Third Act. The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde

SUMMARY

John and Algernon are worried because their name isn’t Ernest, and Cecily and Gwendolen feel deceived and disappointed for the same. The boys’ only solution is getting re-baptized. While they are thinking about that, Lady Bracknell arrives in search of her run-away daughter. She forbids her to be engaged to John. Then Algernon informs her aunt that he’s engaged to Cecily, and in the end aunt Augusta gives her approbation; but, unfortunately, they can't get married until John, Cecily’s guardian, gives his consent, and that will be when Lady Bracknell gives hers to him. While they are debating this, Miss Prism appears; Lady Bracknell recognizes her, and, thanks to this meeting, John discovers who really is and what his real name is.
At the end there are some marriages and lots of happiness.

Oscar Wilde Documentary (video)

Great Lives: Oscar Wilde. BBC radio

ACTORS AND ACTRESSES on the radio play:

Terence Alexander
as Merryman

Samantha Bond
as Gwendolen

Miriam Margolyes
as Miss Prism

Michael Hordern
as Lane

Michael Sheen
as John Worthing

Martin Clunes
as Algernon Moncrieff

Judy Dench
as Lady Bracknell

John Moffat
as Cannon Chasuble

Amanda Root
as Cecily

Second Act: The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde

The place where the second act is situated is in the Manor House, in the country.
As we already know, Algernon Moncrieff has surreptitiously got Cecily’s address and is determined to visit her, as he has fallen in love with her… without even having ever met her.

The first scene is in the garden. Cecily is studying with Miss Prism, but she doesn’t like the subjects her governess proposes her.

Unexpectedly for them, Algernon arrives under the name of Ernest Worthing, the wicked brother invented by Jack Worthing. Cecily is so happy to meet him, that she immediately falls in love with him.

They both go in the house and, while they are inside, Jack arrives and communicates the sad news of his brother death to Miss Prism and Dr Chasuble, the parson, without knowing that Algernon/Ernest is there. A moment later, Algernon/Ernest and Cecily come out to the garden and meet them. Jack has a big surprise and has to pretend that Ernest death has been a misunderstanding or a bad joke.

In the second scene, Gwendolen arrives to visit Jack/Ernest, and she meets Cecily. Then they are enormously puzzled because they both say they are engaged to Ernest. Fortunately for them, they discover that they’re two different young men, and that none of them (unfortunately for the boys) is called Ernest. Cecily and Gwendolen are very disappointed, but they end forgiving their lovers.

The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde

Some films: 

The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)

Frame of The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)

The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)

Wilde (1997)

The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960)

Happy Prince, "La importancia de llamarse Oscar Wilde",  (2018)

The importance... a radio play: BBC audio

The Importance of Being Earnest was a very successful play in London at the end of the 19th century, but its performances stopped when Oscar Wilde became convicted for “gross indecency” and sent to prison.

There are some versions of the same play. Ours has three acts.

In the first act, Algernon Moncrieff gets some visitors at home. The first visitor is his friend Ernest Worthing; in his visit, we discover that his real name isn’t Ernest, but Jack (a form of John). Algernon also finds that Ernest is the tutor of a very beautiful young ward called Cecily Cardew, and immediately he falls in love with her.

Next visitors are his aunt Augusta (Lady Bracknell) and her daughter Gwendolen. While Aunt Augusta, with the help of Algernon, is selecting some music for a party she’s going to have that evening, Ernest/Jack proposes to Gwendolen, and she says yes. Aunt Augusta comes back suddenly, reproaches the couple’s behaviour and attitude and, obviously, cancels the engagement. However, she asks some questions to Ernest/Jack in order to discover if he is an eligible man for her daughter; when she knows that he has no parents and has been adopted, she discards him absolutely and forbids him to approach Gwendolen.

By chance (and listening attentively) Algernon gets to know Cecily’s address in the country, and decides to visit her.

 

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854 and died in Paris at the age of 46.

He was the son of an important poetess of the Irish Literary Renaissance.

He went to Trinity College in Dublin and then to Oxford. After that, he settled in London, where he got the reputation of a clever wit for his writings and lectures. His epigrams and paradoxes are famous. He also went to the USA to deliver lectures.

