别吃野味了, 吃点好吃的行不？黄油面包，黄瓜三明治，蛋糕，松饼和煎饼:《真诚的重要性》里的吃货世界
Bunny
英国文学莎士比亚博士生
坐标海外
千方百计哄你读原文
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王尔德吧，无论正经的时候，还是不正经的时候，都特别受欢迎。《真诚的重要性》属于特别不正经那一类。两个男主，Algy是公开的不正经，Ernest是隐藏的不正经。
他们在关键时候，选择吃，而不是去面对。就如我国吃野味那类人，选择吃，而不是想想非 典的前车之鉴，不能面对、也面对不起现在的新灾难。说不定他们现在在某个阳光海滩度假呢，害！吐槽完毕
第一场开篇，Jack就撞见Algy像“往常那样”在吃东西：
Algernon How are you, my dear Ernest? What brings you up to town?
Jack Oh, pleasure, pleasure! What else should bring one any- where? Eating as usual, I see, Algy!
Algernon (Stiffly) I believe it is customary in good society to take some slight refreshment at five o’clock.
随后Jack加入了战斗，并和Algy抢了起来，展开了一场Jack该不该吃黄瓜三明治和黄油面包的对话：
(Jack puts out his hand to take a sandwich.
Algernon at once interferes) Please don’t touch the cucumber sandwiches. They are ordered specially for Aunt Augusta.
Takes one and eats it jack Well, you have been eating them all the time.
Algernon That is quite a different matter. She is my aunt. (Takes plate from below) Have some bread and butter. The bread and butter is for Gwendolen. Gwendolen is devoted to bread and butter.
Jack (Advancing to table and helping himself) And very good bread and butter it is too.
Algernon Well, my dear fellow, you need not eat as if you were going to eat it all. You behave as if you were married to her already. You are not married to her already, and I don’t think you ever will be.
Algy提出帮Jack引开姑妈，条件是Jack请吃饭：
Jack I haven’t asked you to dine with me anywhere to-night.
Algernon I know. You are absurdly careless about sending out invitations. It is very foolish of you. Nothing annoys people so much as not receiving invitations.
当姑妈来的时候，黄瓜三明治已经被吃完了，Algy煞有介事地找了Lane一起演了一场“为什么没有黄瓜三明治”的戏，Lane的回答是，今天菜市场就是没有，连不赊账都买不到：
Algernon (Picking up empty plate in horror) Good heavens! Lane! Why are there no cucumber sandwiches? I ordered them specially.
Lane (Gravely) There were no cucumbers in the market this morning, sir.
I went down twice.
Algernon No cucumbers!
Lane No, sir. Not even for ready money.
Algernon That will do, Lane, thank you.
Lane Thank you, sir.
Goes out
Algernonn I am greatly distressed, Aunt Augusta, about there being no cucumbers, not even for ready money.
姑妈回答到，没事，刚才已经吃了煎饼了(还是搞不懂下午茶文化，一周n次的tea time让Bunny胖成猪)：
Lady Bracknell It really makes no matter, Algernon. I had some crumpets with Lady Harbury, who seems to me to be living entirely for pleasure now.
当Jack没通过丈母娘面试，伤心欲绝时，Algy说，我饿了：
Algernon Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first. Now, my dear boy, if we want to get a good table at Willis’s, we really must go and dress. Do you know it is nearly seven? jack (Irritably) Oh! it always is nearly seven.
Algernon Well, I’m hungry.
Jack I never knew you when you weren’t—algernon What shall we do after dinner? Go to a theatre?
接下来惊天动地的下午茶战争发生在两位女主身上，喜欢面包被给了蛋糕，喜欢无糖的茶水被加了糖，撕逼大战在所难免，最后Cecily甚至下了逐客令：
Cecily May I offer you some tea, Miss Fairfax?
Gwendolen (With elaborate politeness) Thank you. (Aside) Detestable girl! But I require tea!
Cecily (Sweetly) Sugar?
Gwendolen (Superciliously) No, thank you. Sugar is not fashionable any more.
