Rainbow Record Blog: The Importance of Being Earnest

Friday, June 3, 2011

The Importance of Being Earnest

The play: "A Trivial Comedy for Serious People" brought to you by Oscar Wilde (1895)

To preserve his intimacy when in town, Jack has himself pass for a so-called Earnest. He also tells his relatives whom reside in the country that he is visiting his fictitious brother he also nicknamed Earnest. However, when Gwendolen, the town woman he wishes to marry, insists on loving him because of his being named Earnest, things get a bit complicated; when his friend Algernon proposes to Jack's pupil as his pretense brother Earnest, events turn a tat tricky; when both fake Earnests meet in the countryward, having both proposed under this name to different women, who eventually meet, meeting also with Algernon's severe Aunt Agatha, a lightheaded baby stealer and a shy priest, it all becomes somewhat chaotic...

Though severe, Aunt Agatha is one of the wittiest characters of the play and her dark puns are delightful.

2002 Movie

This movie hightlights the play by adding to the fun of the original script through visual images such as a fierce riding knight when Cecily daydreams, turning the priest into an adorating paintor, giving us an interpretation of Aunt Agatha's... past, etc. The actors are great and the result, delightful.

Some Epic Quotes

AUNT AGATHA: To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

AUNT AGATHA: I must confess that I feel somewhat bewildered by what you have just told me. To be born, or at any rate bred in a handbag, whether it have handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life which reminds one of the worst excesses of the French revolution, and I presume you know what that unfortunate movement led to?

JACK: You have been christened already.

ALGERNON: Yes but I haven't been christened for years!

ALGERNON: The doctors found out that Bunbury could not live, that is what I mean - so Bunbury died.

LADY BRACKNELL: He seems to have had great confidence in the opinion of his physicians. I am glad, however, that he made up his mind at the last to some definite course of action, and acted under proper medical advice.