: As an actor explain how you would portray the relationship between Algernon and Jack.

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Jacob Meagher Year 11

Q: As an actor explain how you would portray the relationship between Algernon and Jack. Make close references to two contrasting scenes to support your answer.

The Importance of Being Earnest By Oscar Wild was first performed on the 14th of February 1895, St Valentine’s Day. It is a play about love and romance in the upper classes, it is set in the present (1890’s). It is drawing room comedy, otherwise known as comedy of manors. Oscar Wild is one of the world’s literary greats, he wrote this play shortly before he was imprisoned for gorse indecencies. This play is divided into 3 acts; I will be discussing and contrasting scenes one and two from the first act. It is a play about two idle young men, Algernon and Earnest (otherwise known as Jack), who in attempt to marry two very attractive young ladies pretend that there names are Earnest. In the first act the key relationships between Algernon and Jack are as friends who have not seen each other for a period off about a week. It is in the first scene that Algernon discovers that his friends name “isn’t earnest, it’s Jack”. In the second scene Earnest proposes to Gwendolyn but gets refused by her mother and Algernon decides to go visit Jack in the country. I believe that too correctly portray the relationships between the two characters I need to show differences between; mood, tone, dress and personality.

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The first act, scene 1, opens with Algernon talking to his manservant in a very incoherent manor; I would portray Algernon as a man who is not very interested in anything but himself. Algernon is constantly talking in the first person always with emphasis on the word “I” this referring to himself, this gives the audience helpful insight into what really matters in life, him! Jack enters dressed in a smart but not ostentations attire, Algernon in contrast is dressed in an ostentatious suit with large cuffs and is eating. The men talk idly; Algernon is a dandy, he see ...

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