Excerpt: ... ACT I Scene--The octagon room at Sir Robert Chiltern's house in Grosvenor Square. The room is brilliantly lighted and full of guests. At the top of the staircase stands Lady Chiltern, a woman of grave Greek beauty, about twenty-seven years of age. She receives the guests as they come up. Over the well of the staircase hangs a great chandelier with wax lights, which illumine a large eighteenth century French tapestry--representing the Triumph of Love, from a design by Boucher--that is stretched on the staircase wall. On the right is the entrance 'to the music-room. The sound of a string quartet is faintly heard. The entrance on the left leads to other reception-rooms. Mrs. Marchmont and Lady Basildon, two very pretty women, are seated together on a Louis Seize sofa. They are types of exquisite fragility. Their affectation of manner has a delicate charm. Watteau would have loved to paint them.

Mrs. Marchmont. Going on to the Hartlocks' tonight, Margaret?
Lady Basildon. I suppose so. Are you?
Mrs. Marchmont. Yes. Horribly tedious parties they give, don't they?
Lady Basildon. Horribly tedious! Never know why I go. Never know why I go anywhere.
Mrs. Marchmont. I come here to be educated.
Lady Basildon. Ah! I hate being educated!
Mrs. Marchmont. So do I. It puts one almost on a level with the commercial classes, doesn't it? But dear Gertrude Chiltern is always telling me that I should have some serious purpose in life. So I come here to try to find one.
Lady Basildon [Looking round through her lorgnette]. I don't see anybody here to-night whom one could possibly call a serious purpose. The man who took me in to dinner talked to me about his wife the whole time.
Mrs. Marchmont. How very trivial of him!
Lady Basildon. Terribly trivial!

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