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Essays about the book the importance of being earnest
Humorous qualities of the importance of being earnest
Humorous qualities of the importance of being earnest
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Autumn Culpepper
February 16, 2014
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Play/Film Comparative Essay
Oliver Parker’s 2002 film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ is a light-hearted and humorous film that's centered around romantic ideals, but unfortunately it conceals Wilde’s messages and deviates from essential comic elements. This is displayed through many character representations, the lacking of contextual jokes, the sub-plot becomes prominent between Dr Chasuble and Miss Prism, the addition of music and the way the dialogue remains true to the play, but has lost meaning and essence in the film.
In the play, Wilde’s satiric characters is how he attains his great amount of humour, nevertheless, Parker presents them as being farce in the film. Throughout the Wilde’s play the thoughts and perspectives of society by Gwendolen, Jack, Cecily, Algernon and Lady Bracknell. Although theses characters do not realize it, their views do not give them any higher status or merit, and only accentuate their flaws. Algernon’s view that “it is awfully hard work doing nothing” followed by “however, I don’t mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind” is an illustration of how he doesn’t truly comprehend what “hard work” is, yet he strongly believes he fully grsps what hard work is, and the audience laughs at the satire of it. In Parker’s film, the satire is smothered by their farcical nature even though most of the lines has stayed true to the play. The daydreams of Cecily where Algernon is dressed as a knight, Gwendolen’s tattoo of the name ‘Ernest’ on her backside and Algernon and Jack’s duet of ‘Lady Come Down’ are the scenes ...
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Oliver Parker’s approach to Oscar Wilde’s play ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, was in a romantic but humorous way. Although this is true, Parker doesn’t accentuate Wilde’s vital concerns and deviates from comic elements of the play. Parker’s absurd representations of characters catches the eye of a larger audience compared to the satire, as well as many of the jokes opposed to the contextual ones. Parker’s extension of the sub-plot and inclusion of music established a stronger romantic comedy film. Although he was very honest and true to the dialogue of the play, he didn’t give the same essence and effect. Parker managed to establish an entertaining romantic comedy, but he definitely loses Wilde’s key messages and comic genius. Both texts grasp the attention of their audiences, however, Wilde’s manages to do so more brilliantly.
In Oscar Wilde’s play, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” is an early Victorian melodramatic play. This play is very honest and frank. It is a satire, comedy of errors, and an intellectual farce. There are two main characters, Algernon and Jack. Jack Worthing, is known by Jack when he is living at his own country estate, but when he goes into city, London; he creates a fictional character called ‘Earnest.’ Algernon has created a fictional character named ‘Bunbury.’ Algernon uses Bunbury to get him out of prior engagements. This helps him get out of the house and clear his head whenever he wants. Although their both the characters situations are different, both created an “alter-ego” to help them get away from their own lives and also to live another life. They are best friends; both have the same social background, class and taste. Between Jack and Algernon, Jack is more serious about his life; he creates a fictional character to help him keep his image of being humble and respectable intact but in truth is vain. On the other hand, Algernon is truthful about himself and he goes against the Victorian values. But society loves him anyway as he accepts that he is not formal or conservative, or proper and he is rough around the edges but he’s funny, witty and smart. Although Wilde creates two characters in Jack and Algernon who are similar in social class, age, tastes, etc., he also carefully creates subtle character differences between them that create conflict and humor in the play.
The Importance of Being Earnest, a trivial Comedy is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on February 14 1895, it is a comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious identities to escape demanding social obligations. Throughout the play,
...erpreted as dark and significant to the period. The comedy Wilde achieves is at the expense of the characters who are seemingly intelligent adding to the ironic structure that much of the comedy is based on. Many of the comic elements of the play are shown through human reactions to Victorian repression and the effect it has on the men and women of the time. Love seems to be nonexistent within the finds of the fierce and brutal Aristocracy when so many of the qualities they value are not based on human qualities but that of the class’s social norms. Wildes Characters are at often times not subtle about their distaste in marriage and love, Algernon is no exception to this “In aried lie, three is company, two is none” showing that they all have distorted views on many of the social practices that make them morally sound, thus adding to the satire elements of the play.
Oscar Wilde’s, “The Importance of Being Earnest”, play carefully uses satire as a didactic tool to mask the underlying social commentary with the help of comedy through characters theme and dialogue. Wilde uses satire to ridicule class and wealth, marriage and the ignorance of the Victorian Age. Audiences are continually amused by Wilde’s use of linguistic and comic devices such as double entendre, puns, paradox and epigrams, especially in the case of social commentary and didactic lessons. Characters portrayed in the play such as Jack, Cecily, Algernon and Lady Bracknell, allow Wilde to express his opinions on the social problems during the Victorian Age.
