The Importance of Being Earnest - Week 3 (March 2017)

[Luella]

Hello everyone!

This week's reading is about, Act III

Feel free to post your thoughts here.

[Marta]

I have already read this, so I decided to listen on audio, which is perfect for a play. It is less than two hours.

It is so much fun, such a brilliant play on words; great satire, skewering contemporary society. Wilde draws on the mistaken-identity comedies of Shakespeare while suggesting the absurd humor of Monthy Python. I loved it. Laughed out loud (really!) multiple times.

My audio came with an interview with the director of the play. They were talking about Wilde commenting on more serious issues like gender, truth, and how society values dishonesty. Interesting viewpoint although I think I prefer just to enjoy it for the silliness.

[Glennis]

I really enjoyed the play.... Even though I predicted the outcome in my mind at the start of the 2nd act. It makes me wonder if some of the later playwrights borrowed the plot line....
Fun little read....
I read it on the Gutenberg Project.

[Michelle]

I really enjoyed this book. This light-hearted gem was exactly what I needed after a series of good but emotionally draining books.

[Teresa Ramseur]

I loved this one, it was a nice and light read that had me in stitches the whole time. I quite enjoyed the change of pace as well, a nice break from the more intense and heavy books I've been reading lately.

[Kimberly]

The ending made the whole book for me. :) I had an inkling while I was reading the third act, but I wasn't quite right. (view spoiler)[I thought they were going to be brother and sister. I'm still not sure about the whole cousins marrying thing, but it was certainly more common back then. (hide spoiler)] Wilde went all out with satirizing marriage customs. And switched up gender roles... The man staying home instead of the woman and other such things. I didn't have many LOL moments, but there still was a lot of humor. :)

[Daniel]

I also loved this interlude of silliness in the midst of usually heavier reading. Such a clever little play. I love Algernon's little quips about life, which always seemed to be contradictions (of themselves or of some social custom). Like, "Now produce your explanation, and pray make it improbable," or, "My dear boy, I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all." Of course all the other characters were silly in a similar way, but he seemed to pull it off better--as if instead of just being ridiculous, he really revelled in it.