunt call you her uncle? 'From little Cecily, with her fondest love to her dear Uncle Jack.' There is no objection, I admit, to an aunt being a small aunt, but why an aunt, no matter what her size may be, should call her own nephew her uncle, I can't quite make out. Besides, your name isn't Jack at all; it is Ernest.


JACK. It isn't Ernest; it's Jack.


ALGERNON. You have always told me it was Ernest. I have introduced you to every one as Ernest. You answer to the name of Ernest. You look as if your name was Ernest. You are the most earnest-looking person I ever saw in my life. It is perfectly absurd your saying that your name isn't Ernest. It's on your cards. Here is one of them. [Taking it from case.] 'Mr. Ernest Worthing, B. 4, The Albany.' I'll keep this as a proof that your name is Ernest if ever you attempt to deny it to me, or to Gwendolen, or to any one else. [Puts the card in his pocket.]


JACK. Well, my name is Ernest in town and Jack in the country, and the cigarette case was given to me in the country.


ALGERNON. Yes, but that does not account for the fact that your small Aunt Cecily, who lives at Tunbridge Wells, calls you her dear uncle. Come, old boy, you had much better have the thing out at once.


JACK. My dear Algy, you talk exactly as if you were a dentist. It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces a false impression.


ALGERNON. Well, that is exactly what dentists always do. Now, go on! Tell me the whole thing. I may mention that I have always suspected you of being a confirmed and secret Bunburyist; and I am quite sure of it now.


JACK. Bunburyist? What on earth do you mean by a Bunburyist?


ALGERNON. I'll reveal to you the meaning of that incomparable expression as soon as you are kind enough to inform me why you are Ernest in town and Jack in the country.


JACK. Well, produce my cigarette case first.


ALGERNON. Here it is. [Hands cigarette case.] Now produce your explanation, and pray make it improbable. [Sits on sofa.]


JACK. My dear fellow, there is nothing improbable about my explanation at all. In fact it's perfectly ordinary. Old Mr. Thomas Cardew, who adopted me when I was a little boy, made me in his will guardian to his grand-daughter, Miss Cecily Cardew. Cecily, who addresses me as her uncle from motives of respect that you could not possibly appreciate, lives at my place in the country under the charge of her admirable governess, Miss Prism.


ALGERNON. Where is that place in the country, by the way?


JACK. That is nothing to you, dear boy. You are not going to be invited . . . I may tell you candidly that the place is not in Shropshire.


ALGERNON. I suspected that, my dear fellow! I have Bunburyed all over Shropshire on two separate occasions. Now, go on. Why are you Ernest in town and Jack in the country?


JACK. My dear Algy, I don't know whether you will be able to understand my real motives. You are hardly serious enough. When one is placed in the position of guardian, one has to adopt a very high moral tone on all subjects. It's one's duty to do so. And as a high moral tone can hardly be said to conduce very much to either one's health or one's happiness, in order to get up to town I have always pretended to have a younger brother of the name of Ernest, who lives in the Albany, and gets into the most dreadful scrapes. That, my dear Algy, is the whole truth pure and simple.


ALGERNON. The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!


JACK. That wouldn't be at all a bad thing.


ALGERNON. Literary criticism is not your forte, my dear fellow. Don't try it. You should leave that to people who haven't been at a University. They do it so well in the daily papers. What you really are is a Bunburyist. I was quite right in saying you were a Bunburyist. You are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know.


JACK. What on earth do you mean?


ALGERNON. You have invented a very useful younger brother called Ernest, in order that you may be able 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.


JACK. I haven't asked you to dine with me anywhere to-night.


ALGERNON. I know. You are absurdly careless about sending out invitations. It is very foolish of you. Nothing annoys people so much as not receiving invitations.


JACK. You had much better dine with your Aunt Augusta.


ALGERNON. I haven't the smallest intention of doing anything of the kind. To begin with, I dined there on Monday, and once a week is quite enough to dine with one's own relations. In the second place, whenever I do dine there I am always treated as a member of the family, and sent down with either no woman at all, or two. In the third place, I know perfectly well whom she will place me next to, to-night. She will place me next Mary Farquhar, who always flirts with her own husband across the dinner-table. That is not very pleasant. Indeed, it is not even decent . . . and that sort of thing is enormously on the increase. 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. Besides, now that I know you to be a confirmed Bunburyist I naturally want to talk to you about Bunburying. I want to tell you the rules.


JACK. I'm not a Bunburyist at all. If Gwendolen accepts me, I am going to kill my brother, indeed I think I'll kill him in any case. Cecily is a little too much interested in him. It is rather a bore. So I am going to get rid of Ernest. And I strongly advise you to do the same with Mr. . . . with your invalid friend who has the absurd name.


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 knowing Bunbury has a very tedious time of it.


JACK. That is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly won't want to know Bunbury.


ALGERNON. Then your wife will. You don't seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.


JACK. [Sententiously.] That, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years.


ALGERNON. Yes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time.


JACK. For heaven's sake, don't try to be cynical. It's perfectly easy to be cynical.


ALGERNON. My dear fellow, it isn't easy to be anything nowadays. There's such a lot of beastly competition about. [The sound of an electric bell is heard.] Ah! that must be Aunt Augusta. Only relatives, or creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner. Now, if I get her out of the way for ten minutes, so that you can have an opportunity for proposing to Gwendolen, may I dine with you to-night at Willis's?


JACK. I suppose so, if you want to.


ALGERNON. Yes, but you must be serious about it. I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.


LANE. Lady Bracknell and Miss Fairfax.


[Algernon goes forward to meet them. Enter Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen.]


LADY BRACKNELL. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well.


ALGERNON. I'm feeling very well, Aunt Augusta.


LADY BRACKNELL. That's not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together. [Sees Jack and bows to him with icy coldness.]


ALGERNON. [To Gwendolen.] Dear me, you are smart!


GWENDOLEN. I am always smart! Am I not, Mr. Worthing?


GWENDOLEN. Oh! I hope I am not that. It would leave no room for developments, and I intend to develop in many directions. [Gwendolen and Jack sit down together in the corner.]


LADY BRACKNELL. I'm sorry if we are a little late, Algernon, but I was obliged to call on dear Lady Harbury. I hadn't been there since her poor husband's death. I never saw a woman so altered; she looks quite twenty years younger. And now I'll have a cup of tea, and one of those nice cucumber sandwiches you promised me.


ALGERNON. Certainly, Aunt Augusta. [Goes over to tea-table.]


LADY BRACKNELL. Won't you come and sit here, Gwendolen?


GWENDOLEN. Thanks, mamma, I'm quite comfortable where I am.


ALGERNON. [Picking up empty plate in horror.] Good heavens! Lane! Why are there no cucumber sandwiches? I ordered them specially.


LANE. [Gravely.] There were no cucumbers in the market this morning, sir. I went down twice.


ALGERNON. No cucumbers!


LANE. No, sir. Not even for ready money.


ALGERNON. That will do, Lane, thank you.


LANE. Thank you, sir. [Goes out.]


ALGERNON. I am greatly distressed, Aunt Augusta, about there being no cucumbers, not even for ready money.


LADY BRACKNELL. It really makes no matter, Algernon. I had some crumpets with Lady Harbury, who seems to me to be living entirely for pleasure now.


