Well, that is no business of yours.
.
1 1730 / OSCAR WILDE
ALGERNON
If it was my business, I wouldn't talk about it. [Begins to eat muffins.] It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stock
brokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.
JACK How can you sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this hor
rible trouble, I can't make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless.
ALGERNON
Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would
probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is
the only way to eat them.
JACK I say it's perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the
circumstances.
ALGERNON
When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me.
Indeed, when I am in really great trouble, as anyone who knows me inti
mately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink. At the present
moment I am eating muffins because I am unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins. [Rising.]
JACK [Rising.] Well, that is no reason why you should eat them all in that greedy way. [Takes muffins from ALGERNON.] ALGERNON [Offering tea cake.] I wish you would have tea cake instead. I don't like tea cake. JACK
Good heavens! I suppose a man may eat his own muffins in his own
garden.
ALGERNON
But you have just said it was perfectly heartless to eat muffins.
JACK
I said it was perfectly heartless of you, under the circumstances. That
is a very different thing.
ALGERNON
That may be. But the muffins are the same. [He seizes the muffin dish from JACK.]
JACK
Algy, I wish to goodness you would go.
ALGERNON
You can't possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It's
absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians
and people like that. Besides I have just made arrangements with Dr. Chas
uble to be christened at a quarter to six under the name of Ernest.
JACK
My dear fellow, the sooner you give up that nonsense the better. I made
arrangements this morning with Dr. Chasuble to be christened myself at 5:
30, and I naturally will take the name of Ernest. Gwendolen would wish it.
We can't both be christened Ernest. It's absurd. Besides, I have a perfect
right to be christened if I like. There is no evidence at all that I ever have
been christened by anybody. I should think it extremely probable I never
was, and so does Dr. Chasuble. It is entirely different in your case. You have
been christened already.
ALGERNON
Yes, but I have not been christened for years.
JACK
