The Importance of Being Earnest

Transcription

1 Cincinnati Shakespeare Company presents Oscar Wilde s The Importance of Being Earnest Directed by Brian Isaac Phillips Audience Study Guide

2 About the Director Brian Isaac Phillips, a veteran classical actor who interned at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati and then spent four years as an actor in Cincinnati Shakespeare s company, has been the theater s artistic director for a decade. He directs actors to hew close to the text of any show he stages. I tell them to follow the punctuation, to pause at every comma and do a full stop when it s called for. That s the way to find the humor in a show like Earnest. It s not just the situations that are funny it s the language that Wilde uses to set them up. Phillips played a drag role in the 2001 production of Earnest. As a member of CSC s acting company, he portrayed Miss Prism, a befuddled nursemaid in Lady Bracknell s employ. He confesses that he didn t really know what he was doing in that role (cross-dressing is not a tradition with Miss Prism), but he had fun with it. Now that he s a director, he has his own clear ideas of how Wilde s comedy works best. About the Playwright: Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde's rich and dramatic portrayals of the human condition came during the height of the prosperity that swept through London in the Victorian Era of the late 19th century. At a time when all citizens of Britain were finally able to embrace literature the wealthy and educated could only once afford, Wilde wrote many short stories, plays and poems that continue to inspire millions around the world. Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams and plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment which was followed by his early death. Wilde's parents were successful Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at

3 Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde had become one of the most well-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a license. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London. Act I About the Play: : Plot Synopsis Set in The Present (1895) in London, the play opens with Algernon Moncrieff, an idle young gentleman, receiving his best friend, John Worthing, whom he knows as Ernest. Ernest has come from the country to propose to Algernon s cousin, Gwendolen Fairfax. Algernon, however, refuses his consent until Ernest explains why his cigarette case bears the inscription, From little Cecily, with her fondest love to her dear Uncle Jack. John- Ernest is forced to admit to living a double life. In the country, he assumes a serious attitude for the benefit of his young ward, the heiress Cecily Cardew, and goes by the name of John (or Jack), while pretending that he must worry about a wastrel younger brother named Ernest in London. In the city, meanwhile, he assumes the identity of the libertine Ernest. Algernon confesses a similar deception: he pretends to have an invalid friend named Bunbury in the country, whom he can visit whenever he wishes to avoid an unwelcome social obligation. Jack refuses to tell Algernon the location of his country estate. Gwendolen and her formidable mother Lady Bracknell now call on Algernon. As he distracts Lady Bracknell in another room, Jack proposes to Gwendolen. She accepts, but seems to love him very largely for his professed name of Ernest. Jack accordingly resolves to himself to be rechristened Ernest. Discovering them in this intimate exchange, Lady Bracknell interviews Jack as a prospective suitor. Horrified to learn that he was adopted after being discovered as a baby in a handbag at Victoria Station, she refuses him and forbids further contact with her daughter. Gwendolen, though, manages covertly to swear to him her undying love. As Jack gives her his address in the country, Algernon

4 surreptitiously notes it on the cuff of his sleeve: Jack s revelation of his pretty and wealthy young ward has motivated his friend to meet her. Act II Act II moves to Jack s country house, the Manor House in Hertfordshire, where Cecily is found studying with her governess, Miss Prism. Algernon arrives, pretending to be Ernest Worthing, and soon charms Cecily. Long fascinated by Uncle Jack s hitherto absent black sheep brother, she is predisposed to fall for Algernon in his role of Ernest whose name she s particularly fond of. Therefore Algernon, too, plans for the rector, Dr. Chasuble, to rechristen him Ernest. Jack, meanwhile, has decided to abandon his double life. He arrives in full mourning and announces his brother s death in Paris of a severe chill, a story undermined by Algernon s presence in the guise of Ernest. Gwendolen now enters, having run away from home. During the temporary absence of the two men, she meets Cecily, each woman indignantly declaring that she is the one engaged to Ernest. When Jack and Algernon reappear, their deceptions are exposed. Act III Act III moves into the drawing room. Arriving in pursuit of her daughter, Lady Bracknell is astonished to be told that Algernon and Cecily are engaged. The size of Cecily s trust fund soon dispels her initial doubts over the young lady s suitability, but any engagement is forbidden by her guardian Jack: he will consent only if Lady Bracknell agrees to his own union with Gwendolen something she declines to do. The impasse is broken by the return of Miss Prism, whom Lady Bracknell recognizes as the person who, twenty-eight years earlier, as a family nursemaid, had taken a baby boy for a walk in a perambulator (baby carriage) and never returned. Challenged, Miss Prism explains that she had abstractedly put the manuscript of a novel she was writing in the perambulator, and the baby in a handbag, which she had left at Victoria Station. Jack produces the very same handbag, showing that he is the lost baby, the elder son of Lady Bracknell s late sister, and thus indeed Algernon s elder brother. Having acquired such respectable relations, he is acceptable as a suitor for Gwendolen after all. Gwendolen, though, still insists that she can only love a man named Ernest. What is her fiancé s real first name? Lady Bracknell informs Jack that, as the first-born, he would have been named after his father, General Moncrieff. Jack examines the army lists and discovers