ALGERNON. I hear her hair has turned quite gold from grief.


LADY BRACKNELL. It certainly has changed its colour. From what cause I, of course, cannot say. [Algernon crosses and hands tea.] Thank you. I've quite a treat for you to-night, Algernon. I am going to send you down with Mary Farquhar. She is such a nice woman, and so attentive to her husband. It's delightful to watch them.


ALGERNON. I am afraid, Aunt Augusta, I shall have to give up the pleasure of dining with you to-night after all.


LADY BRACKNELL. [Frowning.] I hope not, Algernon. It would put my table completely out. Your uncle would have to dine upstairs. Fortunately he is accustomed to that.


ALGERNON. It is a great bore, and, I need hardly say, a terrible disappointment to me, but the fact is I have just had a telegram to say that my poor friend Bunbury is very ill again. [Exchanges glances with Jack.] They seem to think I should be with him.


LADY BRACKNELL. It is very strange. This Mr. Bunbury seems to suffer from curiously bad health.


ALGERNON. Yes; poor Bunbury is a dreadful invalid.


LADY BRACKNELL. Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd. Nor do I in any way approve of the modern sympathy with invalids. I consider it morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. Health is the primary duty of life. I am always telling that to your poor uncle, but he never seems to take much notice . . . as far as any improvement in his ailment goes. I should be much obliged if you would ask Mr. Bunbury, from me, to be kind enough not to have a relapse on Saturday, for I rely on you to arrange my music for me. It is my last reception, and one wants something that will encourage conversation, particularly at the end of the season when every one has practically said whatever they had to say, which, in most cases, was probably not much.


ALGERNON. I'll speak to Bunbury, Aunt Augusta, if he is still conscious, and I think I can promise you he'll be all right by Saturday. Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk. But I'll run over the programme I've drawn out, if you will kindly come into the next room for a moment.


LADY BRACKNELL. Thank you, Algernon. It is very thoughtful of you. [Rising, and following Algernon.] I'm sure the programme will be delightful, after a few expurgations. French songs I cannot possibly allow. People always seem to think that they are improper, and either look shocked, which is vulgar, or laugh, which is worse. But German sounds a thoroughly respectable language, and indeed, I believe is so. Gwendolen, you will accompany me.


GWENDOLEN. Certainly, mamma.


[Lady Bracknell and Algernon go into the music-room, Gwendolen remains behind.]


JACK. Charming day it has been, Miss Fairfax.


GWENDOLEN. Pray don't talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. And that makes me so nervous.


JACK. I do mean something else.


GWENDOLEN. I thought so. In fact, I am never wrong.


JACK. And I would like to be allowed to take advantage of Lady Bracknell's temporary absence . . .


GWENDOLEN. I would certainly advise you to do so. Mamma has a way of coming back suddenly into a room that I have often had to speak to her about.


JACK. [Nervously.] Miss Fairfax, ever since I met you I have admired you more than any girl . . . I have ever met since . . . I met you.


GWENDOLEN. Yes, I am quite well aware of the fact. And I often wish that in public, at any rate, you had been more demonstrative. For me you have always had an irresistible fascination. Even before I met you I was far from indifferent to you. [Jack looks at her in amazement.] We live, as I hope you know, Mr. Worthing, in an age of ideals. The fact is constantly mentioned in the more expensive monthly magazines, and has reached the provincial pulpits, I am told; and my ideal has always been to love some one of the name of Ernest. There is something in that name that inspires absolute confidence. The moment Algernon first mentioned to me that he had a friend called Ernest, I knew I was destined to love you.


JACK. You really love me, Gwendolen?


GWENDOLEN. Passionately!


JACK. Darling! You don't know how happy you've made me.


GWENDOLEN. My own Ernest!


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. [Glibly.] Ah! that is clearly a metaphysical speculation, and like most metaphysical speculations has very little reference at all to the actual facts of real life, as we know them.


JACK. Personally, darling, to speak quite candidly, I don't much care about the name of Ernest . . . I don't think the name suits me at all.


GWENDOLEN. It suits you perfectly. It is a divine name. It has a music of its own. It produces vibrations.


JACK. Well, really, Gwendolen, I must say that I think there are lots of other much nicer names. I think Jack, for instance, a charming name.


GWENDOLEN. Jack? . . . No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It does not thrill. It produces absolutely no vibrations . . . I have known several Jacks, and they all, without exception, were more than usually plain. Besides, Jack is a notorious domesticity for John! And I pity any woman who is married to a man called John. She would probably never be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment's solitude. The only really safe name is Ernest.


JACK. Gwendolen, I must get christened at once—I mean we must get married at once. There is no time to be lost.


GWENDOLEN. Married, Mr. Worthing?


JACK. [Astounded.] Well . . . surely. You know that I love you, and you led me to believe, Miss Fairfax, that you were not absolutely indifferent to me.


GWENDOLEN. I adore you. But you haven't proposed to me yet. Nothing has been said at all about marriage. The subject has not even been touched on.


JACK. Well . . . may I propose to you now?


GWENDOLEN. I think it would be an admirable opportunity. And to spare you any possible disappointment, Mr. Worthing, I think it only fair to tell you quite frankly before-hand that I am fully determined to accept you.


GWENDOLEN. Yes, Mr. Worthing, what have you got to say to me?


JACK. You know what I have got to say to you.


JACK. Gwendolen, will you marry me? [Goes on his knees.]


GWENDOLEN. Of course I will, darling. How long you have been about it! I am afraid you have had very little experience in how to propose.


JACK. My own one, I have never loved any one in the world but you.


GWENDOLEN. Yes, but men often propose for practice. I know my brother Gerald does. All my girl-friends tell me so. What wonderfully blue eyes you have, Ernest! They are quite, quite, blue. I hope you will always look at me just like that, especially when there are other people present. [Enter Lady Bracknell.]


LADY BRACKNELL. Mr. Worthing! Rise, sir, from this semi-recumbent posture. It is most indecorous.


GWENDOLEN. Mamma! [He tries to rise; she restrains him.] I must beg you to retire. This is no place for you. Besides, Mr. Worthing has not quite finished yet.


LADY BRACKNELL. Finished what, may I ask?


GWENDOLEN. I am engaged to Mr. Worthing, mamma. [They rise together.]


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. An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself . . . And now I have a few questions to put to you, Mr. Worthing. While I am making these inquiries, you, Gwendolen, will wait for me below in the carriage.


GWENDOLEN. [Reproachfully.] Mamma!


LADY BRACKNELL. In the carriage, Gwendolen! [Gwendolen goes to the door. She and Jack blow kisses to each other behind Lady Bracknell's back. Lady Bracknell looks vaguely about as if she could not understand what the noise was. Finally turns round.] Gwendolen, the carriage!


GWENDOLEN. Yes, mamma. [Goes out, looking back at Jack.]


LADY BRACKNELL. [Sitting down.] You can take a seat, Mr. Worthing.


[Looks in her pocket for note-book and pencil.]


JACK. Thank you, Lady Bracknell, I prefer standing.


LADY BRACKNELL. [Pencil and note-book in hand.] I feel bound to tell you that you are not down on my list of eligible young men, although I have the same list as the dear Duchess of Bolton has. We work together, in fact. However, I am quite ready to enter your name, should your answers be what a really affectionate mother requires. Do you smoke?


