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Monologue: Lady Bracknell

The Importance of Being Earnest · Oscar Wilde

Monologue text

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.

Work in the public domain.

Practice pace in the timer (text prefilled)

Why pick it & how to approach

The iconic hand-bag put-down — play monumental self-assurance and lethal social logic with total deadpan gravity.

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