You are not currently logged in. Please create an account or log in to view the full course.
Introduction – Part I
- About
- Transcript
- Cite
Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest
In this course, Professor John McRae (University of Nottingham) explores Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. In the first three lectures, we provide a broad introduction to the play, thinking about the life and career of Oscar Wilde, as well as the social, cultural and literary context of the play itself. After that, in the following twelve modules, we read through the entire play from start to finish, thinking about the character, setting, stagecraft, key themes and motifs, and critical opinion.
Introduction – Part I
In this module, we provide a broad introduction to Oscar Wilde and The Importance of Being Earnest, focusing in particular on: (i) what people think about when they hear the name 'Oscar Wilde' today – both the positives and the negatives; (ii) the development of psychology and psychoanalysis in the late 19th century, and Wilde's interest in the contrast between what you see on the surface and what lies beneath, etc.; (iii) the immense critical and commercial success of The Importance of Being Earnest; (iv) the contrast between 'serious' and 'trivial', and the idea of the Importance of Being Earnest as 'A Trivial Comedy for Serious People'; (v) the philosophy of aestheticism, and the idea of 'campness'; (vi) the importance of Wilde's sexuality and nationality, and the unique perspective afford to 'outsiders' looking in – a gay man observing straight society, an Irishman observing English society, etc.; (vii) the extent to which satirists want to be part of the society that they satirise ("Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that"), and the success with which Wilde was able to enter 'proper' English society; and (viii) the idea of 'Oscar Wilde' as a character played by Wilde, and the relationship between truth and artifice.
Hello.
00:00:06I'm John McRae.
00:00:06And we're talking about the great Oscar Wilde today.
00:00:07What do you know about Oscar?
00:00:13His name is tremendously well-known.
00:00:14And usually, what people remember
00:00:17is a mix of very negative and very positive.
00:00:20I don't want to accentuate any of the negative.
00:00:26Yes, he was gay.
00:00:30Yes, he was sent to prison for homosexual offenses, which
00:00:31only became illegal about 13 or 14 years before he
00:00:36was convicted because of the famous Labouchere Amendment.
00:00:40He was a very great writer.
00:00:44He wrote amazing stories collected as The Happy Prince
00:00:47and Other Stories.
00:00:53He wrote an amazing and sensational and brilliant novel
00:00:54called The Picture of Dorian Gray, which
00:00:59is one where the beautiful young man stays
00:01:01beautiful all through his life and the painting up
00:01:04in the attic becomes more and more wizened and corrupted--
00:01:07a great image and one of the great images of duality
00:01:13of the time.
00:01:18It was written three or four years after Robert Louis
00:01:20Stevenson wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which again explores
00:01:23the duality of humanity--
00:01:28the superficial and the interior.
00:01:32This was as psychology was being invented by people like William
00:01:36James and Sigmund Freud--
00:01:40William James, the brother of Henry James.
00:01:43And here's a little coincidence that you didn't know.
00:01:47The play that was running in the St. James's Theatre
00:01:50before The Importance of Being Earnest
00:01:53came on in February 1895 was a play
00:01:55by Henry James, Guy Domville, which was a flop.
00:01:59Henry James never had any successful plays.
00:02:04In comes Oscar with probably the most successful single play
00:02:07of the 19th century.
00:02:13Think of that.
00:02:16100 years of that century.
00:02:17And this play, The Importance of Being Earnest,
00:02:19was and is still the most successful of the century.
00:02:22In fact, a few years ago, somebody
00:02:28did a count up and found that The Importance of Being Earnest
00:02:31is the second most translated and performed
00:02:34English play outside of Great Britain of all time.
00:02:40You want to have a little guess as to what
00:02:47might be the most translated studied and performed play?
00:02:49Hamlet.
00:02:56There you go.
00:02:58So in at least one way, this is up there
00:02:59with the very, very greatest.
00:03:04Only obviously, this is a comedy.
00:03:08Serious comedy, as I say.
00:03:12And the big binary that we'll be looking at all the way
00:03:14through our examination of the play
00:03:18is that binary between serious and trivial because Oscar--
00:03:21the main thing that we remember as an image of Oscar--
00:03:30and he was very conscious of image,
00:03:35was that he was an aesthete.
00:03:38That beauty, style, fashion were the image.
00:03:41He was one of the first great successes of PR.
00:03:46When he went to America in the 1880s,
00:03:53he uttered that famous line at the customs,
00:03:56"I have nothing to declare but my genius."
00:03:59He was able to charm the birds off of the trees,
00:04:03tell stories all day and all night.
00:04:06Famously, he even conquered an audience of gold miners
00:04:09out in Colorado who thought he was wonderful.
00:04:14They didn't despise him for his aesthetic, effeminate-looking
00:04:19ways.
00:04:24He was a one-off.
00:04:26He was a superstar.
00:04:28A sort of equivalent might be Liberace.
00:04:32But oh dear, the word "camp" was almost
00:04:35invented for Oscar Wilde.
00:04:42"Camp" implies exaggerated.
00:04:44A bit [INAUDIBLE], yes.
00:04:47Stylized.
00:04:50Humorous.