JACK. Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.


LADY BRACKNELL. I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is. How old are you?


JACK. Twenty-nine.


LADY BRACKNELL. A very good age to be married at. I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing. Which do you know?


JACK. [After some hesitation.] I know nothing, Lady Bracknell.


LADY BRACKNELL. I am pleased to hear it. I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square. What is your income?


JACK. Between seven and eight thousand a year.


LADY BRACKNELL. [Makes a note in her book.] In land, or in investments?


JACK. In investments, chiefly.


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 up. That's all that can be said about land.


JACK. I have a country house with some land, of course, attached to it, about fifteen hundred acres, I believe; but I don't depend on that for my real income. In fact, as far as I can make out, the poachers are the only people who make anything out of it.


LADY BRACKNELL. A country house! How many bedrooms? Well, that point can be cleared up afterwards. You have a town house, I hope? A girl with a simple, unspoiled nature, like Gwendolen, could hardly be expected to reside in the country.


JACK. Well, I own a house in Belgrave Square, but it is let by the year to Lady Bloxham. Of course, I can get it back whenever I like, at six months' notice.


LADY BRACKNELL. Lady Bloxham? I don't know her.


JACK. Oh, she goes about very little. She is a lady considerably advanced in years.


LADY BRACKNELL. Ah, nowadays that is no guarantee of respectability of character. What number in Belgrave Square?


LADY BRACKNELL. [Shaking her head.] The unfashionable side. I thought there was something. However, that could easily be altered.


JACK. Do you mean the fashion, or the side?


LADY BRACKNELL. [Sternly.] Both, if necessary, I presume. What are your politics?


JACK. Well, I am afraid I really have none. I am a Liberal Unionist.


LADY BRACKNELL. Oh, they count as Tories. They dine with us. Or come in the evening, at any rate. Now to minor matters. Are your parents living?


JACK. I have lost both my parents.


LADY BRACKNELL. To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. Who was your father? He was evidently a man of some wealth. Was he born in what the Radical papers call the purple of commerce, or did he rise from the ranks of the aristocracy?


JACK. I am afraid I really don't know. The fact is, Lady Bracknell, I said I had lost my parents. It would be nearer the truth to say that my parents seem to have lost me . . . I don't actually know who I am by birth. I was . . . well, I was found.


LADY BRACKNELL. Found!


JACK. The late Mr. Thomas Cardew, an old gentleman of a very charitable and kindly disposition, found me, and gave me the name of Worthing, because he happened to have a first-class ticket for Worthing in his pocket at the time. Worthing is a place in Sussex. It is a seaside resort.


LADY BRACKNELL. Where did the charitable gentleman who had a first-class ticket for this seaside resort find you?


JACK. [Gravely.] In a hand-bag.


JACK. [Very seriously.] Yes, Lady Bracknell. I was in a hand-bag—a somewhat large, black leather hand-bag, with handles to it—an ordinary hand-bag in fact.


LADY BRACKNELL. In what locality did this Mr. James, or Thomas, Cardew come across this ordinary hand-bag?


JACK. In the cloak-room at Victoria Station. It was given to him in mistake for his own.


LADY BRACKNELL. The cloak-room at Victoria Station?


JACK. Yes. The Brighton line.


LADY BRACKNELL. The line is immaterial. Mr. Worthing, I confess I feel somewhat bewildered by what you have just told me. To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. And I presume you know what that unfortunate movement led to? As for the particular locality in which the hand-bag was found, a cloak-room at a railway station might serve to conceal a social indiscretion—has probably, indeed, been used for that purpose before now—but it could hardly be regarded as an assured basis for a recognised position in good society.


JACK. May I ask you then what you would advise me to do? I need hardly say I would do anything in the world to ensure Gwendolen's happiness.


LADY BRACKNELL. I would strongly advise you, Mr. Worthing, to try and acquire some relations as soon as possible, and to make a definite effort to produce at any rate one parent, of either sex, before the season is quite over.


JACK. Well, I don't see how I could possibly manage to do that. I can produce the hand-bag at any moment. It is in my dressing-room at home. I really think that should satisfy you, Lady Bracknell.


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? Good morning, Mr. Worthing!


[Lady Bracknell sweeps out in majestic indignation.]


JACK. Good morning! [Algernon, from the other room, strikes up the Wedding March. Jack looks perfectly furious, and goes to the door.] For goodness' sake don't play that ghastly tune, Algy. How idiotic you are!


[The music stops and Algernon enters cheerily.]


ALGERNON. Didn't it go off all right, old boy? You don't mean to say Gwendolen refused you? I know it is a way she has. She is always refusing people. I think it is most ill-natured of her.


JACK. Oh, Gwendolen is as right as a trivet. As far as she is concerned, we are engaged. Her mother is perfectly unbearable. Never met such a Gorgon . . . I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair . . . I beg your pardon, Algy, I suppose I shouldn't talk about your own aunt in that way before you.


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. It isn't!


JACK. Well, I won't argue about the matter. You always want to argue about things.


ALGERNON. That is exactly what things were originally made for.


JACK. Upon my word, if I thought that, I'd shoot myself . . . [A pause.] You don't think there is any chance of Gwendolen becoming like her mother in about a hundred and fifty years, do you, Algy?


ALGERNON. All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.


JACK. Is that clever?


ALGERNON. It is perfectly phrased! and quite as true as any observation in civilised life should be.


JACK. I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.


ALGERNON. We have.


JACK. I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about?


ALGERNON. The fools? Oh! about the clever people, of course.


JACK. What fools!


ALGERNON. By the way, did you tell Gwendolen the truth about your being Ernest in town, and Jack in the country?


JACK. [In a very patronising manner.] My dear fellow, the truth isn't quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!


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. Oh, that is nonsense.


ALGERNON. What about your brother? What about the profligate Ernest?


JACK. Oh, before the end of the week I shall have got rid of him. I'll say he died in Paris of apoplexy. Lots of people die of apoplexy, quite suddenly, don't they?


ALGERNON. Yes, but it's hereditary, my dear fellow. It's a sort of thing that runs in families. You had much better say a severe chill.


JACK. You are sure a severe chill isn't hereditary, or anything of that kind?


ALGERNON. Of course it isn't!


JACK. Very well, then. My poor brother Ernest is carried off suddenly, in Paris, by a severe chill. That gets rid of him.


ALGERNON. But I thought you said that . . . Miss Cardew was a little too much interested in your poor brother Ernest? Won't she feel his loss a good deal?


JACK. Oh, that is all right. Cecily is not a silly romantic girl, I am glad to say. She has got a capital appetite, goes long walks, and pays no attention at all to her lessons.


ALGERNON. I would rather like to see Cecily.


JACK. I will take very good care you never do. She is excessively pretty, and she is only just eighteen.


ALGERNON. Have you told Gwendolen yet that you have an excessively pretty ward who is only just eighteen?


JACK. Oh! one doesn't blurt these things out to people. Cecily and Gwendolen are perfectly certain to be extremely great friends. I'll bet you anything you like that half an hour after they have met, they will be calling each other sister.


ALGERNON. Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first. Now, my dear boy, if we want to get a good table at Willis's, we really must go and dress. Do you know it is nearly seven?


