The Importance of being Earnest
Educators Packet
Target Audience: college
- The Importance of being Earnest- 3 acts no scene break down
- Cast of 5 men and 4 women
- Written By: Oscar Wilde in 1894
- First produced in 1895
- Setting: London , present
Plot Summary
The play begins in the flat of wealthy Algernon Moncrieff (Algy) in London's fashionable West End. Algernon's aunt (Lady Bracknell) and her daughter (Gwendolen Fairfax) are coming for a visit, but Mr. Jack Worthing (a friend of Algy's) arrives first. Algernon finds it curious that Jack has announced himself as "Ernest." When Jack explains that he plans to propose marriage to Gwendolen, Algy demands to know why Jack has a cigarette case with the inscription, "From little Cecily with her fondest love." Jack explains that his real name is Jack Worthing, squire, in the country, but he assumes the name "Ernest" when he ventures to the city for fun. Cecily is his ward. While devouring all the cucumber sandwiches, Algernon confesses that he, too, employs deception when it's convenient. He visits an imaginary invalid friend named Bunbury when he needs an excuse to leave the city.
Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen arrive. Algernon explains that he cannot attend Lady Bracknell's reception because he must visit his invalid friend, Bunbury, but he offers to arrange the music for her party. While Algernon distracts Lady Bracknell in another room, Jack proposes to Gwendolen. Unfortunately, she explains that she really wants to marry someone named Ernest because it sounds so solidly aristocratic. However, she accepts his proposal, and he makes a mental note to be rechristened Ernest. Lady Bracknell returns and refutes the engagement. She interrogates Jack and finds him lacking in social status. On her way out, Lady Bracknell tells Jack that he must find some acceptable parents. Gwendolen returns for Jack's address in the country. Algernon overhears and writes the address on his shirt cuff. He is curious about Cecily and decides to go "bunburying" in the country.In the second act, the scene shifts to Jack Worthing's country estate where Miss Prism, Cecily Cardew's governess, is teaching Cecily in the garden. Miss Prism sings Jack's praises as a sensible and responsible man, unlike his brother Ernest, who is wicked and has a weak character. She teaches Cecily that good people end happily, and bad people end unhappily, according to the romantic novel Miss Prism wrote when she was young. The local vicar, Canon Chasuble, arrives and, sensing an opportunity for romance, takes Miss Prism for a walk in the garden. While they are gone, Algy shows up pretending to be Jack's wicked brother Ernest. He is overcome by Cecily's beauty. Determined to learn more about Cecily while Jack is absent, Algernon plans to stay for the weekend, then make a fast getaway before Jack arrives on Monday. However, Jack returns early in mourning clothes claiming that his brother Ernest has died in Paris. He is shocked to find Algy there posing as Ernest. He orders a dogcart — a small horse-drawn carriage — to send Algy back to London, but it is too late. Algernon is in love with Cecily and plans to stay there. When Jack goes out, Algernon proposes to Cecily, who gets out a diary and letters that she has already written, explaining that she had already imagined their engagement. She has always wanted to marry someone named Ernest, so Algy, like Jack, needs to arrange a rechristening.
Just when it seems that Jack and Algernon couldn't get into worse trouble, Gwendolen arrives, pursuing Jack, and discovers that his ward, Cecily, is unpleasantly beautiful. In conversation, they discover that they are both engaged to Ernest Worthing. A battle follows, cleverly carried out during the British tea ceremony. The situation is tense. Jack and Algernon arrive, and, in attempting to straighten out the Ernest problem, they alienate both women. The two men follow, explaining that they are going to be rechristened Ernest, and the women relent and agree to stay engaged.
Character Break DownJohn (Jack/Ernest) Worthing, J.P. - The play’s protagonist. Jack Worthing is a seemingly responsible and respectable young man who leads a double life. In Hertfordshire, where he has a country estate, Jack is known as Jack. In London he is known as Ernest. As a baby, Jack was discovered in a handbag in the cloakroom of Victoria Station by an old man who adopted him and subsequently made Jack guardian to his granddaughter, Cecily Cardew. Jack is in love with his friend Algernon’s cousin, Gwendolen Fairfax. The initials after his name indicate that he is a Justice of the Peace.
Algernon Moncrieff - The play’s secondary hero. Algernon is a charming, idle, decorative bachelor, nephew of Lady Bracknell, cousin of Gwendolen Fairfax, and best friend of Jack Worthing, whom he has known for years as Ernest. Algernon is brilliant, witty, selfish, amoral, and given to making delightful paradoxical and epigrammatic pronouncements. He has invented a fictional friend, “Bunbury,” an invalid whose frequent sudden relapses allow Algernon to wriggle out of unpleasant or dull social obligations.
Gwendolen Fairfax - Algernon’s cousin and Lady Bracknell’s daughter. Gwendolen is in love with Jack, whom she knows as Ernest. A model and arbiter of high fashion and society, Gwendolen speaks with unassailable authority on matters of taste and morality. She is sophisticated, intellectual, cosmopolitan, and utterly pretentious. Gwendolen is fixated on the name Ernest and says she will not marry a man without that name.
Cecily Cardew - Jack’s ward, the granddaughter of the old gentlemen who found and adopted Jack when Jack was a baby. Cecily is probably the most realistically drawn character in the play. Like Gwendolen, she is obsessed with the name Ernest, but she is even more intrigued by the idea of wickedness. This idea, rather than the virtuous-sounding name, has prompted her to fall in love with Jack’s brother Ernest in her imagination and to invent an elaborate romance and courtship between them.
