Hey Everyone,
I have an assignment on Importance of Being Earnest, and I just wondered, if you could help.
If you have read the play, or seen it performed, what, in your opinion provides the humor? What makes it funny? And, is it a play that, to find it comical, it has to be performed on stage? Is it all in the delivery of the lines?
Thanks! x
It's fine, honestly! :-)
Thank you! I've been slaving over that tiny piece for hours!
301 words done, 1,200 left to go! Ha.
Thanks, Yes it does help! I think I've got my idea for the next paragraph now, so Thanks again for the help. x
Reading my comment back it seems far blunter than I intended! Sorry! I think that what you've done is really insightful - and I totally agree, satire and irony are probably the most important techniques Oscar Wilde used to make it so funny. He succeeds in making the audience feel superior to the (rather silly) characters, whilst, just as you've said, using them to channel his views regarding marriage. It makes his contemporary audiences rather hypocritical almost, as they would have been laughing at their social norms (such as Lady Bracknell's desire to see her daughter well married)! Hope to have helped a little :)
Thank you. :)
Alice, I certainly do have my own opinions on the play, however, I was just curious about what everyone else thought! :)
Mehdi, Thanks, I haven't seen the film but I have watched the play on stage!
This is what I have so far:
‘Importance of Being Earnest’ is undeniably, a play intended for stage. Its farcical humour requires vocalisation. Wilde’s words need to be uttered aloud to generate his satirical wit. ‘It insists on being acted straight, for if we should feel, even for a moment, that the characters are aware of what absurdities they are saying, the whole thing vanishes’1 writes Otto Reinert. The success of the play depends partly upon the delivery of the lines. Reinert argues that it is essential for the characters to mean what they say. For us to find it comic, they must be oblivious to their preposterous comments. It is imperative for the characters to sincerely believe their revelations to be true.
The performers act as a channel for Wilde’s satirical views of Victorian England and marriage in particular. Similar to ‘An Ideal Husband’ in which Wilde mocks Lady Chiltern’s efforts to fashion herself a textbook marriage centred on social status. ‘Importance of Being Earnest’, also establishes Wilde’s views on the institution of marriage. ‘Is marriage so demoralising as that?’ Algernon replies, when Lane states his observation that ‘in married households the champagne is rarely of first-rate brand.’ Throughout the play Wilde consistently ridicules society’s idea of marriage through humour, describing it as ‘demoralising’. Marriage in the 1890’s was a social obligation, a business venture. To describe marriage as ‘demoralising’ is to suggest that it destroys a person’s hope and spirit.