JACK. [Irritably.] Oh! It always is nearly seven.


JACK. I never knew you when you weren't . . .


ALGERNON. What shall we do after dinner? Go to a theatre?


JACK. Oh no! I loathe listening.


ALGERNON. Well, let us go to the Club?


ALGERNON. Well, we might trot round to the Empire at ten?


JACK. Oh, no! I can't bear looking at things. It is so silly.


ALGERNON. Well, what shall we do?


JACK. Nothing!


ALGERNON. It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind.


LANE. Miss Fairfax.


GWENDOLEN. Algy, kindly turn your back. I have something very particular to say to Mr. Worthing.


ALGERNON. Really, Gwendolen, I don't think I can allow this at all.


GWENDOLEN. Algy, you always adopt a strictly immoral attitude towards life. You are not quite old enough to do that. [Algernon retires to the fireplace.]


JACK. My own darling!


GWENDOLEN. Ernest, we may never be married. From the expression on mamma's face I fear we never shall. Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out. Whatever influence I ever had over mamma, I lost at the age of three. But although she may prevent us from becoming man and wife, and I may marry some one else, and marry often, nothing that she can possibly do can alter my eternal devotion to you.


GWENDOLEN. The story of your romantic origin, as related to me by mamma, with unpleasing comments, has naturally stirred the deeper fibres of my nature. Your Christian name has an irresistible fascination. The simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me. Your town address at the Albany I have. What is your address in the country?


JACK. The Manor House, Woolton, Hertfordshire.


[Algernon, who has been carefully listening, smiles to himself, and writes the address on his shirt-cuff. Then picks up the Railway Guide.]


GWENDOLEN. There is a good postal service, I suppose? It may be necessary to do something desperate. That of course will require serious consideration. I will communicate with you daily.


JACK. My own one!


GWENDOLEN. How long do you remain in town?


JACK. Till Monday.


GWENDOLEN. Good! Algy, you may turn round now.


ALGERNON. Thanks, I've turned round already.


GWENDOLEN. You may also ring the bell.


JACK. You will let me see you to your carriage, my own darling?


GWENDOLEN. Certainly.


JACK. [To Lane, who now enters.] I will see Miss Fairfax out.


LANE. Yes, sir. [Jack and Gwendolen go off.]


[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.]


ALGERNON. A glass of sherry, Lane.


ALGERNON. To-morrow, Lane, I'm going Bunburying.


ALGERNON. I shall probably not be back till Monday. You can put up my dress clothes, my smoking jacket, and all the Bunbury suits . . .


LANE. Yes, sir. [Handing sherry.]


ALGERNON. I hope to-morrow will be a fine day, Lane.


LANE. It never is, sir.


LANE. I do my best to give satisfaction, sir.


[Enter Jack. Lane goes off.]


JACK. There's a sensible, intellectual girl! the only girl I ever cared for in my life. [Algernon is laughing immoderately.] What on earth are you so amused at?


ALGERNON. Oh, I'm a little anxious about poor Bunbury, that is all.


JACK. If you don't take care, your friend Bunbury will get you into a serious scrape some day.


ALGERNON. I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious.


JACK. Oh, that's nonsense, Algy. You never talk anything but nonsense.


[Jack looks indignantly at him, and leaves the room. Algernon lights a cigarette, reads his shirt-cuff, and smiles.]


Garden at the Manor House. A flight of grey stone steps leads up to the house. The garden, an old-fashioned one, full of roses. Time of year, July. Basket chairs, and a table covered with books, are set under a large yew-tree.


[Miss Prism discovered seated at the table. Cecily is at the back watering flowers.]


MISS PRISM. [Calling.] Cecily, Cecily! Surely such a utilitarian occupation as the watering of flowers is rather Moulton's duty than yours? Especially at a moment when intellectual pleasures await you. Your German grammar is on the table. Pray open it at page fifteen. We will repeat yesterday's lesson.


CECILY. [Coming over very slowly.] But I don't like German. It isn't at all a becoming language. I know perfectly well that I look quite plain after my German lesson.


MISS PRISM. Child, you know how anxious your guardian is that you should improve yourself in every way. He laid particular stress on your German, as he was leaving for town yesterday. Indeed, he always lays stress on your German when he is leaving for town.


CECILY. Dear Uncle Jack is so very serious! Sometimes he is so serious that I think he cannot be quite well.


MISS PRISM. [Drawing herself up.] Your guardian enjoys the best of health, and his gravity of demeanour is especially to be commended in one so comparatively young as he is. I know no one who has a higher sense of duty and responsibility.


CECILY. I suppose that is why he often looks a little bored when we three are together.


MISS PRISM. Cecily! I am surprised at you. Mr. Worthing has many troubles in his life. Idle merriment and triviality would be out of place in his conversation. You must remember his constant anxiety about that unfortunate young man his brother.


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. You know German, and geology, and things of that kind influence a man very much. [Cecily begins to write in her diary.]


MISS PRISM. [Shaking her head.] I do not think that even I could produce any effect on a character that according to his own brother's admission is irretrievably weak and vacillating. Indeed I am not sure that I would desire to reclaim him. I am not in favour of this modern mania for turning bad people into good people at a moment's notice. As a man sows so let him reap. You must put away your diary, Cecily. I really don't see why you should keep a diary at all.


CECILY. I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life. If I didn't write them down, I should probably forget all about them.


MISS PRISM. Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.


CECILY. Yes, but it usually chronicles the things that have never happened, and couldn't possibly have happened. I believe that Memory is responsible for nearly all the three-volume novels that Mudie sends us.


MISS PRISM. Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days.


CECILY. Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily? I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.


MISS PRISM. The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.


CECILY. I suppose so. But it seems very unfair. And was your novel ever published?


MISS PRISM. Alas! no. The manuscript unfortunately was abandoned. [Cecily starts.] I use the word in the sense of lost or mislaid. To your work, child, these speculations are profitless.


CECILY. [Smiling.] But I see dear Dr. Chasuble coming up through the garden.


MISS PRISM. [Rising and advancing.] Dr. Chasuble! This is indeed a pleasure.


[Enter Canon Chasuble.]


CHASUBLE. And how are we this morning? Miss Prism, you are, I trust, well?


CECILY. Miss Prism has just been complaining of a slight headache. I think it would do her so much good to have a short stroll with you in the Park, Dr. Chasuble.


MISS PRISM. Cecily, I have not mentioned anything about a headache.


CECILY. No, dear Miss Prism, I know that, but I felt instinctively that you had a headache. Indeed I was thinking about that, and not about my German lesson, when the Rector came in.


CHASUBLE. I hope, Cecily, you are not inattentive.


CHASUBLE. That is strange. Were I fortunate enough to be Miss Prism's pupil, I would hang upon her lips. [Miss Prism glares.] I spoke metaphorically.—My metaphor was drawn from bees. Ahem! Mr. Worthing, I suppose, has not returned from town yet?


MISS PRISM. We do not expect him till Monday afternoon.


CHASUBLE. Ah yes, he usually likes to spend his Sunday in London. He is not one of those whose sole aim is enjoyment, as, by all accounts, that unfortunate young man his brother seems to be. But I must not disturb Egeria and her pupil any longer.


