The Importance of Being Earnest opened in the West
End of London in February 1894 during an era when many of the religious,
social, political, and economic structures were experiencing change — The
Victorian Age (the last 25-30 years of the 1800s). The British Empire was at
its height and occupied much of the globe, including Ireland, Wilde's homeland.
The English aristocracy was dominant, snobbish and rich — far removed from the
British middle class and poor.
Many novelists, essayists, poets, philosophers and
playwrights of the Victorian Age wrote about social problems, particularly
concerning the effects of the Industrial Revolution and political and social
reform. Dickens concentrated on the poor, Darwin wrote his theory of evolution
describing the survival of the fittest, and Thomas Hardy wrote about the
Naturalist Theory of man stuck in the throes of fate. Other notable writers
such as Thackeray, the Brontes, Swinburne, Butler, Pinero, and Kipling were
also contemporaries of Oscar Wilde. In an age of change, their work, as well as
Wilde's plays, encouraged people to think about the artificial barriers that
defined society and enabled a privileged life for the rich at the expense of
the working class.
American writer, Edith Wharton, was also writing
about the lifestyles of the rich during the same period. Her novels, such as
Ethan Frome,The Age of Innocence, or The House of Mirth, explore the concepts
of wealth and privilege at the expense of the working class on the American
side of the Atlantic.
Although the themes in The Importance of Being
Earnest address Victorian social issues, the structure of the play was largely
influenced by French theatre, melodrama, social drama, and farce. Wilde was
quite familiar with these genres, and borrowed from them freely. A play by W.
Lestocq and E.M. Robson, The Foundling, is thought to be a source of Earnest,
and it was playing in London at the time Wilde was writing Earnest. The
Foundling has an orphan-hero, like Jack Worthing in Wilde's play. A farce is a
humorous play using exaggerated physical action, such as slapstick, absurdity,
and improbability. It often contains surprises where the unexpected is
disclosed. The ending of Earnest, in which Jack misidentifies Prism as his
unmarried mother, is typical of the endings of farces. Farces were usually done
in three acts and often included changes of identity, stock characters, and
lovers misunderstanding each other. Wearing mourning clothes or gobbling food
down at times of stress are conventions that can be traced to early farces.
Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen also strongly
influenced Wilde. Ibsen's innovations in A Doll's House, which had played in
London in 1889, were known to Wilde. Wilde also attended Hedda Gabler
andGhosts, two other plays by Ibsen. While in prison, Wilde requested copies of
Ibsen plays.
The theatre manager of the St. James where Earnest
opened, George Alexander, asked Wilde to reduce his original four-act play to
three acts, like more conventional farces. Wilde accomplished this by omitting
the Gribsby episode and merging two acts into one. In doing so, he maneuvered
his play for greater commercial and literary response.
Marriage plots and social comedy were also typical
of 1890s literature. Jane Austen and George Eliot were both novelists who used
the idea of marriage as the basis for their conflicts. Many of the comedies of
the stage were social comedies, plays set in contemporary times discussing
current problems. The white, Anglo-Saxon, male society of the time provided
many targets of complacency and aristocratic attitudes that playwrights such as
Wilde could attack.
Earnest came at a time in Wilde's life when he was
feeling the pressure of supporting his family and mother, and precariously
balancing homosexual affairs — especially with Lord Alfred Douglas.The
Importance of Being Earnest opened at George Alexander's St. James Theatre on
February 14, 1895. On this particular evening, to honor Wilde's aestheticism,
the women wore lily corsages, and the young men wore lilies of the valley in their
lapels. Wilde himself, an outside observer by birth in the world of elegant
fashion, was festooned in a glittering outfit. It was widely reported that he
wore a coat with a black velvet collar, a white waistcoat, a black moiré ribbon
watch chain with seals, white gloves, a green scarab ring, and lilies of the
valley in his lapel. Wilde, the Irish outsider, was dramatically accepted by
upper-class London, who loved his wit and daring, even when laughing about
themselves.
The aristocracy attending Wilde's play knew and
understood the private lives of characters like Jack and Algernon. They were
aware of the culture and atmosphere of the West End. It had clubs, hotels,
cafes, restaurants, casinos, and most of the 50 theatres in London. The West
End was also a red-light district filled with brothels that could provide any
pleasure. It was a virtual garden of delights, and the patrons could understand
the need for married men to invent Ernests and Bunburys so that they could
frolic in this world.
A farce is a comic play in which the audience is
asked to accept impossible or highly improbable situations for the time being.
It differs radically from comedy, in that the audience must believe, for if the
personages are to appear real -- and they must, as character is of prime
importance in comedy -- they must move about in real situations, or at least
such as we can give credence to. In a farce, then, what the characters do is of
more importance than what they are. The Importance of Being Earnest is a farce,
one of the best ever written, cleverly constructed and delightfully amusing.
There is only the slightest attempt at the sketching of character, while most
of the personages are at best but caricatures; the author's skill is brought to
bear chiefly upon the situations and the lines. It so happens that this farce
contains more clever lines, puns, epigrams, and deft repartees than any other
of modern times, but these are after all accessory. A farce may be written
without these additions -- it might well be pure pantomime. Wilde has thrown
them in for full measure.
The first act should be carefully studied after a
reading of the entire play. Notice especially how the very comic scene in the
second act -- where Jack enters "in the deepest mourning" -- is
prepared for and led up to. In order that this scene shall be a surprise, and
that the appearance of Jack, without a spoken word, shall evoke a series of
recognitions in the mind of the audience, and a correlation of hitherto-unknown
facts, the preparation in the first act must be skilfully done. The very
casualness and apparent triviality of the dialogue tend to throw us off our
guard. This is in a manner comparable with the art of the magician who, while
calling attention to a dexterous feat of legerdemain with his right hand,
prepares the next trick with his left. So, in the first act, we are scarcely
aware of the importance of Algernon's disquisition on "Bunburying,"
or of Algernon's writing the address which Jack gives to Gwendolyn "on his
shirt-cuff," so nonchalantly are these points introduced. Yet, when the
scene in question -- in Act II -- comes, we are perfectly acquainted with the
necessary facts.
That farce can be independent of clever dialogue
is, as we have said, true, but when this can be added and made to fit into the
action and further it, so much the better for farce. Oscar Wilde could not
resist the temptation to be witty, though this practice was often detrimental
to the rest of the work. In Lady Windermere's Fan, indeed, the wit covers
occasional bungling in the plot. But in The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde
found a form which he could make "personal," and plot and wit go hand
in hand. Take, for instance, the following dialogue from the first act:
ALGERNON: Well, my dear fellow, you need not eat
as if you were going to eat it all. You he have as if you were married to her
already. You are not married to her already, and I don't think you ever will
be.
JACK: Why on earth do you say that?
ALGERNON: Well, in the first place, girls never
marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right.
JACK: Oh, that is nonsense.
ALGERNON: It isn't. It is a great truth. It
accounts for the extraordinary number of bachelors that one sees all over the
place. In the second placle, I don't give my consent.
The epigram is not forced, as many epigrams are
forced in the first act of A Woman of No Importance; it is in keeping with the
characters and situation. At the same time it serves the ends of drama, by
advancing the story and affording some insight into the character of the
personages.
The third act of a farce -- and it is extremely
dangerous to extend a farce to more than three acts -- is usually difficult.
The effort to maintain interest for two acts often leaves a dramatist exhausted
by the time he comes to conclude.
