bicc2的部落格

澆好多水...(網誌花園的)花不會爛掉吧(仙人掌大概就是這樣被我...)

嗯只是學期都過了 有些檔案該拿出來曬曬不然被黴菌覆蓋打不開或長腳跑走就糟囉

(這不是被害妄想症)

The passing of the Theatre Act of 1843 breaks the monopoly of London drama, giving rise to modern theater. The upper middle class, or the fashionable Victorian theater-goer, favors “well-made play.” Created by the French playwright Augustin Scribe in 1815 in reaction against the formlessness of romantic drama, the “well-made play” follows these patterns:

Firstly is “character.” There are four to eight roles from the upper middles class, each with equal number of lines. Secondly is “plot.” It should be simple, focusing on one problem, usually love and marriage. Playwrights demonstrate their skill in “logic of events” which controls the structure. Characters are tied in a seemly hopeless knot, but with neat foreshadowing, it will be smoothly resolved. The plot is also full of coincidence, such as mistaken identity. The endings are incredible. Thirdly is “setting.” Realistic, or authentic contemporary stage setting and costume convince the audience that the play is about their own life and problems. Lastly is “dialogue.” It should be smooth, “simulating upper-middle-class speech but free of the slurrings, garbling, or fragments of everyday conversation” (Day 160).

To poet turned playwright like Wilde, following these patterns in his play is like “writ[ing] for the popular stage,” which is “risk[ing] the loss of artistic prestige.” Even after his publication of several plays, he denies that his plays are influenced by contemporaries (Powell 5). His denial, however, fails in the summer of 1894 when W. Lestocq’s The Foundling is a popular success then, and success is exactly what Wilde wants. It has to be clarified that The Foundling is categorized as “farce,” “a type of comedy designed to provoke the audience to simple, hearty laughter. From the medieval miracle plays like the Second Shepherd’s Play, Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, to Charles Chaplin’s comedies, television “situation comedies,” even the theater of absurd has affinity with ‘farce’” (Abrams 40).

Two or three weeks after the first performances of The Foundling in London, Wilde completes the first draft of The Importance of Being Earnest in his residence at Worthing (Powell 109-10). I consider that the birth of Earnest shows Wilde’s talent in its responds to popular contemporaries and literary ancestors. For contemporaries, he mocks the “well-made play,” and revises/revenges the “farce.” For ancestors, he joins the “comedy of manners” which follows patterns similar to the “well-made play.” The characters include upper class young lovers, and “stock/stereotyped characters” such as clever servant (e.g. Lane in Earnest), old and boring parents (e.g. Lady Bracknell). The dialogue is witty, sparkling, with “repartee,” or verbal fencing match as the form. The dialogue also violates social standards, breaking the “decorum.” Plays of Shakespeare, William Congreve, and Oliver Goldsmith, exemplified in A Glossary of Literary Terms (39-40), are exactly those believed to be the “predecessors of Wilde” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature (1699).

Accordingly Earnest, with mistaken identity as one of the features, still can’t avoid having three identities: the parody of the “well-made play,” the great “farce,” and the “comedy of manners.” The three identities can roughly be combined in discussion of Earnest, but my main focus is still the parody part.

Parody belongs to the tradition of “high burlesque.” “Burlesque…makes the imitation amusing by ridiculous disparity between the manner and the matter” to serve the purpose of “sheer fun,” or usually, of becoming “a form of satire.” If the form and style the burlesque imitates are dignified but the subject is trivial, the burlesque is “high burlesque.” Two varieties of high burlesque are “parody” and “mock epic or mock-heroic.” For “mock epic” we have Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, and for “parody” of certain kind of play we have The Importance of Being Earnest. “A parody imitates…the typical stylistic and other features of a serious literary genre, and deflates the original by applying the imitation to a lowly or comically inappropriate subject” (Abrams 27-28).

Regarding Wilde’s parody of the well-made play, firstly we examine character. There are two major couples in Earnest: Jack and Gwendolen, Algernon and Cecily, all come from upper class with fathers like Lord Bracknell and General Moncrieff. One of the scenes in which each role shares roughly the equal number of lines is at the beginning of the last act, after the entrance of Jack and Algernon, whistling dreadful popular air, to Jack’s saying, “Can you doubt it, Miss Fairfax?” Gwendolen and Cecily have nine and eight lines respectively, while Jack and Algernon only have one line (Greenblatt 1731-32). Thus with well-matched roles and equally-shared lines, the parody of characters is done.

Secondly we examine plot. “Although names are the object of scorn in both comedies, nothing in The Foundling matches the strange ‘ideal’ of Wilde’s young women ‘to love some one of the name of Earnest’” (Powell113). The “ideal” is a coincidence as well as a parody of the simple problem concerning love and marriage in the “well-made play.” For Jack and Algernon, the problem of being Earnest is important, “…The Foundling never seriously intends to get christened, but Wilde’s grown-up babies…have every intention of going through with it” (Powell 114).

The structural balance in the well-made play is also parodied. Jack and Algernon’s previous disguises are complementary: Jack invents an unfortunate brother “Earnest” in town so that he could come up to town whenever he likes, while Algernon invents a feeble friend “Bunbury” in country so that he could go down into country whenever he chooses (Greenblatt 1703).