MISS PRISM. Egeria? My name is Lætitia, Doctor.


CHASUBLE. [Bowing.] A classical allusion merely, drawn from the Pagan authors. I shall see you both no doubt at Evensong?


MISS PRISM. I think, dear Doctor, I will have a stroll with you. I find I have a headache after all, and a walk might do it good.


CHASUBLE. With pleasure, Miss Prism, with pleasure. We might go as far as the schools and back.


MISS PRISM. That would be delightful. Cecily, you will read your Political Economy in my absence. The chapter on the Fall of the Rupee you may omit. It is somewhat too sensational. Even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side.


[Goes down the garden with Dr. Chasuble.]


CECILY. [Picks up books and throws them back on table.] Horrid Political Economy! Horrid Geography! Horrid, horrid German!


[Enter Merriman with a card on a salver.]


MERRIMAN. Mr. Ernest Worthing has just driven over from the station. He has brought his luggage with him.


CECILY. [Takes the card and reads it.] 'Mr. Ernest Worthing, B. 4, The Albany, W.' Uncle Jack's brother! Did you tell him Mr. Worthing was in town?


MERRIMAN. Yes, Miss. He seemed very much disappointed. I mentioned that you and Miss Prism were in the garden. He said he was anxious to speak to you privately for a moment.


CECILY. Ask Mr. Ernest Worthing to come here. I suppose you had better talk to the housekeeper about a room for him.


MERRIMAN. Yes, Miss.


[Merriman goes off.]


CECILY. I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.


ALGERNON. [Raising his hat.] You are my little cousin Cecily, I'm sure.


CECILY. You are under some strange mistake. I am not little. In fact, I believe I am more than usually tall for my age. [Algernon is rather taken aback.] But I am your cousin Cecily. You, I see from your card, are Uncle Jack's brother, my cousin Ernest, my wicked cousin Ernest.


ALGERNON. Oh! I am not really wicked at all, cousin Cecily. You mustn't think that I am wicked.


CECILY. If you are not, then you have certainly been deceiving us all in a very inexcusable manner. I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.


ALGERNON. [Looks at her in amazement.] Oh! Of course I have been rather reckless.


CECILY. I am glad to hear it.


ALGERNON. In fact, now you mention the subject, I have been very bad in my own small way.


CECILY. I don't think you should be so proud of that, though I am sure it must have been very pleasant.


ALGERNON. It is much pleasanter being here with you.


CECILY. I can't understand how you are here at all. Uncle Jack won't be back till Monday afternoon.


ALGERNON. That is a great disappointment. I am obliged to go up by the first train on Monday morning. I have a business appointment that I am anxious . . . to miss?


CECILY. Couldn't you miss it anywhere but in London?


ALGERNON. No: the appointment is in London.


CECILY. Well, I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life, but still I think you had better wait till Uncle Jack arrives. I know he wants to speak to you about your emigrating.


ALGERNON. About my what?


CECILY. Your emigrating. He has gone up to buy your outfit.


ALGERNON. I certainly wouldn't let Jack buy my outfit. He has no taste in neckties at all.


CECILY. I don't think you will require neckties. Uncle Jack is sending you to Australia.


CECILY. Well, he said at dinner on Wednesday night, that you would have to choose between this world, the next world, and Australia.


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.


CECILY. Yes, but are you good enough for it?


ALGERNON. I'm afraid I'm not that. That is why I want you to reform me. You might make that your mission, if you don't mind, cousin Cecily.


CECILY. I'm afraid I've no time, this afternoon.


ALGERNON. Well, would you mind my reforming myself this afternoon?


CECILY. It is rather Quixotic of you. But I think you should try.


ALGERNON. I will. I feel better already.


CECILY. You are looking a little worse.


ALGERNON. That is because I am hungry.


CECILY. How thoughtless of me. I should have remembered that when one is going to lead an entirely new life, one requires regular and wholesome meals. Won't you come in?


ALGERNON. Thank you. Might I have a buttonhole first? I never have any appetite unless I have a buttonhole first.


CECILY. A Marechal Niel? [Picks up scissors.]


ALGERNON. No, I'd sooner have a pink rose.


CECILY. Why? [Cuts a flower.]


ALGERNON. Because you are like a pink rose, Cousin Cecily.


CECILY. I don't think it can be right for you to talk to me like that. Miss Prism never says such things to me.


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.


CECILY. Miss Prism says that all good looks are a snare.


ALGERNON. They are a snare that every sensible man would like to be caught in.


CECILY. Oh, I don't think I would care to catch a sensible man. I shouldn't know what to talk to him about.


[They pass into the house. Miss Prism and Dr. Chasuble return.]


MISS PRISM. You are too much alone, dear Dr. Chasuble. You should get married. A misanthrope I can understand—a womanthrope, never!


CHASUBLE. [With a scholar's shudder.] Believe me, I do not deserve so neologistic a phrase. The precept as well as the practice of the Primitive Church was distinctly against matrimony.


MISS PRISM. [Sententiously.] That is obviously the reason why the Primitive Church has not lasted up to the present day. And you do not seem to realise, dear Doctor, that by persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation. Men should be more careful; this very celibacy leads weaker vessels astray.


CHASUBLE. But is a man not equally attractive when married?


MISS PRISM. No married man is ever attractive except to his wife.


CHASUBLE. And often, I've been told, not even to her.


MISS PRISM. That depends on the intellectual sympathies of the woman. Maturity can always be depended on. Ripeness can be trusted. Young women are green. [Dr. Chasuble starts.] I spoke horticulturally. My metaphor was drawn from fruits. But where is Cecily?


CHASUBLE. Perhaps she followed us to the schools.


[Enter Jack slowly from the back of the garden. He is dressed in the deepest mourning, with crape hatband and black gloves.]


MISS PRISM. Mr. Worthing!


CHASUBLE. Mr. Worthing?


MISS PRISM. This is indeed a surprise. We did not look for you till Monday afternoon.


JACK. [Shakes Miss Prism's hand in a tragic manner.] I have returned sooner than I expected. Dr. Chasuble, I hope you are well?


CHASUBLE. Dear Mr. Worthing, I trust this garb of woe does not betoken some terrible calamity?


JACK. My brother.


MISS PRISM. More shameful debts and extravagance?


CHASUBLE. Still leading his life of pleasure?


JACK. [Shaking his head.] Dead!


CHASUBLE. Your brother Ernest dead?


MISS PRISM. What a lesson for him! I trust he will profit by it.


CHASUBLE. Mr. Worthing, I offer you my sincere condolence. You have at least the consolation of knowing that you were always the most generous and forgiving of brothers.


JACK. Poor Ernest! He had many faults, but it is a sad, sad blow.


CHASUBLE. Very sad indeed. Were you with him at the end?


JACK. No. He died abroad; in Paris, in fact. I had a telegram last night from the manager of the Grand Hotel.


CHASUBLE. Was the cause of death mentioned?


JACK. A severe chill, it seems.


MISS PRISM. As a man sows, so shall he reap.


CHASUBLE. [Raising his hand.] Charity, dear Miss Prism, charity! None of us are perfect. I myself am peculiarly susceptible to draughts. Will the interment take place here?


JACK. No. He seems to have expressed a desire to be buried in Paris.


