ACTING IN BRITISH PLAYS FOR AMERICAN  

                           
ACTORS
                  by John Windsor-Cunningham
How to perform the plays of
                    William Shakespeare     Harold Pinter
                    Tom Stoppard                 Oscar Wilde 
                    Alan Ayckbourn               G B Shaw
                    Noel Coward                     Agatha Christie
                    Caryl Churchill               David Hare
                    Robert Bolt                       Alan Bennett
                    Michael Frayn                 Joe Orton 
                    R.B.Sheridan                   William Wycherley
                        (and English translations of Moliere)       
                       
CONTENTS:
  HOW AMERICANS CAN 'FEEL' BRITISH,   with details of Oscar
Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest  which   many   may not know.

2.   BEHAVIOR: The difference between British and American.

4.   TOM STOPPARD: his plays, including THE REAL THING, and how
American actors can sound as if they were educated in the UK.
5.   TYPICAL BRITISH CHARACTERS: how to make them realisitic.
6.   NOEL COWARD and his play  Hay Fever.
7.   BRITISH SOCIETY: more details about British life to help Americans
play British roles.
8.   ALAN AYCKBOURN. His comedies, including Intimate
Exchanges,   and the difference between marriages in the USA and the
UK.
9.   UK ACCENTS: including modern developments, linked to films on
YouTube where all accents can be heard.       
10. BRITISH FARCE - Michael Fray's play Noises Off.
11. HAROLD PINTER: His play  A Kind of Alaska  and how it explains
the mystery of all of Pinter's plays, and even helps with difficult passages
of Shakespeare.
12.   SHAKESPEARE:  - Hamlet;   how American actors can stop being in
awe of    his Shakespeare's plays;  - Twelfth Night, and why it may be the
greatest comedy of all time.
Also Shakespeare's 'clowns', and why (unlike the rest of Shakespeare's
characters), they are hard to play with an American accent. But not
impossible. 
And the heart of As You Like It, - what makes it a comedy.
13. PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES between Brits and Americans.
14. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW:  
The TWO main characters of  Pygmalion.
The Devil's Disciple  - the only play Shaw set in America, and what it can
teach actors  about the different attitude which Brits have towards war,
which applies to dozens of otgher Britgish plays.
15. CARYL CHURCHILL:   Top Girls  -   a play about the ‘new women’
of modern Britain.
16. JOE ORTON:   What the Butler Saw  -    British risque humor.
17. 'RESTORATION COMEDIES'
  WILLIAM WYCHERLEY: THE COUNTRY WIFE
  - and some help understanding the way aristocrats 'move'.   
18. 'SENTIMENTAL COMEDIES'
and 'COMEDIES OF MANNERS' -
                                                     R.B. SHERIDAN:       THE RIVALS
                                                       &             SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL
connecting to the plays of Wilde, Coward and Stoppard.
19          MOLIERE : THE SCHOOL FOR WIVES
              -   and how to enjoy speaking in verse.
20        AGATHA CHRISTIE:    
                WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION
              - how the British Legal system makes British characters in
many plays different to Americans. 
21          DAVID HARE: THE VERTICAL HOUR
                - the manners of politicians in the UK, and how this may help
play characters in other plays.
22          ALAN BENNETT:   TALKING HEADS
                       and        THE HISTORY BOYS                                  
23          ROBERT BOLT:    A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS
                  - the power of British Kings.
                                    Chapter 1
HOW AMERICAN ACTORS CAN PLAY BRITISH 'UPPER-CLASS',
AND THE SECRETS BEHIND OSCAR WILDE'S PLAY  The
Importance of Being Earnest.

Even in the UK today this play does not get the laughter you could hope
for from audiences since it is supposed to be one of the greatest comedies
ever written. Something is wrong. Either  the play doesn't suit modern
audiences, or modern actors don't know how to perform it.
 
Many people don't care. In America many  audiences are satisfied just to
hear the British accents. But  there is a depth to the play with which many
modern actors and directors have lost touch with. And the first task for an
American actor performing this play - or any British role - is to understand
how it 'feels' to be British upper-class.

