Algernon on Dining with Relations
In his elegant London flat, the idle dandy Algernon Moncrieff is dodging a dinner invitation from his aunt while his friend Jack looks on. Asked why he won't simply dine with his own relations, he launches into a mock-outraged defence of his social freedom. He wants to justify skipping the family dinner—and to sound perfectly reasonable doing it.
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.
How to Play It
Algernon is mounting a mock-legal defence for ditching a dinner. He wants to win the argument—'To begin with... In the second place... In the third place'—as if reason were entirely on his side.
Relish the epigrams and let them land cleanly; Wilde's wit needs crisp diction and confident timing, not rushing. The turn into 'washing one's clean linen in public' is the button—set it up and hit it.
Keep it effortless. Algernon is never indignant so much as amused by his own logic; the lighter the touch, the sharper the comedy.
Want Will to Coach You Through It?
A monologue is a two-person scene where the other person never speaks. Working it 1-on-1 with a working actor is the fastest way to make it land.