5 that his father s name and hence his own real name was in fact Ernest. As the happy couples embrace Jack and Gwendolen, Algernon and Cecily, and even Dr. Chasuble and Miss Prism Lady Bracknell complains to her newfound relative: My nephew, you seem to be displaying signs of triviality. On the contrary, Aunt Augusta, he replies, I ve now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of being Earnest. Critical Response and History First performed on 14 February 1895 at St. James's Theatre in London, The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People had a successful opening night marking the climax of Wilde's career but also heralding his downfall. The Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde's intimate friend Lord Alfred Douglas (who was on holiday in Algiers at the time), had planned to disrupt the play by throwing a bouquet of rotten vegetables at the playwright when he took his bow at the end of the show. Wilde learned of the plan, and cancelled Queensberry's ticket and arranged for policemen to bar his entrance. Nevertheless, he continued harassing Wilde, who eventually launched a private prosecution against the peer for criminal libel, triggering a series of trials ending in Wilde's imprisonment. Wilde's ensuing notoriety caused the play, despite its success, to be closed after only 86 performances. After his release, he published the play from exile in Paris, but he wrote no further comic or dramatic work. The Importance of Being Earnest has been revived many times since its premiere. It has been adapted for the cinema on three occasions. In The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), Dame Edith Evans reprised her celebrated interpretation of Lady Bracknell; The Importance of Being Earnest (1992) by Kurt Baker used an all-black cast; and Oliver Parker's The Importance of Being Earnest (2002) incorporated some material cut during the preparation of the original stage production. Lady Bracknell's line, "A handbag?", has been called one of the most malleable in English drama, lending itself to interpretations ranging from incredulous or scandalized to baffled. Dame Edith Evans, both on stage and in the 1952 film, delivered the line loudly in a mixture of horror, incredulity and condescension. Stockard Channing, in the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin in 2010, hushed the line, in a critic's words, with a barely audible 'A handbag?', rapidly swallowed up with a sharp intake of breath. An understated take, to be sure, but with such a well-known play, packed full of witticisms and aphorisms with a life of their own, it's the little things that make a difference.

6 Themes Triviality Wilde told Robert Ross (art expert, literary critic and Wilde s lover) that the play's theme was "That we should treat all trivial things in life very seriously, and all serious things of life with a sincere and studied triviality. The theme is hinted at in the play's ironic title, and "earnestness" is repeatedly alluded to in the dialogue, Algernon says in Act II, "one has to be serious about something if one is to have any amusement in life" but goes on to reproach Jack for 'being serious about everything' While much theatre of the time tackled serious social and a political issue, Earnest is superficially about nothing at all. As a satire of society The play repeatedly mocks Victorian traditions and social customs, marriage and the pursuit of love in particular. In Victorian times earnestness was considered to be the overriding societal value, originating in religious attempts to reform the lower classes, it spread to the upper ones too throughout the century. The play's very title, with its mocking paradox (serious people are so because they do not see trivial comedies), introduces the theme, it continues in the drawing room discussion, "Yes, but you must be serious about it. I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them" says Algernon in Act 1; allusions are quick and from multiple angles. Wilde embodied society's rules and rituals artfully into Lady Bracknell: minute attention to the details of her style created a comic effect of assertion by restraint. In contrast to her encyclopedic knowledge of the social distinctions of London's street names, Jack's obscure parentage is subtly evoked. He defends himself against her "A handbag?" with the clarification, "The Brighton Line". At the time, Victoria Station consisted of two separate but adjacent terminal stations sharing the same name. To the east was the ramshackle LC&D Railway, on the west the up-market LB&SCR the Brighton Line, which went to Worthing, the fashionable, expensive town the gentleman who found baby Jack was travelling to at the time (and after which Jack was named. Wilde managed both to engage with and to mock the genre. The men follow traditional matrimonial rites, but the foibles they excuse are ridiculous, and the farce is built on an absurd confusion of a book and a baby. In turn, both Gwendolen and Cecily have the ideal of marrying a man named Ernest, a popular and respected name at the time, and they indignantly declare that they have been deceived when they find out the men's real