One fact sums up the differences between the USA and the UK, and it is a
fact which gives added meaning to every line that any British character has
ever said. It is that 'Americans live for the future and British people live
in the past'.  There are exceptions, but most Americans do look forward to
the American Dream, while British people are satisfied with the way things
are.  
  This can make Brits appear to be rather old-fashioned, but we should
remember the UK  produced the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Dire
Straits and Coldplay, and their fashions are copied by every designer in
America, so there are exceptions to this idea of Brits living in the past. But
in most of the British plays performed in the USA the characters are rarely
very modern!

What an American actor needs is to see why the past matters so much to
British people and why it affects their lives nearly all the time.   I won't
bog the reader down in history, as it only takes seconds to remember
that  one  hundred years ago  the tiny island of the UK had massive power
and, in a way, had achieved its version of the American Dream already!
They ruled over India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Canada,
Newfoundland,  Australia, New Zealand, Iraq, Egypt, most of Africa,
Bermuda, Barbados, the West Indies, the Falkland Islands, Ireland, Hong-
Kong and Singapore, and controlled the economies of China, Africa, and
Argentina! It is hardly surprising that they regard the past as being more
exciting than the future, in a way, and have developed a kind of
'satisfaction' which can be applied to every British role that an American
actor plays. If the character an actor or actress is playing seems NOT to be
satisfied then it will be the case that they were probably satisfied yesterday
and will be satisfied tomorrow. Another way to sum this feeling up is to
say that Brits do not want 'change'. Amazingly they invented
television  and a host of other staples of modern life but then sat back
satisfied while other countries turned it into a huge industry. They invented
the telephone, refrigerator,   super-computer, radar, nuclear transfer, jet-
engine, color-photography, color cinema-photography, heroin and viagra,
but left it to others to make these inventions change the world.
So Americans can begin to feel British by simply noting how some
Americans already behave this way. In the Southern States of America
millions want life to be as it was a century ago, and most military families
are as proud of their past as any Brit can be. Even some hippies on the west
coast of America want their lives to stay the same, and it is this wish for
things to stay the same that is at the heart of most characters in British
plays and films.
It is fairly easy to apply this to any line in any script. Even the simple
words "Sir down" in a British scene will probably mean "Let's sit down
and talk about the past", while in the average American script the words
will mean "Let's talk of what we are going to do next!"
Once an American sees that Brits cannot help being lost in their past to
some extent it is easier to understand the British class-system, which is at
the heart of almost every British play and film ever written.  The
advantages of being an upper-class Brit are far greater than to being a rich
American.   A rich American can always lose his or her money, and many
families which were once famous for their power from owning steel-mills
or railroads now have no place in the 'high society' of America which they
once headed. But A British aristocrat can never lose his or her title of Duke
or Duchess, and if they do become poor there will always be a queue of
rich middle-class people (including Americans) who want to marry them to
get the title for their children.
Until recently the advantages of being British upper-class included
being  able to get into any university with little need to study, and if any of
them needed a job there would always be opportunities kept for them
which involved little work and enormous pay. Even today many industries
are willing to pay millions to have a Duke or a Knight on their list of
board-members. The prestige of being an Earl or a Dame is unmatchable
and unbeatable. 