00:04:53It implies a very noticeable and serious attitude to life.
00:04:54Think RuPaul's Drag Race as an extension
00:05:01of that way of thinking and presenting life.
00:05:05No way Oscar Wilde would ever been a drag queen.
00:05:11Although, he would have associated with them
00:05:14with great fun.
00:05:17The kind of humor that drag brings out, the kind
00:05:19of camp subversion of normal--
00:05:23inverted commas if we ever use that word, values.
00:05:28That is part of what Oscar was about.
00:05:33"The Happy Prince--" there's a little statue covered in gold.
00:05:38And all the gold disappears.
00:05:43And we see what's underneath.
00:05:46Dorian Gray, the beautiful, beautiful youth.
00:05:50None of his corruption is ever made explicit.
00:05:53The corruption is vivid only in the mind of the reader.
00:05:56That's phenomenally important.
00:06:01It's the reader who brings to the story
00:06:02the details of what the corruption might be.
00:06:06Was it sex?
00:06:10Was it drugs?
00:06:11Was it rock and roll?
00:06:12And in a rather Gothic way, the audience
00:06:15enjoyed these forbidden type thrills.
00:06:18He was married with kids.
00:06:24He was great with his kids.
00:06:26He wrote the story for his kids.
00:06:28There was a superb movie by Rupert Everett
00:06:29about "The Happy Prince" which really
00:06:34gets to the essence of who Oscar was as a person.
00:06:36And then he went from the day job
00:06:41in the 1880s which was, would you believe it,
00:06:45editing a woman's magazine to writing for theater.
00:06:48And he wrote a bunch of comedies,
00:06:54Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance,
00:06:57and An Ideal Husband that were huge successes.
00:07:01He finally started making money.
00:07:07He was a personality.
00:07:09If there had been chat shows at that time,
00:07:12he would have been the absolute king of the chat shows.
00:07:15Do you know where he was born?
00:07:21This is important.
00:07:25Oscar is Irish.
00:07:27Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wilde.
00:07:31Now, I don't want to labor these important points about Oscar.
00:07:37That he was gay, yeah.
00:07:44That he was Irish, yeah.
00:07:45But they are both important in a similar way
00:07:48because strangely enough, the other great writers
00:07:52of English theatrical comedy in the previous 200 years
00:07:58had been Irish.
00:08:03Don't know why.
00:08:05Well, yes.
00:08:07I do know why.
00:08:07Because Ireland has always been outside,
00:08:09beyond the pale for London society.
00:08:15So many English people owned, at that time, land in Ireland.
00:08:18Ireland was still not an independent nation.
00:08:24That happened in the 1920s.
00:08:26They had their rebellion at Easter 1916.
00:08:28And then they had the Civil War in the 20s.
00:08:32And Ireland became [? heir. ?] And Northern Ireland
00:08:34was separated off.
00:08:39The English were the occupiers.
00:08:42The English in Dublin were very much--
00:08:46they saw themselves as the center of the universe,
00:08:50of course.
00:08:52But the society they aspired to was London society.
00:08:53And you remember Lady Bracknell's line
00:08:59towards the end of the play when she
00:09:01said, "Never speak disrespectfully
00:09:03of Society, Algernon.
00:09:05Only people who can't get into it do that."
00:09:07You see that lovely ambivalence?
00:09:11Speaking disrespectfully means you actually
00:09:14want to be in that society.
00:09:17Yes.
00:09:20Yes.
00:09:21Oscar graduated in Dublin and came to university in Oxford.
00:09:23And he did everything he could to become a star in the society
00:09:28that he was ambitious to enter.
00:09:34He won the Newdigate Prize in Oxford for poetry.
00:09:36He was developing his art, his craft, his style,
00:09:41his aestheticism.
00:09:46And he began to play the role of Oscar Wilde.
00:09:49Now, this is the clue to The Importance of Being Earnest.
00:09:54For 20 years of his life, Oscar Wilde
00:09:58played the role of Oscar Wilde.
00:10:02And one of the most important essays he wrote in the 1880s
00:10:07was an essay called "The Truth of Masks."
00:10:10I recommend it to you, actually.
00:10:18It's one of these essays that is fundamental to an understanding
00:10:19of the late Victorian era because what
00:10:24happens in "The Truth of Masks" is the truths of metaphysics.
00:10:28He says, "The truths of metaphysics
00:10:34are the truths of masks."
00:10:39He is investigating truth all the time.
00:10:42I'm investigating it by playing with artifice,
00:10:47playing with the created role of Oscar,
00:10:53the fashionable, beautiful, stylish, young man.
00:10:56He played at being Oscar.
00:11:03And The Picture of Dorian Gray shows that difference
00:11:08between appearance and reality.
00:11:12
Cite this Lecture
APA style
McRae, J. (2021, April 23). Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest - Introduction – Part I [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/wilde-the-importance-of-being-earnest/act-2-who-do-you-think-is-in-the-dining-room
MLA style
McRae, J. "Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest – Introduction – Part I." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 23 Apr 2021, https://massolit.io/courses/wilde-the-importance-of-being-earnest/act-2-who-do-you-think-is-in-the-dining-room