CHASUBLE. In Paris! [Shakes his head.] I fear that hardly points to any very serious state of mind at the last. You would no doubt wish me to make some slight allusion to this tragic domestic affliction next Sunday. [Jack presses his hand convulsively.] My sermon on the meaning of the manna in the wilderness can be adapted to almost any occasion, joyful, or, as in the present case, distressing. [All sigh.] I have preached it at harvest celebrations, christenings, confirmations, on days of humiliation and festal days. The last time I delivered it was in the Cathedral, as a charity sermon on behalf of the Society for the Prevention of Discontent among the Upper Orders. The Bishop, who was present, was much struck by some of the analogies I drew.


JACK. Ah! that reminds me, you mentioned christenings I think, Dr. Chasuble? I suppose you know how to christen all right? [Dr. Chasuble looks astounded.] I mean, of course, you are continually christening, aren't you?


MISS PRISM. It is, I regret to say, one of the Rector's most constant duties in this parish. I have often spoken to the poorer classes on the subject. But they don't seem to know what thrift is.


CHASUBLE. But is there any particular infant in whom you are interested, Mr. Worthing? Your brother was, I believe, unmarried, was he not?


JACK. Oh yes.


MISS PRISM. [Bitterly.] People who live entirely for pleasure usually are.


JACK. But it is not for any child, dear Doctor. I am very fond of children. No! the fact is, I would like to be christened myself, this afternoon, if you have nothing better to do.


CHASUBLE. But surely, Mr. Worthing, you have been christened already?


JACK. I don't remember anything about it.


CHASUBLE. But have you any grave doubts on the subject?


JACK. I certainly intend to have. Of course I don't know if the thing would bother you in any way, or if you think I am a little too old now.


CHASUBLE. Not at all. The sprinkling, and, indeed, the immersion of adults is a perfectly canonical practice.


JACK. Immersion!


CHASUBLE. You need have no apprehensions. Sprinkling is all that is necessary, or indeed I think advisable. Our weather is so changeable. At what hour would you wish the ceremony performed?


JACK. Oh, I might trot round about five if that would suit you.


CHASUBLE. Perfectly, perfectly! In fact I have two similar ceremonies to perform at that time. A case of twins that occurred recently in one of the outlying cottages on your own estate. Poor Jenkins the carter, a most hard-working man.


JACK. Oh! I don't see much fun in being christened along with other babies. It would be childish. Would half-past five do?


CHASUBLE. Admirably! Admirably! [Takes out watch.] And now, dear Mr. Worthing, I will not intrude any longer into a house of sorrow. I would merely beg you not to be too much bowed down by grief. What seem to us bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.


MISS PRISM. This seems to me a blessing of an extremely obvious kind.


[Enter Cecily from the house.]


CECILY. Uncle Jack! Oh, I am pleased to see you back. But what horrid clothes you have got on! Do go and change them.


MISS PRISM. Cecily!


CHASUBLE. My child! my child! [Cecily goes towards Jack; he kisses her brow in a melancholy manner.]


CECILY. What is the matter, Uncle Jack? Do look happy! You look as if you had toothache, and I have got such a surprise for you. Who do you think is in the dining-room? Your brother!


JACK. Who?


CECILY. Your brother Ernest. He arrived about half an hour ago.


JACK. What nonsense! I haven't got a brother.


CECILY. Oh, don't say that. However badly he may have behaved to you in the past he is still your brother. You couldn't be so heartless as to disown him. I'll tell him to come out. And you will shake hands with him, won't you, Uncle Jack? [Runs back into the house.]


CHASUBLE. These are very joyful tidings.


MISS PRISM. After we had all been resigned to his loss, his sudden return seems to me peculiarly distressing.


JACK. My brother is in the dining-room? I don't know what it all means. I think it is perfectly absurd.


[Enter Algernon and Cecily hand in hand. They come slowly up to Jack.]


JACK. Good heavens! [Motions Algernon away.]


ALGERNON. Brother John, I have come down from town to tell you that I am very sorry for all the trouble I have given you, and that I intend to lead a better life in the future. [Jack glares at him and does not take his hand.]


CECILY. Uncle Jack, you are not going to refuse your own brother's hand?


JACK. Nothing will induce me to take his hand. I think his coming down here disgraceful. He knows perfectly well why.


CECILY. Uncle Jack, do be nice. There is some good in every one. Ernest has just been telling me about his poor invalid friend Mr. Bunbury whom he goes to visit so often. And surely there must be much good in one who is kind to an invalid, and leaves the pleasures of London to sit by a bed of pain.


JACK. Oh! he has been talking about Bunbury, has he?


CECILY. Yes, he has told me all about poor Mr. Bunbury, and his terrible state of health.


JACK. Bunbury! Well, I won't have him talk to you about Bunbury or about anything else. It is enough to drive one perfectly frantic.


ALGERNON. Of course I admit that the faults were all on my side. But I must say that I think that Brother John's coldness to me is peculiarly painful. I expected a more enthusiastic welcome, especially considering it is the first time I have come here.


CECILY. Uncle Jack, if you don't shake hands with Ernest I will never forgive you.


JACK. Well, this is the last time I shall ever do it. [Shakes with Algernon and glares.]


CHASUBLE. It's pleasant, is it not, to see so perfect a reconciliation? I think we might leave the two brothers together.


MISS PRISM. Cecily, you will come with us.


CECILY. Certainly, Miss Prism. My little task of reconciliation is over.


CHASUBLE. You have done a beautiful action to-day, dear child.


CECILY. I feel very happy. [They all go off except Jack and Algernon.]


JACK. You young scoundrel, Algy, you must get out of this place as soon as possible. I don't allow any Bunburying here.


MERRIMAN. I have put Mr. Ernest's things in the room next to yours, sir. I suppose that is all right?


JACK. What?


MERRIMAN. Mr. Ernest's luggage, sir. I have unpacked it and put it in the room next to your own.


MERRIMAN. Yes, sir. Three portmanteaus, a dressing-case, two hat-boxes, and a large luncheon-basket.


ALGERNON. I am afraid I can't stay more than a week this time.


JACK. Merriman, order the dog-cart at once. Mr. Ernest has been suddenly called back to town.


MERRIMAN. Yes, sir. [Goes back into the house.]


ALGERNON. What a fearful liar you are, Jack. I have not been called back to town at all.


ALGERNON. I haven't heard any one call me.


JACK. Your duty as a gentleman calls you back.


ALGERNON. My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.


JACK. I can quite understand that.


ALGERNON. Well, Cecily is a darling.


JACK. You are not to talk of Miss Cardew like that. I don't like it.


ALGERNON. Well, I don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up and change? It is perfectly childish to be in deep mourning for a man who is actually staying for a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque.


JACK. You are certainly not staying with me for a whole week as a guest or anything else. You have got to leave . . . by the four-five train.


ALGERNON. I certainly won't leave you so long as you are in mourning. It would be most unfriendly. If I were in mourning you would stay with me, I suppose. I should think it very unkind if you didn't.


JACK. Well, will you go if I change my clothes?


ALGERNON. Yes, if you are not too long. I never saw anybody take so long to dress, and with such little result.


JACK. Well, at any rate, that is better than being always over-dressed as you are.


ALGERNON. If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.