When this play was written the members of this class also had access to
investments kept secret from others, and this insider trading was perfectly
legal! And yet we must not look on them as a kind of pompous Mafia,
as  spoiled divas only interested in themselves, for they did not ask to be
born into the upper-class. They cannot escape from their class, and if we
do not understand that many of them use their power to good purpose then
audiences will not care about them falling in love, which is what six people
in this play do.
The most important fact about being British upper-class (from an
American point of view) is that to belong once must have  a title, (or
somebody in their close family must have one). A title is inherited, passed
down from one generation to the next, just as Prince William will one day
become King William. If a family includes a Lord, a Count or a Duchess,
then they cannot lose the title. If they tried to give iot up and called
themselves "Mr" and "Miss" they would soon find their children probably
choosing to use the titles, becxause of all the advcantaghes that titles
bring. 
The 'middle-class' refers to people who do white-collar jobs in the UK. If
these people try to 'appear' or to sound as if they are upper-class, as if they
had high connections then they would be behaving ion the pompous
manner which Americans tend to think   British upper-classses have, but in
truth the genuinbe upper-class is usually a charitable and well-behaved
group of people.
It is only their ignorance of other wlaks of life which makes them seem
rather ridiculous, as is the case with all the characters in this play.
The term 'working-class' in the UK is meant for manual workers, and
however successful a plumber becomes he will never be looked on as
middle-class, and if he were a billionaire he might mix with people in
London 'society', and he might be liked and for genuine friendships with
even members of the Royal Family, but they will never shake off having
all the characteristics of being working-class which usually boils down to
their accent. Among all the hundreds of Lords and Duchesses and oltghers
with titles there may be one opr two cockneys who have married into
having a title, but they are very, very, very much the exception.
American actors should try to imagine how it would feel to win the 'lottery'
every single week of their lives. Of course it would be highly enjoyable for
most, but the constant attention from   others, and the weekly reminder of
another lottery-win would eventually become rather a bore, and that is
what being a Lord feels like.
  Actors need to remind themselves that these Brits have been born to this
life and have no choice. They cannot run away and live in a hippy-
community, or become a priest, or start speaking with working-class
accents. It is like asking a film star to   spend the rest of their life only
acting with a small community theatre company! They cannot give up their
position.
They get paid like Tom Cruise,and adored like Jennifer Aniston, they are
as powerful as the Mayor of New York, and as well-connected as the
Kennedy family, and if they tried to live quiet lives away from society they
would throw thousands   of people out of their jobs. 
In   any war they are expected to be in the front line,,in peace-time the
amount of charity work asked of them can be one of the hardest jobs in the
world. Prince Charles personally helps run the most successful 265
charities in the world, and if he only goes to one fund-raising dinner a year
for each one, it still means he has to know about each one in order to speak
about it publicly, as well as constantly organizing his staff to make sure
that any charity he helps is free of and to make sure that the charities are
not corrupt and are all well-run. As well as this he has personally started
three of the biggest charities in the UK.
They do not in fact get paid much for their work. Their comfortable homes
and life-style are managed by their own personal fortunes, and the main
pay they get from the government is to cover the expenses of their Royal
duties.
  One of the few examples of an aristocrat trying to change led to disaster
when in 1937 the King of England gave up his crown so as to marry an
American divorcee. He did not want to give up being King, but had no
choice as the British legal system prevented him from remaining king and
marrying a divorcee. The law made sense because anybody might claim to
have been the child from a previous relationship of his wife's, and be
entitled to be in line to be king or queen! 
They lived lonely and unhappy in France for most of their subsequent
lives.
THE PLOT OF THIS PLAY.
Three couples, steeped in upper-class values, are genuinely in love with
each other, but forced by the rules of 'society' to keep their love a secret.
          Two of the six are deeply embarrassed about their feelings because
one is a vicar. The Reverend Chassuble has longed for the arms of the
demure local teacher, Miss Prism for twenty years, but been too afraid to
say so. The teacher, Miss Prism, has longed for his arms too but been
equally nervous of showing her feelings. The two of them have been
thrilled to simply know each other.   The other, much younger couples, are
more open about their love, but they also know little about how to have a
serious relationship, and their huge wealth makes the idea of marriage an
issue for their families.
          They feel, like so many young people, as if nobody has been in love
before, and underneath their deliberately witty remarks the girls are as
anxious as Shakespeare's Juliet, and the men almost as reckless as Romeo.
They cannot keep their love a secret for long, and are planning to
elope,   while frantically managing to appear at ease and confident about
everything. 
          Jack, despite his wealth, was kin fact adopted as a child and has no
idea who his real parents were. He has fallen helplessly in love with
Gwendolen, a very rich, upper-class heiress, and in a moment of madness
told her his name is ‘Ernest’, because he knows the name is her ideal. 
          His closest friend, Algernon, who has a 'title' and is more definitely
upper-class, has fallen in love with an even wealthier heiress called Cecily,
and told her that he is also called Earnest, as she's equally  obsessed with
the Earnest-sounding name.
          Algernon's aunt, Lady Bracknell,   is understandably nervous about
Jack's wish to marry into her family, as well as being against her nephew
marrying Cecily because the girl lives in the country-side, and unknown to
her. 
        The complications which ensue are not obvious to modern actors, so
they are often tempted to play the characters in ways which Wilde did not
intend. Gwendolen, for instance, is often played as rather bossy, and the
actress playing her may justify this by pointing out that she is Lady
Bracknell's daughter, and as a result missing the exact meaning of her
lines.   Wilde has created Gwendolen to be wonderfully innocent, an
'English rose', totally unaware that her jokes could sound bossy or absurd.
Lady Bracknell herself in fact is not really bossy, and only shocked at how
the youngsters behave, for she herself was not born into the upper-classes.
She may behave like Queen Victoria at times, but only because she thinks
that is what women in her position are supposed to do!
          One central question can be asked of every line in the play, which
explains the real meaning of all of them. Does the character saying the line
INTEND what they say to sound funny? Are they aware and witty or
completely ignorant and lost? 
          Before looking at these lines there are useful secrets to performing
the play hidden in the opening  stage-directions, which run: 

