No começo de 1892, em pleno inverno londrino, estreou no St James's Theatre a primeira comédia dramática de Oscar Wilde, "O leque de Lady Windermere". Foi o marco da consolidação de sua fama como escritor e dramaturgo, que só faria aumentar até 1895. Eis aqui alguns diálogos memoráveis, para alegrar o domingo:

"Enter MR. CECIL GRAHAM.

CECIL GRAHAM:

[(bows to LADY WINDERMERE, passes over and shakes hands with LORD WINDERMERE)] Good evening, Arthur. Why don't you ask me how I am? I like people to ask me how I am. It shows a wide-spread interest in my health. Now, to-night I am not at all well. Been dining with my people. Wonder why it is one's people are always so tedious? My father would talk morality after dinner. I told him he was old enough to know better. But my experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all. Hallo, Tuppy! Hear you're going to be married again; thought you were tired of that game.

LORD AUGUSTUS:

You're excessively trivial, my dear boy, excessively trivial!

CECIL GRAHAM:

By the way, Tuppy, which is it? Have you been twice married and once divorced, or twice divorced and once married? I say you've been twice divorced and once married. It seems so much more probable.

LORD AUGUSTUS:

I have a very bad memory. I really don't remember which.

* * * * *

LORD WINDERMERE:

Dumby, you are ridiculous, and Cecil, you let your tongue run away with you. You must leave Mrs. Erlynne alone. You don't really know anything about her, and you're always talking scandal against her.

CECIL GRAHAM:

[(coming towards him L.C.)] My dear Arthur, I never talk scandal. I only talk gossip.

LORD WINDERMERE:

What is the difference between scandal and gossip?

CECIL GRAHAM:

Oh! gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. Now, I never moralise. A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain. There is nothing in the whole world so unbecoming to a woman as a Nonconformist conscience. And most women know it, I'm glad to say.

LORD AUGUSTUS:

Just my sentiments, dear boy, just my sentiments.

CECIL GRAHAM:

Sorry to hear it, Tuppy; whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong.

* * * * *

LORD DARLINGTON:

What cynics you fellows are!

CECIL GRAHAM:

What is a cynic? [(Sitting on the back of the sofa.)]

LORD DARLINGTON:

A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

CECIL GRAHAM:

And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market price of any single thing.

LORD DARLINGTON:

You always amuse me, Cecil. You talk as if you were a man of experience.

CECIL GRAHAM:

I am. [(Moves up to front off fireplace.)]

LORD DARLINGTON:

You are far too young!

CECIL GRAHAM:

That is a great error. Experience is a question of instinct about life. I have got it. Tuppy hasn't. Experience is the name Tuppy gives to his mistakes. That is all.

LORD AUGUSTUS looks round indignantly.

DUMBY:

Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes."