The Importance of Being Earnest
Number of lessons: 5; compatible text for study guide: Dover Publications ISBN 0486264785 (you may order the text below). Guide prepared by Robert W. Watson.
$0.00
Order text here
OSCAR WILDE’S actual name at birth was Oscar Fingall O’Flahertie Wills Wilde—a mouthful by any standard. Wilde wrote several poems, the most famous being “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” many plays, but only one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The Importance of Being Earnest has received mixed reviews. George Bernard Shaw stated that the play “amused me, of course; but unless comedy touches me as well as amuses me, it leaves me with a sense of having wasted my evening.”
However, the play is arguably not a comedy, but a farce. If this is so, then a farce is not supposed to “touch” us. The whole idea of the farce is supposed to be absurd in that the silliness in the play must seem to impact the characters in a serious way. In fact, life is viewed as very trivial. When asked what philosophy the play espoused, Wilde expressed, “we should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.”
The central male characters are bent upon flouting social mores, but the best that we can say about Jack and Algernon is that the one is guilty of laziness and other of gluttony. Yet lying seems to be the primary structure of the play. Jack creates a fictional brother who is an outcast so that he can go to the city from time to time. As for Algernon, he has an imaginative fellow who is called Bunbury, a poor invalid. In addition to these lies, Jack masquerades as Ernest in Act I and Algernon becomes Ernest in Act II. But because of these lies, Jack discovers his true self.
In spite of the façade of wanting to revel in pleasure and wickedness, both men truly desire to find wives. The absurdity is increased when we learn that both Gwendolen and Cecily have rather imaginative diaries. Both of these women want husbands, but under the condition that the man they will marry must have the name of Ernest. Gwendolen believes that the name Ernest represents stability and security, while Cecily associates the name with Jack’s misfit “brother.” The Importance of Being Earnest is unique not only as making fun of society, but arguably of drama during Wilde’s lifetime as well.
OSCAR WILDE’S actual name at birth was Oscar Fingall O’Flahertie Wills Wilde—a mouthful by any standard. Wilde wrote several poems, the most famous being “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” many plays, but only one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The Importance of Being Earnest has received mixed reviews. George Bernard Shaw stated that the play “amused me, of course; but unless comedy touches me as well as amuses me, it leaves me with a sense of having wasted my evening.”
However, the play is arguably not a comedy, but a farce. If this is so, then a farce is not supposed to “touch” us. The whole idea of the farce is supposed to be absurd in that the silliness in the play must seem to impact the characters in a serious way. In fact, life is viewed as very trivial. When asked what philosophy the play espoused, Wilde expressed, “we should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.”
The central male characters are bent upon flouting social mores, but the best that we can say about Jack and Algernon is that the one is guilty of laziness and other of gluttony. Yet lying seems to be the primary structure of the play. Jack creates a fictional brother who is an outcast so that he can go to the city from time to time. As for Algernon, he has an imaginative fellow who is called Bunbury, a poor invalid. In addition to these lies, Jack masquerades as Ernest in Act I and Algernon becomes Ernest in Act II. But because of these lies, Jack discovers his true self.
In spite of the façade of wanting to revel in pleasure and wickedness, both men truly desire to find wives. The absurdity is increased when we learn that both Gwendolen and Cecily have rather imaginative diaries. Both of these women want husbands, but under the condition that the man they will marry must have the name of Ernest. Gwendolen believes that the name Ernest represents stability and security, while Cecily associates the name with Jack’s misfit “brother.” The Importance of Being Earnest is unique not only as making fun of society, but arguably of drama during Wilde’s lifetime as well.