Scene: A morning room in Algernon’s flat in Half-Moon Street.  The

room is luxuriously and artistically furnished.  The sound of a piano is
heard in the adjoining room.

          Half-Moon Street  is a tiny street in central London which leads to a

park across which stands Buckingham Palace. Queen Victoria lived there
at the time of the play, just as Queen Elizabeth does now, and anybody
living in the area is part of a world of staggering wealth. Oscar Wilde knew
such people intimately, for his own father had been knighted by the Queen
for services to medicine. Wilde was in a perfect position to know the
absurd side of British society, and to get away with showing it on stage in a
way which modern comedians should envy. 
The opening stage-directions also mention that the scene in a ‘morning-
room’. The word only means a kind of sitting-room that is used in the
'mornings', (to receive guests without the surroundings being too intimate,
and discouraging guests from staying all day!) But the fact that the room
exists at all means that Algernon's flat is quite large, because we are told a
piano is heard being played by Algernon so he must have a second sitting
room - he would hardly have a piano in his bedroom. This means the
apartment must have at least   four rooms, and a flat of this size in that
street today would sell for $15,000,000. So however humble the sets may
be in a production of THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST actors
should feel as if they are wandering round a very spacious apartment, and
to remember that the building has also probably been owned by Algernon's
family for generations.
It is enormously important to see just how rich these people have, not least
to explain the degree of confidence they have.  When Cecily reveals she
has investments of “about one hundred and thirty thousand pounds”
which would convert to $100,000,000 today. This is no exaggeration, for
in 1895 a thousand pounds was said to bring in enough interest to live on!
A large house could be rented for $10 dollars for a month, and a servant’s
wages for an entire year might be only $20. The play is not about people
who are rich, but who are super-rich, and this partly explains the enormous
confidence with which they all speak. Rich Americans today may protect
their own wealth but in 1895 members of London’s   ‘high-society’
protected each other’s. If one of the upper-classes 'fell on hard times' it
made all of them look bad, so they kept the knowledge of lucrative
investments   to themselves, and average people had no access to them at
all. And if this seems dreadfully unfair it would have caused  chaos and
disgrace if any of the Lords and Ladies had revealed the secrets of their
stocks and shares.     
          Let us look at one of the characters now in detail.
LADY BRACKNELL
          Modern actresses often misunderstand Lady Bracknell's
character,making her a kind of   'comic turn' and raising only a small
amount of laughter. She is even played sometimes by a man, which goes
against the most important part of her character in the play - that she is a
mother.   She is often portrayed as a fool when she is in fact eccentric, and
it is her cleverness which ironically brings the couples together, as we shall
see. For such a dominant lady as Lady Bracknell to exist at all in an era
when British women were expected to be softly feminine is what scares
those around her, but what scares them most is the gap between what she
says and what she means.
This is where the question arises of whether a character is intending to be
amusing or not.

          When interviewing Jack to decide if he would be a suitable

husband for her daughter, she has a typical misunderstanding with Jack: 

LADY BRACKNELL: Do you smoke?

JACK: Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.

LADY BRACKNELL: I am glad to hear it.  A man should always have an

occupation of some kind.