7 names. When Jack apologises to Gwendolen during his marriage proposal it is for not being wicked: JACK: Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me? GWENDOLEN: I can. For I feel that you are sure to change. Ten Common misconceptions about Oscar Wilde (UK Guardian, 2003) 1. 'Oscar' is the best-known 'Wilde' True, but unfairly so. His father, Sir William, was a remarkable Dublin doctor whose medical work on the 1851 and 1861 censuses earned him his knighthood, and is still referred to today as essential source material for 19th century Irish history. Sir William also published important contributions to the study of Celtic antiquities and Irish folklore. Oscar's mother, Jane, was a prominent Irish Nationalist and poet who was nearly imprisoned for her inflammatory anti-english writing in As Oscar would write from prison in 1897: "She and my father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honored not merely in literature, art, archaeology and science, but in the public history of my own country in its evolution as a nation." 2. He coasted through university, with a reputation for languorousness and a love of lilies Oscar was certainly influenced by the aesthetic theories of John Ruskin and Walter Pater while at Oxford, and he adopted the pose of an effete young man, but he went up as a scholar to Magdalen and came down with a double first in classics and the Newdigate prize for poetry. This took considerable application as his contemporaries later testified and his surviving Oxford notebooks demonstrate. 3. Apart from writing a couple of plays, a few children's stories, The Ballad of Reading Gaol and The Picture of Dorian Gray he doesn't seem to have done much Oscar's 'serious' side is often overlooked. He spent a year in the US in 1882 lecturing about the decorative arts; he edited a high-profile woman's magazine for two years; he wrote thought-provoking and controversial critical essays as well as many art exhibition, theatre and book reviews. He also applied twice, unsuccessfully, to become an Inspector of Schools; his effect on English education could have been startling.

8 4. Being Irish was just an accident of birth; he was an English author, surely? In the sense that The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere s Fan are archetypically 'English' plays - perhaps; but there is a profound Irishness underlying much of what Oscar wrote and thought, especially in his correspondence. He may have remarked that the first thing he forgot at Oxford was his Irish accent, but when his play Salomé was banned he openly accused the English of being narrow-minded saying, "I am not English; I'm Irish which is quite another thing." 5. Oscar Wilde's arrest was delayed by several hours to allow him to catch the last boat-train and escape to the continent When Oscar's libel action against Queensberry collapsed, Queensberry's lawyers sent all their papers to the director of public prosecutions, who consulted the solicitor-general and the home secretary and then immediately applied to the magistrates for a warrant. Oscar was arrested at 6.20pm, though there were still four more trains to Paris that night. He was then twice prosecuted by the crown. The jury failed to agree on the first occasion, and the crown, though not obliged to do so, tried him again - hardly the action of a government anxious to see him escape.

9 Lady Bracknell: A History of Drag The role was first played by a man in the mid- 1970s at Canada s Stratford Shakespeare Festival with William Hutt playing the old battle-axe. More recently, for the same esteemed company, the actor Brian Bedford did the same, a production that transferred to New York City for a run on Broadway that landed Bedford a Tony Award nomination. A similar twist was incorporated into a 1980 Australian production at the Bondi Pavilion Theatre in Sydney, where Lady Bracknell was played by female impersonator Tracey Lee. In 2005 the Abbey Theatre produced the play with an all male cast; it also featured Wilde as a character the play opens with him drinking in a Parisian café, dreaming of his play. More recently the Melbourne Theatre Company staged a production in December 2011 with Geoffrey Rush playing Lady Bracknell. (The role s most memorable female interpreter was the British actress Dame Edith Evans, who played Lady Bracknell onstage in the late 1930s and in a wonderful cinematic version in The disdain she slathered on the role has influenced actors ever since.) CSC continues the Lady Bracknell cross-dressing tradition with six-year company member Jim Hopkins taking on the role. Phillips says he and Hopkins have worked hard to keep the character from simply being a collection of quirky observations and funny quips, things you d see on a T- shirt, as Phillips characterizes them. ( To lose one parent, she opines to Jack, who has mentioned being an orphan, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. ) I ve asked Jim to play Lady Bracknell traditional, Phillips says. The humor is there in what Wilde wrote. There s no need to ham it up. In fact, it s funniest when the actor maintains a kind of stillness and lets the words and situations create the humor. Phillips appreciates working with Hopkins. He s masterful at creating a role and then holding true to it throughout the run of the show.