Cecily looks angrily at her, takes up the tongs, and puts four lumps of sugar into the cup Cecily (Severely) Cake or bread and butter?
Gwendolen (In a bored manner) Bread and butter, please. Cake is rarely seen at the best houses nowadays.
Cecily (Cuts a very large slice of cake, and puts it on the tray) Hand that to Miss Fairfax.
Merriman does so, and goes out with footman.
Gwendolen drinks the tea and makes a grimace. Puts down cup at once, reaches out her hand to the bread and butter, looks at it, and finds it is cake. Rises in indignation
Gwendolen You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake. I am known for the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far.
东窗事发，Algy和Jack的把戏被女主们揭穿，女主们愤愤地离开了，而男主们却在吃松饼和蛋糕。Jack一边抱怨Algy都什么时候了还只知道吃，还吃这么多，一边自己也吃得欢。Algy生怕Jack把松饼吃完了，试着让他多吃点蛋糕：
Algernon If it was my business, I wouldn’t talk about it. (Begins to eat muffins) It is very vulgar to talk about one’s business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.
Jack How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless.
Algernon Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.
Jack I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.
Algernon When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, when I am in really great trouble, as anyone who knows me intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink. At the present moment I am eating muffins because I am unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins.
Jack (Rising) Well, that is no reason why you should eat them all in that greedy way, Takes muffins from Algernon
Algernon (Offering tea-cake) I wish you would have tea-cake instead. I don’t like tea- cake.
Jack Good heavens! I suppose a man may eat his own muffins in his own garden.
Algernon But you have just said it was perfectly heartless to eat muffins.
Jack I said it was perfectly heartless of you, under the circumstances.
That is a very different thing.
Algernon That may be, but the muffins are the same.
He seizes the muffin-dish from Jack
就像Algy自己说的，当自己遇到麻烦的时候，就会吃东西，吃是唯一的慰藉。Algy在全剧都在遇麻烦，全剧都在吃。也许暴饮暴食这种习惯就可以管窥他的麻烦体质。吃是一种本能，跟赌博、好色、游手好闲都差不多，控制不好，就只能惹麻烦咯。就像结婚这件事情，连蒙带骗，埋伏了好多炸弹，恭候着小俩口。
最后再分享一些一如既往让人笑成狗的句子吧
伦敦婚姻现状：
Jack. That is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly won't want to know Bunbury.
Algernon. Then your wife will. You don't seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.
天气
Jack Charming day it has been, Miss Fairfax.
Gwendolen Pray don’t talk to me about the weather, Mr Worthing.
Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. And that makes me so nervous.
Jack I do mean something else.
Gwendolen I thought so. In fact, I am never wrong
如何与漂亮女孩相处：
Algernon. The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to some one else, if she is plain.
我也不知道我在说什么：
Jack Do you always really understand what you say, Algy?
Algernon (After consideration) Yes—if I listen attentively.
亲戚如债主：
(The sound of an electric bell is heard) Ah! that must be Aunt Augusta.
Only relatives, or creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner.
听亲戚被吐槽：
Jack Oh, Gwendolen is as right as a trivet. As far as she is concerned, we are engaged. Her mother is perfectly unbearable.Never met such a Gorgon—I don’t really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair. I beg your pardon, Algy, I suppose I shouldn’t talk about your own aunt in that way before you.
Algernonn My dear boy, I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
父子关系和母女关系：
Jack Upon my word, if I thought that, I’d shoot myself—(A pause) You don’t think there is any chance of Gwendolen becoming like her mother in about a hundred and fifty years, do you Algy?
Algernonn All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.
No man does. That’s his.
宴会音乐：
You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.
牙医：
Jack. My dear Algy, you talk exactly as if you were a dentist. It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces a false impression.
嫁很多次也不改初心：
Gwendolen Ernest, we may never be married. From the expression on mamma’s face I fear we never shall. Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out. Whatever influence I ever had over mamma, I lost at the age of three.
But although she may prevent us from becoming man and wife, and I may marry someone else, and marry often, nothing that she can possibly do can alter my eternal devotion to you.