The lines may seem only mildly amusing, but this is because Lady
Bracknell can simply seem to be pompous. But, as kin all her lines, and in
those of all the other characters, there there is more behind her remarks
than pomposity. The idea of regarding 'smoking' as an occupation may just
seem absurd, and no more, but there are two very different meanings she
might have, and question has to be asked -   Is she a fool or a wit?    Could
she be deliberately making fun of men, expressing her disdain about how
she regards men, suggesting that the only thing that men do in their lives is
smoke cigarettes. But while she might be sarcastic, and audiences certainly
like the idea that she regards men so trivially, there is another way of
understanding these lines. 
          She might in fact admire men who smoke. She might be
congratulating Jack quite sincerely. She might have so little experience do
that the idea of them smoking, of perhaps having brilliant thoughts while
sitting in a smoking-room, is             one of the few things she likes
about men at all. In other words she knows nothing. In other words she is
not sarcastic, but a fool. Her words cannot mean both. She cannot be both.
She is either witheringly sarcastic, or completely ignorant about life. In
either case she is aggressively confident, but we need to know more about
her in order to decide.
          We know that she is  phenomenally rich, and has probably managed
to live her life without needing to learn anything outside her own narrow
world. She certainly has little idea of what questions to pose to a
prospective son-in-law, and the gap between her extreme confidence and
her extreme ignorance becomes more startling with every speech. 
          Because of her social power nobody has the nerve to contradict
anything she says.   She is a pillar of society who may well rubs shoulders
sometimes with Queen Victoria.
          Another line which helps show how Wilde intended her to be
played is one made famous by a British actress,   Edith Evans, to the extent
that modern actresses usually feel obliged to copy her. The line (when Jack
tells her where is adopting Father first found him) "A handbag!" is usually
said in a dragon-like,   horror-filled, slow-motion. It has made a generation
of actresses think     she must be played as rather ridiculous, exaggerating
everything. But she is upset for one good reason alone, which is that she
loves her daughter and is apalled at the notion of her marrying a man who
cannot care for her. The play is about people who are in love.
  And the choice is very clear again,m that she might be a fool, regarding
Jack's having been found in a handbag as the start of some kind
of  revolution, which she cannot begin to comprehend. Or she might simply
be incredibly surprised and slightly upset to hear about Jack's start in life.
The original Lady Bracknell was a rather attractive woman in her 40's, who
will doubtless have done her best to appear even younger on the stage. Her
manner may be ridiculous, or it may be one of constant shock, but there is
no reason for her to look like a battleship. The whole play revolves round
her concern for her daughter.
          It is easy for some to think she is an unkind woman, delivering her
lines with a slight but constant anger. When, for instance, she says that her
daughter will "be informed" when she is to become engaged, it is easy for
her to seem over-bearing, but she may simply be shocked that her daughter
could have another opinion. The difference between her being very
annoyed and being very amazed makes the entire play a very different
collection of scenes. And since audiences rarely laugh at characters they
dislike it is important to see the mis-placed ideas of Lady Bracknell, and
turn her into more than the aging, pompous diva for which she is so often
mistaken in modern timers.
            Self-important women who are well-meaning like Lady Bracknell
exist in the USA today, of course, but her egotism is singularly British. It is
based on family ties and even when the subject of money is raised it is
because of what people will say about somebody and not because of what
the money can be spent on!
          And She may in fact be extremely foolish, but the lines where this
is clear are often misunderstood. Some critics have pointed out that she
never even thinks that Jack might have been the baby that her brother lost
long ago. But there is no reason for her to think this, and even if there is -
as I shall explain in my film next week on this site on Pinter and
Shakespeare (and in a later chapter here) there are often unexplained
matters in plays which should not be examined closely. (Why for example
does Gertrude describe Ophelia's death in Hamlet at great length while at
the same time says not a single word about possibly trying to save the girl?
- These are not what Shakespeare was writing about, and Wilde, in a
similar way, may leave some matters to be left in the same way.)
          Another example of mis-judging her is from her not recalling her
dead brother’s first name at the climax of the play. If this is taken as a sign
of her insensitivity and self-centeredness then she becomes an ogre, and
misses the point that she is powerful not because she is cruel but because
she thinks she is right about almost everything and would like people to
enjoy thje fact. Wilde allows her to forget her brothers name, just as we all
sometimes forget important things, because it helps the suspense of the
play.
          The real life of an aristocrat like Lady Bracknell must have been a
lonely one, for she is scared of intimacy, and must know few people who
are as important as herself. At the risk of mentioning names of people who
live in a totally different world, Prince Charles (until recently, Marlon
Brando and Elvis Presley hardly ever had a close friend at all because
nobody else was like them.
          She has married a Lord in her early twenties and her brother - who
died some years before the play begins - was a Lord as well as a General in
the army. Just the address of her house in Belgrave Square makes her a
permanent celebrity, for it was (and is still) the most fashionable address in
London. Her neighbors in such a unique street would be members of Royal
Families exiled from other countries, ex-prime-ministers, retired cardinals
and Dukes and Lords. And no Americans probably!
          The asking price for a house in the square in 2009 was one
hundred million pounds, - or nearly double that number in dollars.
            She will also own a huge country-house, far from the bustle of
London, with rooms to accommodate a hundred guests or more. Such a
house might have fifty unused bedrooms all year round, with a ball-room
(or two), and stables holding the finest horses in Europe.   A staff of twenty
or more will be employed all-year-round to keep the house prepared for
immediate use, even though some years may pass without it being visited
at all. Attached to the house would be stunning and extensive gardens, with
hundreds more acres of land used by friends for hunting occasionally. Even
more land may be attached to the house and rented out to local farmers,
bringing in revenue which - combined with the fortune she must already
have in the bank - makes her a very powerful member of Society indeed. 
In modern America such a woman would have to deal with the media, with
heavy taxation and intrusive demands to be philanthropic, but a woman
like Lady Bracknell can do as she likes. Unlike rich Americans who might
want to build up wealth for the future she uses her wealth to hang on to her
family’s   past.

