VII. Do the following assignment:

What do you know about Oxford University? Name some famous Oxonians. What is the other oldest university in the UK? Members of what classes went to Oxford in O. Wilde’s time? What did an Oxford degree indicate about the social status of its holder? How did the university admission policy change in the twentieth century?

General Discussion.

I. Read the following texts and say what is so appealing about the play.

“The Importance of Being Earnest”. Why reading the play is a must!

…Oscar Wilde’s comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest was first performed in 1895, and since then it has become the most performed play in the English theatre. They say that every Englishman is (or wants to be) an actor, and amateur dramatics are certainly a popular pastime. Local groups from churches, schools and clubs perform plays in small halls all over the country, and this is their favourites play. On any Friday or Saturday night in the winter months it is being performed somewhere in the country. (from “Streamline English” by Peter Viney)

…According to George Sampson in the Concise Cambridge History of English Literature, The Importance of Being Earnest “is one of the two best comedies written since Sheridan.”…

…The Importance of Being Earnest is his (O. Wilde’s) exuberant parody of the ‘trivial comedies’ (his own among them) which the ‘serious people’ had established in the English theatre. It contains all the features of Wilde’s earlier plays – the shameful secret (Worthing’s origin in a handbag), the mistaken and assumed identities (Bunburying), and the sensational denouement in which Worthing turns out to be Lady Bracknell’s long-lost nephew. It even contains a sally against the dual morality which distinguishes male and female identity [ see the dialogue between Jack and the woman he momentarily takes for his mother, Miss Prism].

…The playwright with characteristic wit and a tendency towards epigrams satirizes the British nobility in the person of Lady Bracknell and the British clergy in the person of the Reverend Canon Chasuble. The play centers around the aspiration of a Wilde-like young aristocrat named Jack Worthing for the hand of the more obviously blue-blooded Gwendolen Fairfax. The marriage is opposed by the girl’s mother, the imperious Lady Bracknell, because of Worthing’s obscure origins: he was found as an infant in a handbag in London’s Victoria Railway Station (still the terminus for trains to the south of England), and consequently has no idea as to who his real parents are. Eventually the difficulty is resolved by the discovery that Jack is in fact Ernest Moncrieff, the older brother to his scape-grace friend Algernon and nephew to Lady Bracknell. (by Philip V. Allingham)

…The plot of this brilliant comedy is quite difficult to explain, but everything hinges on a pun in the title: earnest means serious, but it is pronounced exactly the same as “Ernest”, the name. The two main protagonists, for various reasons, wish to lead double lives: Jack wishes to marry Gwendolen, who has her heart set on marrying someone called Ernst; at the same time Jack has pretended to his niece Cecily that he has a rakish brother named Ernest (who does not exist) to justify his frequent trips to London. Algernon pretends to be Jack’s brother Ernest in order to court Cecily, who has fallen in love with the idea of his dissolute brother. When the four meet up great confusion entails.

However it is not for the admittedly elegant plot that the play delights, but for the cut and thrust of its dialogue, which lays bare the foibles and hypocrisy of the upper classes of Wilde’s day. (from “Focus on English and American Literature” by Kenneth Brodey and Fabio Malgaretti)