“Ensnared in the complications of a double life…the role-playing young men…seem to suggest murder as a solution to their problems” (Powell 116). Once he marries Cecily, Algernon plans to “kill the friend Bunbury” by asserting that “Bunbury(bomb)” dies from explosion. Likewise, Jack plans to “kill the brother Earnest” by asserting that “Earnest” dies from chill once he marries Gwendolen. The “murderers/cause of death” here are mocked. Jack’s original invention of “Earnest’s dying from apoplexy” is replaced and parodied. Algernon’s comment that “it’s hereditary” implies that Lady Bracknell would not allow Gwendolen “marry into a family with such sort of thing running in bloods” (Greenblatt 1711).

Another coincidence revealed by Jack to Lady Bracknell ties Jack in a knot. It begins twenty-eight years ago with Miss Prism’s misplacement: putting the manuscript in bassinette, while the baby in handbag. Followed by the cloak room attendant’s error: giving Mr. Cardew the handbag of Miss Prism, and Mr. Cardew’s carelessness: doesn’t discover the error until he gets home. The knot seems hopeless since Lady Bracknell insists that Jack find his one parent—she would not allow Gwendolen “marry into a cloak room, and form an alliance with a parcel” (1710). Earnest “makes fun of the standard melodrama orphan who discovers his identity and thus surmounts obstacle in love” (Powell 115). This reminds me of the so-called “sensationalist” Charles Dickens’ The Great Expectations.

Thankfully, the knot is finally resolved smoothly with the third coincidence. Miss Prism enters the stage looking for Dr. Chasuble who’s not in the church. They are both informed that they’re expected by each other in vestry. Coincidentally Lady Bracknell recognizes Miss Prism. The endings are incredible. The mockery of “mistaken identity” still exists: Jack mistakes the unmarried Miss Prism as “mother” (Powell 115, Greenblatt 1738) “The usual Victorian farce…after getting its laughs from mixups of identity, ends by restoring all characters to their right names and true positions…Instead, the heroes[in Earnest] are permanently liberated from their former identities” (Powell 120). “Jack” is really “Earnest” and he really has an “unfortunate” brother. “Far from repenting their rebellion against things as they are, Jack and Algernon exult in their gossamer lies and see them curiously transformed into truth ” (120). On the one hand, Algernon’s “Bunbury in country” is dead, so is Jack’s “Earnest in town.” One the other hand, “Earnest in country” is born along with the discovery of Jack’s birth parents, and Algernon still deserves Cecily’s love for he’s indeed “Uncle Jack’s brother in town.” Jack’s last line of the play is also the parody commonly seen in farce, praising “the vital Importance of Being Earnest” in the tone not earnest at all. Thus with the well-tied-and-extricated knot, the parody of plot is done.

Thirdly we examine setting. In Act I, Algernon’s flat in Half-Moon Street is “a highly fashionable location (at the time of the play) in the West End of London” (Greenblatt 1699). More familiar to London upper class is perhaps “Willis’s,” “the first-class restaurant in the center of London” (1703). In Act II, the Manor House is in an authentic place—Hertfordshire, mentioned by Jack when inquired by Gwendolen, and written down by Algernon on his shirt-cuff (Greenblatt 1712). Even when Jack lies to Algernon previously that Cecily is a “charming old lady,” where she lives is “Tunbridge Wells,” “a fashionable resort town south of London” (Greenblatt 1702). The audiences are like Lady Bracknell (whose title, like “Worthing,” is the place Wilde has visited), who’d prick up her ears upon hearing elegant residential areas in real life. Owning a house in “Belgrave Square,” for example, is mocked through Lady Bracknell’s comment after knowing the number, “the unfashionable side” (1709).    Thus with well-understanding of fashionable places, the parody of setting is done.

Lastly we examine dialogue. “Nothingness is repeatedly evoked in the verbal texture of the play in a way that prefigures techniques of the drama of the absurd. Characters are always using words like serious and nonsense in a manner that sends out little ripples of significance” (Parker 39). Algernon’s opinion about “seriousness,” such as “One has a right to Bunbury anywhere one chooses. Every serious Bunburyist knows that” (Greenblatt 1729), and “A man who marries without knowing Bunbury has a very tedious time of it…in married life three is company and two is none” (1704), is often regarded by Jack as “Nonsense.” In comparison, if these upper class brothers lower the dialogue coarsely, Dr. Chasuble and Miss Prism parody the dialogue smoothly. Dr. Chasuble says, “I spoke metaphorically.—My metaphor was drawn from bees” (1715), while Miss Prism says, “I spoke horticulturally. My metaphor was drawn from fruits” (1718). Thus with well-spoken rhetoric, the parody of dialogue is done.

In conclusion, through the parody of character, plot, setting, and dialogue, with the revised elements in farce and the succeeded conventions in comedy of manners, Wilde mocks the well-made play, demonstrating his talent in play-writing simultaneously.  

Works Cited

Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 8th ed. Boston: Thomson Wadsworth,2009. Print.

Day, Martin S. History of English Literature:1837 to the Present. Taipei: Bookman Books, 2004. Print.

Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature.8th ed. Vol. 2. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print

Parker, David. “Oscar Wilde’s Great Farce: The Importance of Being Earnest.” Modern Language Quarterly 35.2 (1974). Rpt. In Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1988. 35-47.Print.

Powell, Kerry. Oscar Wilde and the Theatre of the 1890s. Cambridge: UP of Cambridge, 1990. Print.