  From hints in the dialogue we learn that her husband has no authority in
her household, and we may assume their bedrooms are a considerable
distance apart.   We may imagine her lying in bed until late each morning,
undisturbed in a huge, multi-pillowed four-poster, until being gently
woken by ‘personal’ maids with a large English breakfast. The maids will
carefully help her into a sitting position, and present her with a copy of that
morning’s Times Newspaper, its pages have been ironed thoroughly to
prevent any ink from staining her fingers.
She only bothers reading the paper’s ‘Social’ pages, and after breakfast in
bed possibly takes a bath that has been run to a temperature exactly
specified.
          Two of her servants will lay out her first clothes for the day while
other servants downstairs are preparing her lunch. The number of servants
she has does not embarrass her in the slightest. Her ancestors may have
once literally been able to afford  a private army!
            After bathing she rests again until being joined for lunch by her
daughter, Gwendolen, after which - if the exertions of the day have not
completely exhausted her - she asks for the daily mail to be brought and
she dictates brief replies to invitations for dinners or balls. 
          It's unlikely that she often throws parties herself, for she seems to
dislike even people of her own class, but she will invite special
acquaintances to ‘afternoon-tea’, and at at tea-time - four o’clock - she
descends to receive them any guests wearing a dress which will have cost
more than a maid’s salary for a year, even though she only choose to wear
it this one time.
          If no visitors are scheduled, she is helped into one of the carriages
she owns, and be driven around the nearby park, passing the gates of
Buckingham Palace on the way.  Her carriage is lead by four pedigree
horses, its two drivers dressed in unique, expensively-designed uniforms,
with a ‘groom’ in a contrastingly-colored uniform perched on a seat above
the back wheels.  She orders the drivers to stop if she spots anybody
‘important’ so as to exchange gossip with them for a few minutes, but she
is careful to return home by six o’clock for it is time to change into   a
different dress.
          She may now journey out to dinner with her daughter, and possibly
even go to the theater.  It is unlikely that she likes or understands plays or
operas or ballets, but she is obliged to attend them in order to show off
Gwendolen. She has to keep reminding society that her daughter exists and
available for marriage. But this must be hard for her as she seems despise
everyone she meets.             She looks down on her nephew just because
he is male, and on Jack for having no parents. She has little respect for   her
daughter, Gwendolen, as the girl does not seem to remember to do what
she is told. 
        In a way Lady Bracknell has the air of a judge, and it is probably
true that her ancestors have written some of the country's laws. She is like
a Senator who has been elected for life, with the right to pass the title to
her child. 

          So exactly why do audiences like her?   They possibly forgive

her  haughty manner because she is honest, and more interestingly because
she loves her daughter.   And it is important to question any interpretation
of a line which makes her seem to be actually unpleasant.
One such moment comes late in the play when she appears to be more
interested in money than in her nephew’s happiness, for only seconds after
deciding that Cecily is not suitable to marry her nephew she learns that
Cecily is very rich and immediately changes her mind:

LADY BRACKNELL:     -  I had better ask you if Miss Cardew has any
little fortune?