10 Quotable Wilde On Men: "No man is rich enough to buy back his past." "Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account." "Men become old, but they never become good." -- Lady Windermere's Fan "I delight in men over seventy, they always offer one the devotion of a lifetime. " -- A Woman of No Importance "How many men there are in modern life who would like to see their past burning to white ashes before them!" -- An Ideal Husband "A man who moralizes is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralizes is invariably plain." -- Lady Windermere's Fan "Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors and all the bachelors live like married men." -- The Picture of Dorian Gray "I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean." -- Lady Windermere's Fan On Women: "One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything." -- A Woman of No Importance "Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones." -- Lady Windermere's Fan "Men know life too early. Women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women."-- A Woman of No Importance

11 "Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood." -- The Sphinx Without a Secret "It takes a thoroughly good woman to do a thoroughly stupid thing." -- Lady Windermere's Fan "I don't think there is a woman in the world who would not be a little flattered if one made love to her. It is that which makes women so irresistibly adorable." -- A Woman of No Importance "My dear young lady, there was a great deal of truth, I dare say, in what you said, and you looked very pretty while you said it, which is much more important." -- A Woman of No Importance "Women give to men the very gold of their lives. But they invariably want it back in such very small change." -- The Picture of Dorian Gray "I prefer women with a past. They're always so damned amusing to talk to." -- Lady Windermere's Fan On People "People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately." -- Letter from Paris, dated May 1900 "The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner of later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature." -- The Decay of Lying "The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing." -- The Soul of Man Under Socialism "Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualification." -- Lord Arthur Savile's Crime "It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true."

12 -- The Picture of Dorian Gray On Life "Life is much too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it." -- Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892, Act I "The Book of Life begins with a man and woman in a garden. It ends with Revelations." -- A Woman of No Importance "Life is never fair...and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not." -- An Ideal Husband "You must not find symbols in everything you see. It makes life impossible." -- Salome "We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell." -- The Duchess of Padua "The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast." -- Lord Arthur Savile's Crime On Love "Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman - or the want of it in the man." -- A Woman of No Importance "One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry." -- A Woman of No Importance "To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance." -- An Ideal Husband "A kiss may ruin a human life." -- A Woman of No Importance

13 "A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her." -- The Picture of Dorian Gray "Young men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and cannot." -- The Picture of Dorian Gray "Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failures." -- The Picture of Dorian Gray What s With the Cucumber Sandwiches? The traditional cucumber sandwich is composed of paper-thin slices of cucumber placed between two thin slices of crustless, lightly buttered white (or wheat in some cases) bread.

