TIOBE : Algernon Flashcards
Comic stereotypes + social commentary
‘Algernon’s flat in half-moon street. The Room is…’
‘luxuriously and artistically furnished.’
- Algernon Act 1
Clearly upper-class, Narcissist Aesthete
Social commentary - marriage
“Good heavens!…”
“is marriage so demoralising as that.”
- Algernon Act 1
Social commentary - marriage
“Well I wish you would offer one. I happen to be…”
“more than usually hard up.”
- Act 1, Algernon
Algernon’s spending and debst throws into question whether his marriage was for love or for money.
Social commentary - hypocrisy and deception
“I have invented an invaluable pernmanent invalid…”
“called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose.”
- Act 1, Algernon
Social life requires deception, they are intrinsically linked.
Social commentary - marriage and deception
“Nothing will induce me to part with Bunbury, and if you ever get married… you will be very glad to…”
“know a Bunbury. A man who marries without knowing Bunbury has a very tedious time of it.”
- Algernon Act 1
Marriage as an institution and social tradition rather than out of love ; undercurrent of deception in Victorian life.
Social commentary - marriage
“You don’t seem to realise that in married life…”
“three is company and two is none.”
- Algernon Act 1
Trivialisation of the serious
“I hear her hair has turned…”
“quite golden from grief”.
- Algernon Act 1
Mocking everything even death
Social commentary - dominance of family
“I love hearing my relations abused […]”
“Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven’t got the remoest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.”
- Algernon Act 1
Detachment of the upper-classes
“The truth is rarely pure…”
“and never simple.”
- Algernon Act 1
Social commentary - moral constraints
“Algy, you always adopt a…”
“strictly immoral attitude towards life. You are not quite old enough to do that.”
- Gwendolen Act 1
Algernon’s narcissism
“Eating as…”
“usual I see Algy.”
- Jack Act 1
Over indulgence
Algernon’s narcissism - detatchment from reality
Enter Algernon very…
gay and debonair
- Act 2
Algernon’s narcissism - over indulgence
“Yes sir. Three portmanteaus…”
“a dressing case, two-hat boxes, and a large luncheon basket.”
- Merriman Act 2
Narcissism - detachment
“My duty as a gentlmen…”
“has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.”
- Act 2
Marriage and superficiality
“Cecily, ever since I first looked upon your wonderful and incomparable beauty…”
“I have dared to love you wildly, passionately, devotedly, hopelessly.”
- Algernon Act 2
