Oscar Wilde’s famous play, The Importance Of Being Earnest is basically written as a social pun for its time. In a manner of speaking, it’s a satirical look at humor and wit based on the characterization of a small group of aristocratic friends in England in the mid 1800’s.
The Importance Of Being Earnest is simply fantastic, clever and amusing. Thus the characterization of the story enfold with witty yet absurd joke about the integral role of Jack. It the mystery and mystic of Jack, to the girl of his affections, Gwendolyn, who knows him as “Earnest “, that creates the proverbial uproar. It’s the case of the proverbial who dun it where all his friends desire to know more of him and what and who he really desires. The set for the play is the social occasions which allow us to see his friends become increasingly bemused and yet will see their own confines of emotions as they joke.
Through and through Oscar Wilde makes lavish use of this particular characterization to set the cadence for the satirical look at people and the social morays of Oscar’s time. There is really no other relevance to The Importance Of Being Earnest, for when we see this kind of social interplay between the cast and Jack go back and forth, it becomes the commonality of the age old expression, “it is what it is.” The joke around Jack as Earnest becomes totally nonsensical and ends up taking the laughter to the rite of attrition, rather than fruition about the credibility of the whole story line from the likes of the Play. We, the audience revel in the social nuisance for the offbeat coloring and black and white to the characterization of the play itself.
Mr. Wilde lived in disregarding times and was considered a so-called homosexual. But still he had the capacity to live his own lifestyle and show his own personal sentiment to the world. In essence, he endured much social friction about being who he was and what he did best, which was to write and write well. He wrote this play at the height of his popularity despite the social morays. Society, at this time, did not believe in him, to be a person of human care, to have the person hood that was necessary to live the life he chose for himself.
Living in peace was important to Oscar, but he never really did have that or live that way at all, in so much as his own life and his writings always seemed to be about the trials and tribulations of never ever really being able to be gay together as people, through and through. This play represents that, that life is a pun and a social pun all rolled into one. And this is at the heart of a gifted, gay man who also had the forbearance to be a gay writer within that livelihood despite the grotesque concerns around being openly gay at the time. You see my friends of R.U.12?, Oscar Wilde was not purported to be a great writer, really and truly, of any right. His lifestyle was considered way too odd and enigmatic of sorts, and always ended up being misconstrued for sure. But still he will always be remembered as the greatest contemporary writer of His Day and Times, even still.
To Oscar Wilde, forever I say, as a Gay Writer and a Gay Man . . .amen to that, so be sure to pick up the copy of the play at R.U.12 for the consummate read of laughter and gaiety of its own right and care, in this world of ours where the importance of being earnest is so easy come, so easy go . . .and or so it goes.
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