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The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
Archived Group Reads 2021
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Week 5: The Importance of Being Earnest - Act I
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My initial impression is that this play starts better than a Woman of No Importance, which introduced too many characters in the beginning and then pared them down in the later scenes to just the core characters.. This one starts with only the butler Lane, with Algernon and Jack/Ernest going back and forth wittily explaining the plot themes like a quick paced tennis match. Only after we get a feel for these characters do we get introduced to Gwendolyn and Lady Bracknell and I anticipate other characters in the next act. I found "Ernest's" method preferable as I feel much more into the play at this stage than with "Woman," where i felt a little unsure of my handle on things after the first act.
This is the Oscar Wilde play I am most familiar with, having seen it both on stage and screen. Each time I have seen it I have laughed a lot without focusing too deeply on the meaning behind the dialogue. This chance to read the play has given me the opportunity to scrutinise the words they use a little more closely. Both Algernon and Earnest/Jack don’t hesitate to deceive even their closest relatives and friends and they also seem wary of each other’s deceptions. Honesty is not a quality to attribute to either of them. The whole of the first act seemed frivolous to say the least, including Earnest’s proposal and Gwendolyn’s fixation about his (bogus) name. This tone provided plenty of opportunities for witty retorts from all the cast, including the manservant.
One theme focused on the unsuitability of Earnest/Jack for marriage, due to the mystery of his parentage. This led to a series of funny quips from Lady Bracknell, my favourites are shown below.
Lady Bracknell Now to minor matters. Are your parents living?
Jack I have lost both my parents.
Lady Bracknell To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
……..
Lady Bracknell To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.
Did anyone else notice that one of Algernon’s lines also appeared in ‘A Woman of No Importance?’
…..
Algernon All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
I love the complications that already build up in the first act and intrigue us about the further development! Also some witty remarks, but not too many to destroy the story.I like this sentence of Gwendolen´s:
The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.
Mod
…..
Algernon All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his...."
I did notice that! I guess he just couldn't pass up an opportunity to use it again when it fit so perfectly. I can't really blame him--it's a great line!
Mod
Could he have been comparing his life to theirs when he wrote those plays? They were born of the same father, yet had such very different lives and opportunities. What are your thoughts?
Cindy wrote: "What do you think about how all of the plays we have read so far are about unknown/uncertain parentage? Obviously, the English class system revolves around this issue, but to have it front and cent..."It is possible that Wilde was acutely aware of his older siblings origins, particularly Henry Wilson, who worked with his father in his medical profession.
One critic described the symbolism of Jack being found in a bag in a cloakroom at Victoria station like this…..
’The coatroom at Victoria Station is a symbol for Jack’s lack of family “relations” and unknown origins. The Brighton Line is Wilde’s play on the notion of a family bloodline. Instead of having a lineage to his name, Jack has a place of origin and a train line to his credit, underlining the obscurity of his roots as well as the ridiculous value characters like Lady Bracknell place on family "lines".’
Mod
I found this dialogue to be particularly powerful. It shows how people, even though wealthy, who couldn't produce a decent lineage suffer from social condescending.
Mod
Yet those same snobs were quick to recover from their snobbishness when they found themselves in financial hot water and needed a wealthy Cit's daughter to shore up their family fortunes! Quite a few wealthy middle-class businessmen "bought" titles for their daughters in exchange for injecting a fortune into an aristocratic family's coffers. Look at how quickly Lady Bracknell's opinion of Cecily changed when her fortune was revealed!
Mod
Yet thos..."
Exactly. "Lady Bracknell: A Hundred and thirty thousand pounds! And in the Funds! Miss Cardew seems to me a most attractive you lady, now that I look at her." :)
One interesting thing I learned about this play is that it started off as a four-act play, but upon the encouragement of a friend, Wilde revised it down to a three-act play. The cuts that he made to accomplish this are considered significant by critics in the effects they have, not only on the play's structure but its messages and social impact, as well. I am reading the Norton Critical Edition of this play, which includes critical essays, and I tried and failed to find a copy of this essay that doesn't require a subscription. The author, Eva Thienpont, posits that "the final rewriting of The Importance of Being Earnest" effected a more poignant social subversion caused by a move towards absurdity, a fortification of the position of the play's women, and a heightened identification with Victorian stereotypes" (107). She goes on to explain how Wilde's changes strengthen the characters and radically "refuse the Victorian norms which he had originally supported," (110). She goes on to claim the three-act play is superior to the four-act version and that "cautiously wrapped up in sublime humour and absurdity as it is in its final version, it is the most radically subversive of Wilde's plays," (115). I thought this was fascinating, and I might use this little story on my students, most of whom consider revising their own work unnecessary!
The play begins, as his others do, in the drawing-room of a fashionable home. We are introduced to a languid young gentleman, Algernon Moncrieff, and his dry-witted and long-suffering butler, Lane. Jack Worthing (aka Ernest) comes calling. We learn that Jack is in love with Algernon's cousin, Gwendolyn, and intends to propose, a move that Algernon considers to be the death of romance. The formidable Lady Bracknell, Algernon's Aunt Augusta, is Gwendolyn's protective mother.
Both gentlemen are leading a double life that allows them to indulge in excess while maintaining the appearance of propriety. We also learn a new word: Bunburying! :) Jack has an imaginary younger brother, Ernest, and Algernon has a perpetually ailing friend, the aforementioned Bunbury. During this revealing conversation, Algernon also learns that his friend has had a lovely young ward tucked away in the country all this time, and nary a word of it to his dear friend!
Jack proposes to Gwendolyn, a strong-minded young lady, and is accepted by her. Lady Bracknell, however, is horrified to discover that Jack's parentage is unknown and that he had the bad taste to allow himself to be abandoned in a handbag in a train station! She firmly rejects his suit and sweeps Gwendolyn away, but not before the lovers exchange vows of undying love and Jack's country address, which Algernon discreetly records. Gee, I wonder what he's going to do with that information? ;)
Wilde dives into the humor immediately in this play, with the droll interaction between Algernon and Lane. I especially loved the lines about the recently widowed Lady Harbury! First Lady Bracknell remarks, "I never saw a woman so altered; she looks quite twenty years younger." And Algernon's response is priceless: "I hear her hair has turned quite gold from grief."
What are your thoughts so far? What truths lurk beneath the witty dialogue about relationships and society? What other lines did you find noteworthy?
Maggie Smith played Lady Bracknell in a West End theater production of this play, but I could find no trace of it recorded anywhere. I would have LOVED to see her in that role!