Monologue

Lord Windermere Monologue from Lady Windermere's Fan

From Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde

male · anguished · 1:56 min

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I can’t bear to see you with her. Besides, you have not told me the truth, Mrs. Erlynne. (MRS. ERLYNNE: I have not told her the truth, you mean.) (Standing C.) I sometimes wish you had. I should have been spared then the misery, the anxiety, the annoyance of the last six months. But rather than my wife should know—that the mother whom she was taught to consider as dead, the mother whom she has mourned as dead, is living—a divorced woman, going about under an assumed name, a bad woman preying upon life, as I know you now to be—rather than that, I was ready to supply you with money to pay bill after bill, extravagance after extravagance, to risk what occurred yesterday, the first quarrel I have ever had with my wife. You don’t understand what that means to me. How could you? But I tell you that the only bitter words that ever came from those sweet lips of hers were on your account, and I hate to see you next her. You sully the innocence that is in her. (Moves L.C.) And then I used to think that with all your faults you were frank and honest. You are not. (MRS. ERLYNNE: Why do you say that?) You made me get you an invitation to my wife’s ball.

About this piece

Lord Windermere confronts a figure from his wife's past, expressing his deep emotional turmoil over the impact of this revelation on his marriage and his wife's innocence.

30s · anger · betrayal · family · identity · jealousy

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