ACT 1 SCENE 8 Flashcards
JACK: For goodness’ sake, don’t play that ghastly tune, Algy. How idiotic you are!
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: ……
I beg your pardon, Algy, I suppose I shouldn’t talk about your own aunt in that way before you.
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.
JACK: Oh, that is nonsense! (first)
It isn’t!
JACK: You always want to argue about things.
[Sits on sofa, munches]
That is exactly what things were originally made for.
JACK: Upon my word, if I thought that, I’d shoot myself…
You don’t think there is any chance of Gwendolen becoming like her mother in about a 150 years, do you, Algy?
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.
No man does - that’s his.
JACK: Is that clever?
It is perfectly phrased!
JACK: I am sick to death of cleverness…
…
I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.
We have!
(Brief pause)
By the way… have you told Gwendolen yet the truth about your being Earnest in town and Jack in the country?
JACK: … What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!
The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain.
Oh, that is nonsense. (second)
What about your brother? What about the profligate Earnest?
JACK: Oh, before the end of the week I shall have got rid of him…
…
Lots of people die of apoplexy, quite suddenly, don’t they?
Yes, but it’s hereditary, my dear fellow. You had much better say…. a severe chill!
JACK: You are sure a severe chill isn’t hereditary?
Of course, it isn’t!
JACK: Very well, then. My poor brother Earnest is carried off suddenly, in Paris, by a severe chill. That gets rid of him.
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 and pays no attention at all to her lessons.
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 18.
Have you told Gwendolen yet that you have an excessively pretty ward who is only just 18?
JACK: ….
…
…half an hour after they have met, they will be calling each other sister.
Women only do that after 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: Oh! It is always nearly seven.
Well, I’m hungry. :(
JACK: I never knew you when you weren’t.
What shall we do after dinner? Go to a theatre? :)
JACK: Oh no! I loathe listening.
> :( Well. Hm. Let us go to the club?
JACK: Oh no! I hate talking.
Well, let us trot round to the Empire at ten?
JACK: Oh no! I can’t bear looking at things. It is so silly.
Well what shall we do!?
JACK: Nothing!
It is awfully hard work doing nothing.