JACK: Oh, about a hundred and thirty thousand pounds in the Funds. 
That is all.  Good-bye, Lady Bracknell.  So pleased to have seen you.

LADY BRACKNELL: (sitting down again)  A moment, Mr Worthing. 

A hundred and thirty thousand pounds! And in the Funds! Miss Cardew
seems to me a most attractive young lady, now that I look at her.

          But Lady Bracknell is not being swayed by news of a minor

fortune.   Her sudden change of heart is entirely logical, for Cecily’s
fortune is so enormous that it will raise even Lady Bracknell’s family to a
higher position in society. She feels a moral obligation to protect her
family’s status, and it is natural that she is shocked by the news of such a
giant fortune, and she suddenly and genuinely likes Miss Cardew. It is not
her hypocrisy which Wilde wants audiences to laugh at,   but at her values.
Hypocrisy is not funny.
          Lady Bracknell is not normally interested in having a few extra
million in the bank. But this is different. A few years before the play was
written there had been a 'crash' in the British economy, resulting in the
'funds' in which Cecily's money is invested being an investment protected
by a guarantee from the government. The sum of money is so startling that
Lady Bracknell would have to be a stone NOT to be impressed.
Algernon
          First - his  'title'.  He is the " Honourable"  Algernon Malcrief –
which may sound odd to Americans but it means he is the son of a Lord
and will become a Lord  himself when his father dies. He does not think he
is 'better' than other people because of the title, but he does know he is
luckier.
          Like Lady Bracknell he has little experience of life outside London
society but, unlike her, he knows it. He is perfectly willing to make fun of
his class, and is being deliberately ironic when he says   ****** (add
later).

-   The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is
perfectly scandalous. -

          He pretends to speak censoriously, like Lady Bracknell, as if he

might actually be disgusted by wives who show their husbands public
affection, but he expects intelligent people to know he is only pretending to
be narrow-minded about women. Many upper-class people in 1895 took a
very conservative view of sex, and woman rarely showed their affection in
public. Married couples may well have never seen each other entirely
naked.   But people still had sincere longings for each other and Algernon
hates narrow-mindedness but is too polite top say so, and anyway is rather
shy himself. 
          His accent may make him sound old-fashioned, but one cannot
judge a person by their dialect, and his is not something he has been able to
choose.And by making humorous remarks which will not be understood by
people like Lady Bracknell he gets away with having what were then
'modern' views.
AUTHORS NOTE : Issues about other characters in the play will be added
here at a later date. For now let us just take a break from Wilde and say a
few words about another writer -

  EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER ON 

HAMLET 
If you are directed to play these characters differently you should, of
course, always go along with the director's view, especially if you are able
to include your own feelings about a character at the same time, but let us
look at Ophelia and Horatio.
OPHELIA     It may   help in an odd way to know that her name means
'help'. She obviously  goes ‘mad’ eventually and some actresses may detect
signs of this in her earlier silence in the face of insults from hger father,
brother and Hamlet, or there may be no sign at all when we first see her of
eventually hearing voices, or that she will end up singing accusations at the
king and committing suicide.
So while   an actress  may be tempted to play her as already anxious in her
opening scenes, Shakespeare has put no indication in the lines.  Instead he
paints a picture of a girl who is open and honest with her father and
brother, and who seems to love Hamlet.  
The word 'love' is so casually used that it's easy to forget that the word can
sometimes be deep and real. And  unrequited love is a painful issue to try
and act. It is often misunderstood by modern men and women, and I will
explore this in more detail in the chapter on TWELFTH NIGHT, but it is
extraordinary how differently people viewed love a few hundred years ago.
Ophelia is willing to   give up Hamlet when her father demands it, quite
unlike Juliet's reaction to her own father.   Of course Ophelia is a
‘commoner’ which makes her marriage to a prince extremely unlikely, but
she is healthy, intelligent, attractive, loyal, sensible, well-known to
Hamlet's family, quick-witted and charming. If she is played as nervous
and insanely in love from the start then the actress playing her is not
respecting the words that Shakespeare has written. But she is no fool. 

