I could fill this
page with sayings from the scene in question, all perfectly
comprehensible without any account of the situation. Among them would be
one of those; profound sayings which Wilde now and then threw off in his
lightest moods, like opals among soap-bubbles. "In the world," says
Dumby, "there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and
the other is getting it." This may rank with Lord Illingworth's speech
in _A Woman of No Importance_: "All thought is immoral. Its very essence
is destruction. If you think of anything you kill it. Nothing survives
being thought of." When we hear such sayings as these--or the immortal
"Vulgarity is the behaviour of other people"--we do not enquire too
curiously into their appropriateness to character or situation; but none
the less do they belong to an antiquated conception of drama.
It is useless to begin to give specimens of the "mot de caractere" and
"mot de situation." All really dramatic dialogue falls under one head or
the other.
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