14 As the thinness of the bread is a point of pride in the kitchen, a dense-textured white Pullman loaf is cut with a wide-bladed knife, which guides the cut; daylight should pass through the resulting fine pores. The peel of the cucumber is either removed or scored lengthwise with a fork before the cucumber is sliced. The slices of bread are carefully buttered all the way to the edges in the thinnest coating, which is only to protect the bread from becoming damp with cucumber juice, and the slices of cucumber, which have been dashed with salt and lemon juice, are placed in the sandwich just before serving in order to prevent the sandwich from becoming damp enough to moisten the eater's fingers. The crusts of the bread are cut away cleanly and the sandwich sliced diagonally twice, creating four small triangular tea sandwiches. The traditional cucumber sandwich is of British origin. Cucumber sandwiches are most often served for a light snack or at afternoon tea, a formal light meal served at four in the afternoon or early evening before the main supper. In addition, cucumber sandwiches are supposed to be served in the tea break at club cricket matches in England. Because of English influence on Indian culture, cucumber sandwiches are popular during cricket matches and weekend picnics. The Indian variant is flavored with green chutney and sometimes contains slices of boiled potatoes. Because of cucumber's cooling nature, cucumber sandwiches are often eaten in the summer months or in warmer climates, such as in parts of India. Indian Airlines used to serve cucumber sandwiches as part of its usual vegetarian inflight meal in short-haul domestic flights. Cucumber sandwiches contain little protein and so are generally not considered sustaining enough to take a place at a full meal. This is deliberate; cucumber sandwiches have historically been associated with the Victorian era upper classes of the United Kingdom, whose members were largely at leisure and who could therefore afford to consume foods with little nutritive value. Cucumber sandwiches formed an integral part of the stereotypical afternoon tea affair. Cucumber sandwiches are often used as a kind of shorthand in novels and films to identify upper-class people. Corsets In CSC production, all of the female roles require the actors to wear corsets (yes, that includes Lady Bracknell!). A corset is a close-fitting undergarment reinforced by tight lacing, also known as "stays", that lace up the back of the garment. Often a shift or chemise was worn underneath for added comfort, to absorb perspiration and to keep the corset clean. Problems began in the 19th century when corsets were reinforced with whale bone or metal. The goal in wearing these corsets was to achieve the smallest possible waist. This obsession eventually gave birth to various corset health issues. Women wore corsets to exaggerate the bust and hips in order to also give the appearance of a slim waist. In the name of fashion, tightlacing became commonplace. The goal was to reshape a female's body to conform to standards of fashion. For many ladies, a 16- to 17-inch waist was desirable and was accomplished by lacing their corsets tighter and tighter until their rib cages became deformed. Health problems naturally followed. Trouble Breathing

15 One such problem was reduction of lung volume. Because the corsets were so tight, women were only able to fill the tops of their lungs with air. This shallow breathing resulted in the bottom part of the lungs being filled with mucus. This was characterized by a persistent cough, the body's way of ridding the lungs of foreign matter. This may have been why doctors believed corsets were a cause of tuberculosis. Women were also known to faint because of the reduced lung function. This made smelling salts a typical household item. Impact on Internal Organs Another corset health issue was the compression of the internal organs, including: Liver, Stomach, Bladder and Intestines. Not only did this compression cause a deformed liver but also indigestion, heartburn and constipation. At the time it was common for children to wear training corsets in order to prepare them for real corsets when they grew older. This often resulted in the atrophy of their back muscles. Consequentially, some women found it impossible to go with out the support of a corset in order to accomplish simple tasks such as picking up a baby. Inability to Bear Children Perhaps one of the most significant corset health issues involved a woman's ability to have children. Obviously, constricting and compressing her internal organs made it difficult for a baby to develop. Many times, the mother died or the baby was born with birth defects. Discussion Questions 1. By the end of the play, has Jack really learned the importance of being earnest? Why or why not? 2. What is each of the four main character s relationship to reality? How do they cope, romanticize, or escape from it? 3. What is the girls fascination with the name, Earnest? What does it have to do with their romantic idealizations? How are names used to indicate character (or not) in the play? 4. In what way might the gender roles in Earnest reversed? 5. What do the aristocracy in Earnest value? How does Wilde show that Jack and Cecily have the same kinds of values? 6. Judging by the tone in Earnest, what is Wilde s opinion of the aristocracy? Does he approve or disapprove of them? 7. How do the aristocrats values clash directly with a more standard concept of respectability? 8. What is the importance of the city/country split? What qualities do city-dwellers usually have? How about country folk? Do these stereotypes work in Earnest? 9. What s up with all the food fights? Why are they humorous? 10. How are Miss Prism and Dr. Chasuble products of society? What does this reveal about Victorian attitudes towards education? 11. In the end, why doesn t Cecily care that Algernon s name isn t Ernest? 12. Which character is the ultimate symbol of the aristocracy? Who is the symbol of a lower class? How does the former character treat the latter? What does this reveal about the aristocracy?

16 Resources: Wikipedia 10 Most Common Misconceptions about Oscar Wilde: An Earnest Response to A Classic Comedy by Rick Pender All photos by Rich Sofranko.