But he got his literary position thanks to his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and to his play The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). He also wrote some short stories, e.g. The Happy Prince, and some poems, e.g. The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

At the age of 30, he got married and had two children.

Wilde prosecuted the Marquess of Queensberry (Lord Alfred Douglas’s father, his lover) for criminal libel and lost the trial. As a consequence of the information appeared in the trial relative to his sexual behaviour (“the love that dare not speak its name”), he was arrested and sentenced to two years of hard labour. Once he got out of prison, he went to Paris, where he spent his three last years of life, impoverished and abandoned from everybody.

His tomb is in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

The Demon Lover, by Elizabeth Bowen

Elizabet Bowen at the Wikipedia

(We had a previous entry about Bowen, so I have copied some paragraphs.)

Elisabeth Bowen was an Irish-born author, but she did her literary activities within a cultural club in London called The Bloomsbury Group, which had its headquarters in the neighbourhood of the British Museum and whose most famous members were the writer Virginia Woolf and the economist John M. Keynes (whose main idea was that the government had to intervene in the economy to correct the bad effects of the capitalism).

She was born in Dublin in 1899 and spend her childhood in a big country house with a large park. Her family belonged to the Anglo-Irish class that had dominated Ireland for centuries. Her novel The Last September deals with the situation of her class during the Independence War and the Irish Civil War. When she was seven, she went to live in England, where she studied. When she was 24, she married and published her first book, a collection of short stories, Encounters, that was a great success and encouraged her to go on writing. From then on, she wrote a book every year and a lot of book reviews.

Her stories are usually about the upper class, and she writes in a sophisticated style.

But Bowen isn’t very well-known here: in Catalan you aren’t going to find any translation, and there are only some of these books in Spanish. If you want to find her works in the library, click here.

The Demon Lover

The short story that we’re reading has autobiographic details because during the World War II she worked in London for the War Ministry. In the title we find the word demon; this word has the meaning of "evil spirit", but is also a variant of daimon, that only means "spirit". So, we don't know exactly if the lover is bad or not. The story is about a (happily?) married woman during the Blitz. She had a boyfriend in the WWI, but he was reported missing or dead, and she forgot him. But now, after 25 years, she got a suspicious letter. Could it be from her old boyfriend saying that he wants to fulfil the promise of marrying her? This boyfriend, what kind of person/being was/is he?

The Demon Lover: audio

The Demon Lover Study Guide

The Demon Lover: summary, characters, analysis

Presentation (minutes 00-3.30)

The Demon Lover, (but a very free and enlarged adaptation, minutes 00-52)

QUESTIONS

Which are the first hints of the Blitz?

Why do you think the woman is prosaic?

Why is a “tenseness preceding the fall of the rain” before she read the letter?

Why did she look at the mirror after reading the letter?

Why did she look at it “stealthily”?

Describe the protagonist.

What was the effect of the raining when he opened the chest?

What did she remember best from their last meeting (a physical mark)?

Why did she wish him already gone when they were saying goodbye?

Describe the boy.

Describe their last meeting.

Was she really in love with him? How do you know?

Tell us about Mrs Drover’s life after discovering her fiancée was missing or dead.

Why was she “unable to be with her back exposed to an empty room” and preferred to “sit against the wall”?

A crisis is mentioned: what crisis is it?

Why did she decide to take the objects she had come to fetch and not to run away immediately?

“She tugged at the knot she had tied wrong”: what is its connotation?

What are her feelings now about her old fiancée?

When she is in the point of leaving the house, what reassures her? And in the street? And what scared her before leaving?

Why does the narrator use this expression: “a hinterland of deserted streets”?

What was the appointed time?

What details suggested us that her old fiancée was the taxi driver?

Some people say the story means that “we are always tied to the past”. What is your opinion?

VOCABULARY

boarded up, contemptuous, bedspring, flicker, foresworn (forsworn), plight your troth, (without) stint, score, desuetude, rally, fumbling, to be in a mood, tread, creek, pant, issue, perambulator (pram)