Summary The curtain rises on Algernons upper-crust apartment in London's prestigious West End. We hear Algernon playing the piano in another room while Lane showed first 75 words of 2075 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2075 total…she is in no way sympathetic to Algernon or his friend. While her attitude may be based on a suspicion that Bunbury is fictional, the audience gets the sense that almost nothing is sacred to these characters. Indeed, as Wilde wrote of The Importance of Being Earnest, "It has as its philosophy...that we should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality."