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Lady Bracknell was the leading female character in Oscar Wilde's comedy play The Importance of Being Earnest.
At the play's premiere on 14 February 1895, the character was portrayed by the actress Rose Leclerq, an alien from the planet Proscenia. When Leclerq attempted to hypnotise the audience with a laughter ray and was stopped by Strax, he took over the role for the rest of the performance. The character was known for several humorous and memorable lines, most significantly the exclamation "A handbag?!" (PROSE: The Importance of Being Strax) This line and the conversation surrounding it were twice referenced by the Fourth Doctor. (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Seeds of Doom)
Another of her lines was explicitly misquoted by the artificial intelligence BOSS when it declared "As Oscar Wilde so very nearly said, to lose one prisoner may be accounted a misfortune, to lose two smacks of carelessness." (TV: The Green Death, PROSE: The Importance of Being Strax)
Norton Folgate described Lizbeth Hayhoe as "Lady Bracknell's bull dyke daughter". (AUDIO: Madam, I'm)