William Shakespeares Twelfth Night and Oscar Wildes The Importance of Being Earnest - Essay Example

Top of Form Comic Spirit – Romance in Comedies William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest While both plays by two famous playwrights and fictional provocateurs, William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde, may have been centuries apart, both carve up to a fashionable sense of style – romance, humor, satire, and amusingly vulgar double meaning. The Importance of Being Earnest, which was written in the 1890s and considered to be Wilde’s magnum opus, has been flatteringly measured up to Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night. Wilde reworked the old Victorian sentimental genre to a one of its kind, hilarious, somewhat nonsensical, highly fictitious piece, although viewers regard the play as pure entertainment. Behind the superficial nature of Wilde’s play is a serious implication of self-righteous morality and hypocritical aristocracy too characteristic of the Victorian culture that to some extent brought about an end to his career as a highly acclaimed playwright in London. Wilde got enmeshed with a legal suit against his homosexuality that eventually led to his downfall ~ detention, impoverishment, divorce, exile and sadly, his death. Seven decades after his death, detractors, viewers and readers still consider The Importance of Being Earnest as an enchanting yet absolutely playful and shallow comedy, an outlook fairly echoing the way of thinking of an era wherein homosexuality is regarded as a forbidden subject. England’s homosexuality decriminalization in 1967 and America’s awareness of the gay society and particular interest in the undisclosed homosexual prose of the earlier period, has likely changed the perspective of the 21st century audiences (“Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest”, 3-5). The Importance of Being Earnest is probably the most brilliant theatrical exhibition of identity crisis since Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and at the same time as comical. It is a story of two young men, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, both wanting to escape from their real dull lives and from the social expectations of the English upper class, thus inventing imaginary personalities that provide each of them a suitable alibi for their individual secret adventures. Jack creates a fictitious brother “Ernest” and Algernon invents a friend “Mr. Bunbury.” These deceptions in the last part, however, threatened to ruin their romantic happy-endings and shake the aristocratic fascination for origin, sophistication and fine breeding (Meineck). William Shakespeare’s works have risen above excellence and became very powerful that deeply influenced Western literature and culture. His works were collected, continually adopted and studied in the academe and published in a variety of editions after his death and earned him a reputation as the greatest writer in English language in the early eighteenth century. His Twelfth Night, written in the early 1600s in the middle of his writing career, is regarded as one of his best comedies. This romantic comedy is all about fantasy, trickery, disguises, insanity, gull, and the strange things one will do for love (“William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night Study Guide”). Gender roles are sometimes confused and disguises are common such as in the case of the Twelfth Night characters: Viola disguises as a man named Cesario, thus creating a sexual chaos. Viola secretly falls in love with his employer Orsino who thinks she is a man; Orsino’s love is Olivia who develops love for Viola in her disguise as Cesario. Suppressed homoeroticism is evident, with Olivia being in love with a woman who pretends to be a man, and Orsino believing he is in love with Olivia when he in fact has hidden affection for his page Cesario, implicating that he is physically fascinated with Viola even before he discovered her male disguise. In the play’s end, sexual uncertainties and dishonesties are corrected and both Orsino and Olivia get proper heterosexual fulfillment: Orsino marrying Viola and Olivia marrying Sebastian. However, Shakespeare leaves his audience a little perplexed when Orsino still declares his love for Viola even after her guise is removed, hinting that he likes Viola’s pretentions as a male Cesario: “Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times / Thou never should’st love woman like to me” (V.i.260–261). In the same way, in his last lines, Orsino declares, “Cesario, come— For so you shall be while you are a man; But when in other habits you are seen, Orsino’s mistress, and his fancy’s queen” (V.i.372–375). Orsino still calls Viola Cesario even if the mask is disclosed. Therefore, creating confusion whether Orsino’s love for Viola is true or it is really Cesario he loves more (“Drama for Students”). Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night is in love with Olivia who does not return his love and is in deep mourning for the death of her brother. Common in the Victorian society is the strict command of fathers in choosing future husbands for their daughters. However, Olivia has neither father nor brother making her free to choose her man. Here in this play, Shakespeare creates an innovation in using his character Olivia as a free woman who will make a helpful literary tool to add complications to this romance comedy and to make Orsino persistent in getting her favour (“Drama for Students”). In Act I, scene i, Orsino commands his musicians for more music to fill the room with more love because music satiates his desires, however, sad music makes him completely depressed. Music is interpreted here as Orsino’s emotions and for him, more music will remedy his feelings of sadness for Olivia’s rejection of his affection. Orsino declares, "If music be the food of love play