Act Two

CECILY I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life. If I didn't write them down, I should probably forget all about them.
MISS PRISM Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.
CECILY Yes, but it usually chronicles the things that have never happened, and couldn't possibly have happened. I believe that Memory is responsible for nearly all the three-volume novels that Mudie sends us.
MISS PRISM Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days.
CECILY Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily? I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.
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Cecily. I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.
[Enter Algernon, very gay and debonnair.] He does!
Algernon. [Raising his hat.] You are my little cousin Cecily, I’m sure.
Cecily. You are under some strange mistake. I am not little. In fact, I believe I am more than usually tall for my age. [Algernon is rather taken aback.] But I am your cousin Cecily. You, I see from your card, are Uncle Jack’s brother, my cousin Ernest, my wicked cousin Ernest.
Algernon. Oh! I am not really wicked at all, cousin Cecily. You mustn’t think that I am wicked.
Cecily. If you are not, then you have certainly been deceiving us all in a very inexcusable manner. I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
Algernon. [Looks at her in amazement.] Oh! Of course I have been rather reckless.
Cecily. I am glad to hear it.

The portion above is a part of Act Two from:
The Importance of  Being Earnest
A Trivial Comedy for Serious People
by Oscar Wilde

I couldn't resist it once I re-read the script.  I found out it is on Broadway and knowing I wouldn't get a chance to see it I decided to take another look down memory lane which according to Cecily are things that never happen or couldn't possibly have happened.  (Or was that only when they were recorded in a diary)? 
So the fact is...I played Cecily in a production one late spring many, many years ago.  She was a bit of an air-head and yet she is strangely similar to me.  I didn't remember the reference (or maybe I do sub-consciously) to being little.  I have never been to keen on being short and little can be a bad word to me.  I do remember her talking that way (or was it me talking her way?)  I remember having to introduce myself..Cecily. [Advancing to meet her.] Pray let me introduce myself to you. My name is Cecily Cardew...I dragged out the last name...Carrduuuue.  She goes on later...oh well, it's crazy and so was she (or was that me?)
What fun!  What a long time ago.  I hadn't even thought about it.  Then after this show closed I was cast as the lead in the Summer Melodrama.  I had been a saloon girl (in Act Two again!) for the past few summers and made Heroine that year.  I gave the part up, though.  I didn't like the fact that I kept playing her as Cecily so I went back to being a saloon girl and danced the can-can in the second act instead.  I got to drink (real) beer left on the villians table and throw my garter out to someone interesting in the audience each performance after the dance.  I had someone interesting actually come back and tell me how they had caught my garter which started a nice conversation and...
What a long time ago.  I hadn't thought about that!
TT