JACK. Your vanity is ridiculous, your conduct an outrage, and your presence in my garden utterly absurd. However, you have got to catch the four-five, and I hope you will have a pleasant journey back to town. This Bunburying, as you call it, has not been a great success for you.


[Goes into the house.]


ALGERNON. I think it has been a great success. I'm in love with Cecily, and that is everything.


[Enter Cecily at the back of the garden. She picks up the can and begins to water the flowers.] But I must see her before I go, and make arrangements for another Bunbury. Ah, there she is.


CECILY. Oh, I merely came back to water the roses. I thought you were with Uncle Jack.


ALGERNON. He's gone to order the dog-cart for me.


CECILY. Oh, is he going to take you for a nice drive?


ALGERNON. He's going to send me away.


CECILY. Then have we got to part?


ALGERNON. I am afraid so. It's a very painful parting.


CECILY. It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a very 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.


MERRIMAN. The dog-cart is at the door, sir. [Algernon looks appealingly at Cecily.]


CECILY. It can wait, Merriman for . . . five minutes.


MERRIMAN. Yes, Miss. [Exit Merriman.]


ALGERNON. I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.


CECILY. I think your frankness does you great credit, Ernest. If you will allow me, I will copy your remarks into my diary. [Goes over to table and begins writing in diary.]


ALGERNON. Do you really keep a diary? I'd give anything to look at it. May I?


CECILY. Oh no. [Puts her hand over it.] You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy. But pray, Ernest, don't stop. I delight in taking down from dictation. I have reached 'absolute perfection'. You can go on. I am quite ready for more.


ALGERNON. [Somewhat taken aback.] Ahem! Ahem!


CECILY. Oh, don't cough, Ernest. When one is dictating one should speak fluently and not cough. Besides, I don't know how to spell a cough. [Writes as Algernon speaks.]


ALGERNON. [Speaking very rapidly.] Cecily, ever since I first looked upon your wonderful and incomparable beauty, I have dared to love you wildly, passionately, devotedly, hopelessly.


CECILY. I don't think that you should tell me that you love me wildly, passionately, devotedly, hopelessly. Hopelessly doesn't seem to make much sense, does it?


ALGERNON. Cecily!


MERRIMAN. The dog-cart is waiting, sir.


ALGERNON. Tell it to come round next week, at the same hour.


MERRIMAN. [Looks at Cecily, who makes no sign.] Yes, sir.


CECILY. Uncle Jack would be very much annoyed if he knew you were staying on till next week, at the same hour.


ALGERNON. Oh, I don't care about Jack. I don't care for anybody in the whole world but you. I love you, Cecily. You will marry me, won't you?


CECILY. You silly boy! Of course. Why, we have been engaged for the last three months.


ALGERNON. For the last three months?


CECILY. Yes, it will be exactly three months on Thursday.


ALGERNON. But how did we become engaged?


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.


ALGERNON. Darling! And when was the engagement actually settled?


CECILY. On the 14th of February last. Worn out by your entire ignorance of my existence, I determined to end the matter one way or the other, and after a long struggle with myself I accepted you under this dear old tree here. The next day I bought this little ring in your name, and this is the little bangle with the true lover's knot I promised you always to wear.


ALGERNON. Did I give you this? It's very pretty, isn't it?


CECILY. Yes, you've wonderfully good taste, Ernest. It's the excuse I've always given for your leading such a bad life. And this is the box in which I keep all your dear letters. [Kneels at table, opens box, and produces letters tied up with blue ribbon.]


ALGERNON. My letters! But, my own sweet Cecily, I have never written you any letters.


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.


ALGERNON. Oh, do let me read them, Cecily?


CECILY. Oh, I couldn't possibly. They would make you far too conceited. [Replaces box.] The three you wrote me after I had broken off the engagement are so beautiful, and so badly spelled, that even now I can hardly read them without crying a little.


CECILY. Of course it was. On the 22nd of last March. You can see the entry if you like. [Shows diary.] 'To-day I broke off my engagement with Ernest. I feel it is better to do so. The weather still continues charming.'


ALGERNON. But why on earth did you break it off? What had I done? I had done nothing at all. Cecily, I am very much hurt indeed to hear you broke it off. Particularly when the weather was so charming.


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.


ALGERNON. [Crossing to her, and kneeling.] What a perfect angel you are, Cecily.


CECILY. You dear romantic boy. [He kisses her, she puts her fingers through his hair.] I hope your hair curls naturally, does it?


ALGERNON. Yes, darling, with a little help from others.


ALGERNON. You'll never break off our engagement again, Cecily?


CECILY. I don't think I could break it off now that I have actually met you. Besides, of course, there is the question of your name.


ALGERNON. Yes, of course. [Nervously.]


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 rises, Cecily also.] There is something in that name that seems to inspire absolute confidence. I pity any poor married woman whose husband is not called Ernest.


ALGERNON. But, my dear child, do you mean to say you could not love me if I had some other name?


CECILY. But what name?


ALGERNON. Oh, any name you like—Algernon—for instance . . .


CECILY. But I don't like the name of Algernon.


ALGERNON. Well, my own dear, sweet, loving little darling, I really can't see why you should object to the name of Algernon. It is not at all a bad name. In fact, it is rather an aristocratic name. Half of the chaps who get into the Bankruptcy Court are called Algernon. But seriously, Cecily . . . [Moving to her] . . . if my name was Algy, couldn't you love me?


CECILY. [Rising.] I might respect you, Ernest, I might admire your character, but I fear that I should not be able to give you my undivided attention.


ALGERNON. Ahem! Cecily! [Picking up hat.] Your Rector here is, I suppose, thoroughly experienced in the practice of all the rites and ceremonials of the Church?


CECILY. Oh, yes. Dr. Chasuble is a most learned man. He has never written a single book, so you can imagine how much he knows.


ALGERNON. I must see him at once on a most important christening—I mean on most important business.


ALGERNON. I shan't be away more than half an hour.


CECILY. Considering that we have been engaged since February the 14th, and that I only met you to-day for the first time, I think it is rather hard that you should leave me for so long a period as half an hour. Couldn't you make it twenty minutes?


ALGERNON. I'll be back in no time.


[Kisses her and rushes down the garden.]


CECILY. What an impetuous boy he is! I like his hair so much. I must enter his proposal in my diary.


MERRIMAN. A Miss Fairfax has just called to see Mr. Worthing. On very important business, Miss Fairfax states.


CECILY. Isn't Mr. Worthing in his library?


MERRIMAN. Mr. Worthing went over in the direction of the Rectory some time ago.


CECILY. Pray ask the lady to come out here; Mr. Worthing is sure to be back soon. And you can bring tea.


MERRIMAN. Yes, Miss. [Goes out.]


CECILY. Miss Fairfax! I suppose one of the many good elderly women who are associated with Uncle Jack in some of his philanthropic work in London. I don't quite like women who are interested in philanthropic work. I think it is so forward of them.


CECILY. [Advancing to meet her.] Pray let me introduce myself to you. My name is Cecily Cardew.


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.


CECILY. How nice of you to like me so much after we have known each other such a comparatively short time. Pray sit down.


GWENDOLEN. [Still standing up.] I may call you Cecily, may I not?


CECILY. With pleasure!


CECILY. If you wish.


GWENDOLEN. Then that is all quite settled, is it not?


