The Importance Of Being Earnest Play Essay

The play, The Importance of Being Earnest, was written by Oscar Wilde in the late 1800’s. Wilde wrote the play as a means to satirize the Victorian model and social values. He points out the Victorian Period tendency to value an individual’s status and superficiality over there true personality and nature. In Act II, during Algernon and Cecily’s dialogue, Wilde creates humor by poking fun at their relationship. He achieves this by using ridiculous-diction, “double life” and irony.

One of Oscar Wilde’s most notable works, The Importance of Being Earnest, showcases Wilde’s bizarre and arguably backwards take on the literary device known as an aphorism. Most commonly, aphorisms are used in a didactic context and tend to reflect some form of ethical guideline or universal truth. It is easy to write off Wilde’s utilization of the device as ironic, as the aphorisms used in the play demonstrate values that are diametrically opposed to those we recognize in the real world; however, due to the aforementioned fact that aphorisms are typically meant to point out a universal truth, it can be argued that Wilde’s use of the device is quite proper in the sense that the specific universe created in the work just happens to be different

Throughout much of the play and especially the beginning, Wilde satirizes the setting in which both the characters as well as his audience live in. This satirization specifically requires that the audience be thoughtful whenever Wilde makes a joke, resulting in the thoughtful laughter which makes a true comedy. “The Importance of Being Earnest” is set during the late 20th century in Britain, a time period known as the Victorian Era, in which the British Empire was at its absolute peak. The dominance of Britain in world affairs resulted in a sense of

Oliver Parker’s (2002) film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ is sadly completely consumed by the romantic comedy style, masking Wilde’s key concerns and detracting from important comic elements of the play. This can be observed through the varying representations of characters, the film’s lack of contextual jokes, the more prominent sub-plot between Dr Chasuble and Miss Prism, the addition of music and the way in which dialogue, while remaining true to the play, has lost meaning in the film.

In Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest the setting is Victorian England, which is pertinent because of the social rules that play a role in the play, such as how a woman should behave. Oscar Wilde’s main goal while writing this play was to critique the upper class citizens in a comedic light. He achieved this through writing his characters as people who didn’t quite follow the rules, but could still keep up their appearances when need be. The character Cecily Cardew is an example of a character who can pass as a respectable noble when they try but that personality they show is in fact a fake. In truth, Cecily’s character is by no means innocent but she is charming and clever in ways she can hide that fact. Her character is not interested

Elinor Fuchs sees the play as a world that passes in front of the critic in ‘time and space’; one that has elements that must be understood (Fuchs, 2004, p 6). These elements closely resembles Aristotle’s six elements of a play- plot, character, thought, diction, music and spectacle- elements that are clearly identifiable in Oscar Wilde’s 1895 play ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’.

Oscar Wilde’s, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, published in 1899, is a further example of a detailed, complicated and meticulously structured social environment, in which every character

Viewing the play of The Importance of Being Earnest from a feminist perspective portrays the men in the Victorian Era to be misogynistic. A perpetuated stereotype in this play is that women should be protected from the truth. “Jack:[In a very patronizing manner] My dear fellow, the truth isn't quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman”(29)! The belief that women are fragile and unable to handle anything serious is present. Furthermore, when Algernon discovers that Cecily is convinced that they had met before and had had many romantic encounters, she is presented as mentally insane. This perpetuates the belief that women depend on men and could not be satisfied without one in their life. In addition to this, Gwendolen and Cecily are the ones being deceived by Jack and Algernon. This shows that women are stereotypically submissive to men and can be taken advantage of. Through evaluating The Importance

??? The plays Othello by William Shakespeare and The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde cause us to examine some of our human weaknesses. In Othello, we consider jealousy, hatred, manipulation, deceit, resentment, dishonesty, and the effects of rules imposed by others. In Earnest, we see dishonesty and hypocrisy presented in such a way as to make us laugh at ourselves.

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, premiered in London in 1895 when Wilde was in the peak of his career. During this time of the Victorian Era, society was very moral and chaste, at least on the surface. There was a very specific code of behavior that governed almost everything, but focused mainly on the topic of marriage. This affected Wilde first-hand as he was married to a woman but also involved with men which was forbidden at the time. Using the themes of dualism and marriage, Wilde is trying to show the audience the ridiculous nature of Victorian society. Through the reoccurring theme of dualism, Oscar Wilde uses sizable amounts of satire to not only mock the trivial Victorian society, but more specifically to ridicule

AThe Importance of Being Earnest a play written by Oscar Wilde is set in England in the late Victorian era. Wilde uses obvious situational and dramatic irony within the play to satirize his time period. According to Roger Sale in Being Ernest the title has a double meaning to it and is certainly another example of satire used by Wilde. With a comedic approach, Wilde ridicules the absurdities of the character’s courtship rituals, their false faces, and their secrets. (Sale, 478)

During the Victorian Age, The Victorian upper class society judged things through appearance and many laughed at those morals by turning them upside-down through a language, which is satirical, funny and witty. Oscar Wilde was an author during the time that displayed humor into his writing. In “ The Importance of Being Earnest”, Wilde created ridiculous situations and characters whose lack of understanding which cause them to react to things inappropriately. Different characters in the play embody those values and provide us insight into the upper-class society of the Victorian period. The play is centered on the idea of identity, love, marriage and money. Many of the characters’ statements, especially Algernon’s, are humorous because they

It is very humorous when one watches a play or movie or reads a book and knows more about what is happening than the characters do. This is no different in the play “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde. There are many instances when the audience has more information that the characters do, and this is partly what drives the plot of this book. When the reader or viewer is given more information than the characters are it changes the dynamics of a book or play. Dramatic irony creates interest in this play through adding humor, suspension, and insights.

Wordplay is used extensively in all of Oscar Wilde’s plays, and perhaps never more so than in The Importance of Being Earnest, where every scene is peppered with double entendres, puns and aphorisms. The world of the play is a high parody of Victorian society at the time – it both follows the rules and doesn’t; norms are undermined through wordplay, and language is endlessly adaptable through puns and paradoxes. Sos Eltis notes of the characters in this play that “nothing stands in the way of their self-creation, for reality itself is infinitely adaptable.” Eltis argues that the characters in this play are able, through language, to create their own realities as well as adapting to one another’s. Characters who seem to exemplify Victorian

The Importance of Being Earnest is a satirical play written in 1895 by renowned author Oscar Wilde. This play has been reviewed by many critics, two of which being John Drinkwater and Bernard Shaw. Drinkwater views Wilde’s plot as a masterpiece, in the sense that it has a way to captivate the audience using passion; however, Bernard Shaw has his own harsh views on the way the whole storyline is weak and needs a lot of improvement.