Here she warns her brother to take his own advice about discretion:

Do not as some ungracious pastors do

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles like a puff’d and reckless libertine
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.

Her language is strong. This is no naïve girl shyly asking her brother to
live the saintly life which he, Laertes, has just prescribed for her. Her
reference to an “ungracious pastor” clearly shows she does not hold
church-officials in awe.  She uses the daring phrase “reckless libertine”
with soem confidence and seems to give her brother advice quite calmly. 
Her words may suggest she knows about her own awkward position in the
'court', but that is not what Shakespeare has her show at this early stage.
Her words are in fact a verse from the Bible,   and the actress playing her
should probably sticks to that. 

Shakespeare shows her first as the most balanced and fair-minded

character in the play. She has as much wisdom than even Horatio, and
possibly more than her brother Laertes or her father, and Hamlet probably
sees her as the best part of his life until the ghost appears and starts to drive
him mad.
When she sings her warnings to the King and Queen towards the end of the
play, her madness should be – at least for audiences new to the play - not
only a tragedy but a huge surprise.

HORATIO

Horatio is described by Hamlet as his best friend. When Hamlet fails to

recognize him for a moment Horatio says nothing.  When Hamlet says
Horatio is the best man he has ever known Horatio says

HORATIO: Oh my Lord.

He might be too overwhelmed to say more, but his words suggest he is - as

Hamlet later simply calls him -   "a quiet man".
He becomes a part of Hamlet’s scheme to catch Claudius but says little
even then. He asks Hamlet about the death of Rozencrantz and Guidenstern
but does not ask why when Hamlet offers no real explanation. Horatio does
caution Hamlet against the duel with Laertes when Hamlet himself
confides to him that he feels unsafe, but Horatio accepts it when Hamlet
shrugs off his concern and changes the subject. 
When the two meet the gravediggers there are few words from Horatio,
and some actors are tempted to explain this by playing Horatio as
embarrassed by homersexual feelings for Hamlet.   Others portray Horatio
as a philosopher, seizing on Hamlet’s single use of the word to justify a
'distanced' character, lacking much emotional life. But, unlike Hamlet, and
very unlike Ophelia, Horatio is not “passion’s slave”. He is described by
Shakespeare as the man whom Hamlet would like to be. 
It is sad and hard for actors to play Horatio if they have never experienced
close friendship themselves. Horatio is everything Hamlet says he is: he
accepts whgat his friend says without argument, always. 
Hamlet is not exaggerating when he says:

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice,

And could of men distinguish her election,
Hath seal'd thee for herself, for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those
Whose blood and judgement are so well commedled ***???
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.

Hamlet has a friend. We only see them together when Hamlet is at his most
vulnerable and troubled, and Horatio might be a joyous, skittish person at
other times. Close friendship between heterosexual men is not as common
as it should be in modern times, perhaps, and we should realize that
Horatio’s arms are a wonderful cushion for Hamlet when he dies.
Detailed thoughts like these about one character in a play are only meant to
help an actor find his own view of a character, and  Horatio might have
private views he longs to express to Hamlet, but we never see them, nor
any hint of them, for if it were needed Shakespeare would have included
that. 
There is a difference between men who completely hide their thoughts and
those who have none to hide.

LETTERS AND RESUMÉS . 

A few people have asked for advice on how to write letters and resumés to
get auditions. The best advice in the whole of the USA regarding who to
write to, and when is better obtained from the great Brian O'Neill, whose
website www.ActingAsABusiness.com, for he has far, far more specific
knowledge about Agents and Casting Directors   than anyone else, and a
brilliant ability to match actors with the right directors and agents. But I
have a fewe ideas which may help land auditions. 
The way a resumé is written can help, as well as knowing how to write
good letters.
First the resumé. If it is written clearly it can look better impressive than
those of actors with more experience. 
And you should add or change things on your resumé to suit the job,
anything which shows experience in the kind of production for which you
are you are applying. Even if some of the roles you have to quote were
played at school -at least it shows extra interest in the audition.
And pof course a resume for theatre work should have everything you can
fit kin about your theratre experience, and ponly the basics of tv or film
work.
And if you have done enough there is no point in listing plays you have
done by Agatha Christie if you are auditioning for Shakespeare!
But the biggest help is to make your resume tidy, and by that I mean
"VERY tidy indeed" please!