The Importance of Being Earnest is regarded as one of the most successful plays written by Oscar Wilde, a great 19th century playwright. Oscar Wilde deals with something unique about his contemporary age in this drama. It addresses Victorian social issues, French theatre, farce, social drama and melodrama. All these factors influenced the structure of the play in a large scale. This play is basically a Victorian satirical drama showcasing the social, political, economic and religious structural changes that affected 18th century England. It was the time when British Empire had captured most part of the world including Oscar Wilde’s homeland, Ireland. The aristocrats of England had become dominant over the middle and poor class people and Wilde wrote plays with the motivation to encourage people to think against the English aristocracy and artificiality.
“Ignorance is like a delicate fruit; touch it, and the bloom is gone,” engraves Oscar Wilde as he sets the literary table with a bountiful demonstration of Victorian satire. “The Importance of Being Earnest” is evidently a comic critic of late Victorian value (Schmidt 5). Brought into this world from Dublin, Ireland, to well-heeled parents in 1854. Wilde received an opportunity for social improvement when graduating from Oxford University, after receiving a financial scholarship that gave him a first hand account of the upper crust society lifestyle which allowed him to acquire material to poke fun at (Moss 179). Wilde shows his characters as if they knew that people where watching them. By doing that he caused the audience to feel that the actors had authentic regret about their characters actions (Foster 19).
The Importance of Being Earnest Written, written in 1854, by Oscar Wilde, discusses many social matters occurring in the 19th century. Since The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy, it “awakens thoughtful laughter” (George Meredith). This comedic play often awakens thoughtful laughter, or laughter that makes someone ponder more about important issues. One of many of the primary instances of this is created by the ideas of marriage and love is a social device during this era. The characters didn’t fall in love because there was a romantic spark or that they felt a love connection with one another, they fell in love because the people they loved had a specific name, history, physical characteristics or economic status.
In Oscar Wilde’s drama The Importance of Being Earnest, he uses light-hearted tones and humor to poke fun at British high society while handling the serious theme of truth and the true identity of who is really “Earnest.” Truth as theme is most significantly portrayed through the women characters, Gwendolen and Cecily but to present serious themes comically, Wilde portrays women to be the weaker sex of society, despite the seriousness of the subject—the identity of the men they want to marry.
Satire in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. "The Importance of Being Earnest" is a play by Oscar Wilde, set in the late 1800's. His actors are playing upper class citizens who are very self-absorbed. The play is set amongst upper class, wealthy people. They appear not to work and are concerned with their own pleasure.
Throughout The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde plays around with the standard expectations along with the absence of compassion of a Victorian society in the 1890’s, he demonstrates this through several genres of comedy such as Melodrama, Comedy of Manners, Farce, dark humour and Irony, as well as portraying the themes, death and illness, in this play in a brilliance of unusual amount of references.
The Importance of Being Earnest appears to be a conventional 19th century farce. False identities, prohibited engagements, domineering mothers, lost children are typical of almost every farce. However, this is only on the surface in Wilde's play. His parody works at two levels- on the one hand he ridicules the manners of the high society and on the other he satirises the human condition in general. The characters in The Importance of Being Earnest assume false identities in order to achieve their goals but do not interfere with the others' lives. The double life led by Algernon, Jack, and Cecily (through her diary) is simply another means by which they liberate themselves from the repressive norms of society. They have the freedom to create themselves and use their double identities to give themselves the opportunity to show opposite sides of their characters. They mock every custom of the society and challenge its values. This creates not only the comic effect of the play but also makes the audience think of the serious things of life.
In the play, Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde ridicules and identifies the negative aspects of Victorian society through comedic dialogue. He uses characters with ridiculous personalities to demonstrate his idea of Victorian life. By making absurd scenes with foolish characters, it is his way of mocking the Victorian lifestyle passive aggressively.
The Importance of Being Earnest is a play written by Oscar Wilde during the Victorian era. It is a farcical comedy in which the main characters live and maintain a fictional persona to escape their responsibilities. To which Oscar Wilde uses secondary characters within the play such as Lady Bracknell to humorously make her the tool of the conflict and much of the satire. She is the first and foremost a symbol of Victorian earnests and the unhappiness it brings as a result. Lady Bracknell was specially designed to represent Wilde’s opinion of the upper Victorian class repressiveness and traditional negativity. Hence minor characters such as Lady Bracknell play essential roles as they help both the plot and support the themes with assistance
To emphasize era, emotion and locality, Parker uses a variety of visual and auditory devices. With the combination of all these aspects, he made Wilde’s play come alive. He made it more appealing to the contemporary audience. In today’s day and age, the fashion of watching theatrical plays is dying out. However, Parker took this to his advantage and created a movie in order to allow the current generation to sit back and enjoy a film with effects, transitions, modern lighting and no scene changes whilst still enjoying an English literature classic.
One facet Wilde wants to portray is language. He believes the characters converse in a stylized form of wit (Mackie 146). An example can be found on page 29 when Algernon asks Jack what he wants to do. Jack replies with “Nothing!” and Algernon says “It is awfully hard word doing nothing.