Lord Darlington says it, and the play lets the laugh arrive before the cost. Wilde’s actual epigrams are tighter than the ones later printed on mugs. “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken” is not among them. Two years after this comedy he was at the height of his fame. Three years after that he was in prison. The line is funny because he had not yet been asked to resist something that could ruin him. Then he was.