BY WHAT MEANS AND WITH WHAT SUCCESS DOES OSCAR WILDE MAKE ''THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST'' SUCH A MEMORABLE PLAY?

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Mikey Holder                18/12/2007

English Literature Coursework                

BY WHAT MEANS AND WITH WHAT SUCCESS DOES OSCAR WILDE MAKE ‘‘THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST’’ SUCH A MEMORABLE PLAY?

Oscar Wilde's play makes fun of the English upper classes with satire and humour. The play focuses on two young men in love with women both determined to marry someone named Earnest. It tells the tale of Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, two young men who have taken to bending the truth and in my opinion, only to add a dash of excitement to their lives. Jack has invented an imaginary brother, Ernest, whom he uses as an excuse to escape from his dull home in the country and frolic in the town. Algernon uses a similar technique, only to escape his town life and retreat to the country. However, their dishonesty eventually crosses each other, and causes a lot of problems with their romantic lives.

Oscar Wilde makes this play, ‘The Importance Of Being Earnest’, such a memorable play, by including a large amount of humour in the play. Humour always plays an important part in a production as this one is, because if an audience laughs during the course of a play, it causes each and every member of the audience to feel uplifted and to feel a sense of happiness.

Humour is brought into the play in several different ways. A main element of humour is portrayed through certain characters. The characters’ eccentricity seems so out of the ordinary, and is stepping out of line so much, that it can even be classified as totally abnormal behaviour, which as a result makes the play so much more memorable. It is quite evident that a classic example of abnormal and eccentric behaviour is Lady Bracknell. Her views are so ‘over-the-top,’ that it becomes significantly funny, and as a result causes the audience to laugh. We can see this when she is carrying out her strange interrogation process on Jack, when he has proposed to Gwendolen. She is such a notoriously humorous character and she is so amusing because she is so opinionated. She expresses her views about Jack as if everyone else is wrong, and she is correct. She begins by saying ‘ you are not on my list of eligible young men.’ She also comments that his house is on the ‘unfashionable side’ of the road. These quotes surely show how opinionated Lady Bracknell is.

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Algernon is another one of these ‘crazy’ characters and his eccentricity also brings out humour in the play. Algernon leads such an irresponsible life that it brings out humour. Algernon, who we see is the play’s secondary hero, seems to be a completely idle bachelor. Algernon is brilliant, witty, selfish, and is constantly making delightful paradoxical statements that either make no sense at all or touch on something thoughtful. We can see this from his words ‘relations are simply a tedious pack of people who

haven’t got the remotest of knowledge of how to live.’ Not only ...

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