CECILY. I hope so. [A pause. They both sit down together.]


GWENDOLEN. Perhaps this might be a favourable opportunity for my mentioning who I am. My father is Lord Bracknell. You have never heard of papa, I suppose?


CECILY. I don't think so.


GWENDOLEN. Outside the family circle, papa, I am glad to say, is entirely unknown. I think that is quite as it should be. The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man. And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not? And I don't like that. It makes men so very attractive. Cecily, mamma, whose views on education are remarkably strict, has brought me up to be extremely short-sighted; it is part of her system; so do you mind my looking at you through my glasses?


CECILY. Oh! not at all, Gwendolen. I am very fond of being looked at.


GWENDOLEN. [After examining Cecily carefully through a lorgnette.] You are here on a short visit, I suppose.


CECILY. Oh no! I live here.


GWENDOLEN. [Severely.] Really? Your mother, no doubt, or some female relative of advanced years, resides here also?


CECILY. Oh no! I have no mother, nor, in fact, any relations.


CECILY. My dear guardian, with the assistance of Miss Prism, has the arduous task of looking after me.


CECILY. Yes, I am Mr. Worthing's ward.


GWENDOLEN. Oh! It is strange he never mentioned to me that he had a ward. How secretive of him! He grows more interesting hourly. I am not sure, however, that the news inspires me with feelings of unmixed delight. [Rising and going to her.] I am very fond of you, Cecily; I have liked you ever since I met you! But I am bound to state that now that I know that 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. In fact, if I may speak candidly—


CECILY. Pray do! I think that whenever one has anything unpleasant to say, one should always be quite candid.


GWENDOLEN. Well, to speak with perfect candour, Cecily, I wish that you were fully forty-two, and more than usually plain for your age. Ernest has a strong upright nature. He is the very soul of truth and honour. Disloyalty would be as impossible to him as deception. But even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less than Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable.


CECILY. Oh, but it is not Mr. Ernest Worthing who is my guardian. It is his brother—his elder brother.


GWENDOLEN. [Sitting down again.] Ernest never mentioned to me that he had a brother.


CECILY. I am sorry to say they have not been on good terms for a long time.


GWENDOLEN. Ah! that accounts for it. And now that I think of it I have never heard any man mention his brother. The subject seems distasteful to most men. Cecily, you have lifted a load from my mind. I was growing almost anxious. It would have been terrible if any cloud had come across a friendship like ours, would it not? Of course you are quite, quite sure that it is not Mr. Ernest Worthing who is your guardian?


CECILY. Quite sure. [A pause.] In fact, I am going to be his.


GWENDOLEN. [Inquiringly.] I beg your pardon?


CECILY. [Rather shy and confidingly.] Dearest Gwendolen, there is no reason why I should make a secret of it to you. 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. The announcement will appear in the Morning Post on Saturday at the latest.


CECILY. [Very politely, rising.] I am afraid you must be under some misconception. Ernest proposed to me exactly ten minutes ago. [Shows diary.]


GWENDOLEN. [Examines diary through her lorgnettte carefully.] It is certainly very curious, for he asked me to be his wife yesterday afternoon at 5.30. If you would care to verify the incident, pray do so. [Produces diary of her own.] I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train. I am so sorry, dear Cecily, if it is any disappointment to you, but I am afraid I have the prior claim.


CECILY. It would distress me more than I can tell you, dear Gwendolen, if it caused you any mental or physical anguish, but I feel bound to point out that since Ernest proposed to you he clearly has changed his mind.


GWENDOLEN. [Meditatively.] If the poor fellow has been entrapped into any foolish promise I shall consider it my duty to rescue him at once, and with a firm hand.


CECILY. [Thoughtfully and sadly.] Whatever unfortunate entanglement my dear boy may have got into, I will never reproach him with it after we are married.


GWENDOLEN. Do you allude to me, Miss Cardew, as an entanglement? You are presumptuous. On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.


CECILY. Do you suggest, Miss Fairfax, that I entrapped Ernest into an engagement? How dare you? This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade.


GWENDOLEN. [Satirically.] I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.


[Enter Merriman, followed by the footman. He carries a salver, table cloth, and plate stand. Cecily is about to retort. The presence of the servants exercises a restraining influence, under which both girls chafe.]


MERRIMAN. Shall I lay tea here as usual, Miss?


CECILY. [Sternly, in a calm voice.] Yes, as usual. [Merriman begins to clear table and lay cloth. A long pause. Cecily and Gwendolen glare at each other.]


GWENDOLEN. Are there many interesting walks in the vicinity, Miss Cardew?


CECILY. Oh! yes! a great many. From the top of one of the hills quite close one can see five counties.


GWENDOLEN. Five counties! I don't think I should like that; I hate crowds.


CECILY. [Sweetly.] I suppose that is why you live in town? [Gwendolen bites her lip, and beats her foot nervously with her parasol.]


GWENDOLEN. [Looking round.] Quite a well-kept garden this is, Miss Cardew.


CECILY. So glad you like it, Miss Fairfax.


GWENDOLEN. I had no idea there were any flowers in the country.


CECILY. Oh, flowers are as common here, Miss Fairfax, as people are in London.


GWENDOLEN. Personally I cannot understand how anybody manages to exist in the country, if anybody who is anybody does. The country always bores me to death.


CECILY. Ah! This is what the newspapers call agricultural depression, is it not? I believe the aristocracy are suffering very much from it just at present. It is almost an epidemic amongst them, I have been told. May I offer you some tea, Miss Fairfax?


GWENDOLEN. [With elaborate politeness.] Thank you. [Aside.] Detestable girl! But I require tea!


CECILY. [Sweetly.] Sugar?


GWENDOLEN. [Superciliously.] No, thank you. Sugar is not fashionable any more. [Cecily looks angrily at her, takes up the tongs and puts four lumps of sugar into the cup.]


CECILY. [Severely.] Cake or bread and butter?


GWENDOLEN. [In a bored manner.] Bread and butter, please. Cake is rarely seen at the best houses nowadays.


CECILY. [Cuts a very large slice of cake, and puts it on the tray.] Hand that to Miss Fairfax.


[Merriman does so, and goes out with footman. Gwendolen drinks the tea and makes a grimace. Puts down cup at once, reaches out her hand to the bread and butter, looks at it, and finds it is cake. Rises in indignation.]


GWENDOLEN. You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake. I am known for the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far.


CECILY. [Rising.] To save my poor, innocent, trusting boy from the machinations of any other girl there are no lengths to which I would not go.


GWENDOLEN. From the moment I saw you I distrusted you. I felt that you were false and deceitful. I am never deceived in such matters. My first impressions of people are invariably right.


CECILY. It seems to me, Miss Fairfax, that I am trespassing on your valuable time. No doubt you have many other calls of a similar character to make in the neighbourhood.


GWENDOLEN. [Catching sight of him.] Ernest! My own Ernest!


JACK. Gwendolen! Darling! [Offers to kiss her.]


GWENDOLEN. [Draws back.] A moment! May I ask if you are engaged to be married to this young lady? [Points to Cecily.]


JACK. [Laughing.] To dear little Cecily! Of course not! What could have put such an idea into your pretty little head?


GWENDOLEN. Thank you. You may! [Offers her cheek.]