on, give me excess of it, that surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die ......" (I.i.1). From this quote, we see that Orsino is in love with the idea of being in love. His use of melodramatic phrases and display of passionate feelings, obsessive pursuit, and overwhelming thoughts of her will make the audience claim that he sees Olivia as an obsession. Orsino seems filled with emotions he thinks is love. On the other hand, the audience may see that his pursuit of himself in a fantasy that is all about him is more than his pursuit of Olivia. The first time he sees Olivia, he says, “That instant was I turn'd into a hart; And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, E'er since pursue me” (I.i.3). He plays a game with himself as he continues with his hysterics about love even when he is repeatedly turned down by Olivia, making himself suffer more as he continues to listen to depressing music and concentrate more on his feelings of sadness. Shakespeare clearly shows the relationship of love and music. The romantic and sensorial descriptions he uses on Orsino and his love for music connects him with reality (Fores). Framing the entire comedy is Orsino’s love for Olivia, commencing with Orsino declaring his love for Olivia and concluding with his marriage to Viola, making the audience see the great innovation in Shakespeare’s play ~ double plots in one play, which is the love triangle of Orsino, Olivia and Viola/Cesario and the funny trick played on Malvolio (“Drama for Students”). The women of The Importance of Being Earnest, namely Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew grant Wilde with opportunities to talk about ideas and publicize the modern woman. They may be similar in some ways, but more different in how Wilde used them as literary tools in his play. Gwendolen provides Wilde with opportunities for the discussion of matrimony, courtship and the irrationalities of life. Her declarations on trivialities and her overall disagreements make her the ideal device for Wilde to provide humor and to remark on ridiculous aristocratic manners. Cecily gives Wilde a chance to discuss the dull and unexciting Victorian education, high-society standards, wealth and security, and the oppression of passion (“The Importance of Being Earnest, Character Analysis”). Both women are obsessed in marrying a man named Ernest because they believe the name “inspires absolute confidence.” The name denotes truthfulness and honor; this is however ironic as both men, Jack and Algernon, have both forged their identities. The women’s blind love distorts their judgment (“The Importance of Being Earnest, Character Analysis”). Earnestness, which denotes sincerity, rivals morality in Wilde’s play. The word may be used in several ways, such as lack of excitement, seriousness, self-importance, self-satisfaction, arrogance, superiority, and responsibility, all of which Wilde sees as trademarks of the Victorian nature. When the word “serious” is used in the play, it may mean insignificant, as when Algernon mentioned that persons are “shallow” when they are not “serious” about their meals. For Gwendolen, style and not sincerity is the most important thing. For Wilde, the word “earnest” embraced two dissimilar but connected concepts: the concept of false truth and the concept of false morality, or moralism. The moralism of Victorian culture, its arrogance and pretentiousness, propels Algernon and Jack to create fictitious doubles in order to flee from the parameters of decency and aristocracy. On the other hand, decency may take another meaning and may deviate from the real meaning of the word ~ could be decent or indecent, for that matter. One major inconsistency of Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is the unfeasibility of really being either earnest or moral even as asserting to be so. The characters who display insignificance and evilness are those who are actually earnest and virtuous (“Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest”, 20). Shakespearian romances generally tell the tale of lovers who under the pressures of their way of life or society’s intervention are fated to temporarily part; struggle and mend differences; and finally work together for the fruition of confessed sincere love. Happy endings often show poetic impartiality, compensating the good and castigating the bad. Both the Twelfth Night and The Importance of Being Earnest are valued beyond plain romantic comedy, exceeding the audiences’ expectations of comedy style, manners, humor, and satire. Wilde’s and Shakespeare’s masterworks are usually in classy settings, with characters delivering intellectual humorous exchanges, getting involved in social conspiracies such as heartaches, being scrutinized on matters of fashion, etiquette, and behavior by the disapproving high society, featuring typical and realistic characters such as jealous lovers, scheming maids, and fools ~ with only the audience truly understanding the silliness of the scenes (“Drama for Students”). Works Cited “Drama for Students.” The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. Gale Engage. 2013. 4 March 2013. Fores, Vicente. Shakespeare in Performance, Twelfth Night. April 26th to 3rd May 2007. Universitat de Valencia. Meineck, Peter. The Importance of Being Earnest. Aquila Theatre. 12 October 2011. “Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest.” The English Theatre Frankfurt. Resource Pack For Teachers – Comprehensive Version. Arbeitsmaterialien für den Englisch - Unterricht (Oberstufe Gymnasium). n.d. 4 March 2013. “The Importance of Being Earnest, Character Analysis.” Cliff Notes. n.d. 4 March 2013. The Works of William Shakespeare. Charles Night, ed. New York: G. Routledge and Sons, The New York Public Library, 2006. “William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night Study Guide.” Orlando UCF Shakespeare Festival.n.d. Read More