Lady Bracknell - Algernon’s snobbish, mercenary, and domineering aunt and Gwendolen’s mother. Lady Bracknell married well, and her primary goal in life is to see her daughter do the same. She has a list of “eligible young men” and a prepared interview she gives to potential suitors. Like her nephew, Lady Bracknell is given to making hilarious pronouncements, but where Algernon means to be witty, the humor in Lady Bracknell’s speeches is unintentional. Through the figure of Lady Bracknell, Wilde manages to satirize the hypocrisy and stupidity of the British aristocracy. Lady Bracknell values ignorance, which she sees as “a delicate exotic fruit.” When she gives a dinner party, she prefers her husband to eat downstairs with the servants. She is cunning, narrow-minded, authoritarian, and possibly the most quotable character in the play.
Miss Prism - Cecily’s governess. Miss Prism is an endless source of pedantic bromides and clichés. She highly approves of Jack’s presumed respectability and harshly criticizes his “unfortunate” brother. Puritan though she is, Miss Prism’s severe pronouncements have a way of going so far over the top that they inspire laughter. Despite her rigidity, Miss Prism seems to have a softer side. She speaks of having once written a novel whose manuscript was “lost” or “abandoned.” Also, she entertains romantic feelings for Dr. Chasuble.
Rev. Canon Chasuble, D.D. - The rector on Jack’s estate. Both Jack and Algernon approach Dr. Chasuble to request that they be christened “Ernest.” Dr. Chasuble entertains secret romantic feelings for Miss Prism. The initials after his name stand for “Doctor of Divinity.”
Lane - Algernon’s manservant. When the play opens, Lane is the only person who knows about Algernon’s practice of “Bunburying.” Lane appears only in Act I.
Merriman - The butler at the Manor House, Jack’s estate in the country. Merriman appears only in Acts II and III.
References to un-cast characters:
Mr. Thomas Cardew - the man who found and adopted Jack when he was just a baby.
Oscar Wilde (October 16, 1854 - November 30, 1900)
Oscar Wilde, celebrated playwright and literary provocateur, was born in Dublin on October 16, 1854. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford before settling in London. During his days at Dublin and Oxford, he developed a set of attitudes and postures for which he would eventually become famous. Chief among these were his flamboyant style of dress, his contempt for conventional values, and his belief in aestheticism—a movement that embraced the principle of art for the sake of beauty and beauty alone. After a stunning performance in college, Wilde settled in London in 1878, where he moved in circles that included Lillie Langtry, the novelists Henry James and George Moore, and the young William Butler Yeats.
Production History
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06022/640825-325.stm#ixzz1Q0eylXQP
But it's impractical to match wits and aphorisms with a man who once took a morning to contemplate the removal of a single comma from a poem and expended the afternoon reinserting it.
PPT's 'Being Earnest' a masterpiece - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_417936.html#ixzz1Q0fEslZe
Mary O’Regan
Community Lifestyle Magazine
10/13/09
Janet Preus
9/20/09
http://howwastheshowcom.ssl21.com/index.cfm/action/reviews.view/reviewKey/1207
So is the earlier scene between Ernest and Algernon, where Furr and Fontana establish their characters' committed insipidity. All four of the younger cast members, swanning about in Heeley's finery, capture Wilde's essence with the kind of efforts that look absolutely effortless. As might be expected, Ivey and Whitehead sail through the proceedings on the kind of technique they could bottle and sell at considerable prices. As Algernon's man, Lane, Paul O'Brien gets laughs by mere eye rolls, and as Cecily's attendant, Merriman, Tim McDonald acquits himself honorably.
David Finkle
Jan. 14 2011
http://www.theatermania.com/broadway/reviews/01-2011/the-importance-of-being-earnest_33129.html
Earnest tells the story of two friends living the high life in fashionable late Victorian England. Jack Worthing lives on a country estate with his ward, Cecily Cardew; he pretends to have a naughty younger brother named Ernest in London, which makes it easy for him to slip away for visits to the city (in the guise of this fictitious fellow "Ernest") whenever he wants to. As Ernest, he has befriended Algernon Moncrieff, who, it turns out, has devised a similar scheme of his own: he has a fake friend named "Bunbury" who lives in the country, and Algy goes to visit his imaginary pal, who is a terrible invalid, whenever he wants to get out of town. Jack is in love with Gwendolen Fairfax, Algy's cousin, but their marriage plans face a formidable obstacle in the person of Gwendolen's mother, Lady Bracknell: when Jack reveals that he was in fact a foundling (left in a handbag in a cloak room at Victoria Station), the society-conscious Lady Bracknell refuses permission for the match. Complications ensue, and there's also a slight subplot involving Cecily's governess, Miss Prism, and the local minister, Dr. Chasuble. All works out well in the end, of course.
Martin Denton
January 19, 2011
http://www.nytheatre.com/showpage.aspx?s=impo11057
5 critical thinking questions
- How much difference can Jack and Algy look? Seeing as they find out by the end of the play that they are actually brothers.
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In 1895 there was no inter-racial homes in London. How can you go about casting a Black actor or a actress as a main character? This could be for a production that is taken out of period and do in a modern setting making it easier to cast actors of color.
- how long is transportation between the town and country in London?
- What was the social Status of the man that found Jack as a baby? (this awnser will affect his social upbringing)
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what social class is Algy compared to Jacks social class?
- http://www.nytheatre.com/showpage.aspx?s=impo11057
- http://www.ericdsnider.com/theater/the-importance-of-being-earnest-1/
- http://classiclit.about.com/od/importanceofbeingearnest/fr/aa_importance.htm
- http://www.amny.com/urbanite-1.812039/theater-review-the-importance-of-being-earnest-4-stars-1.2607694
Program Notes
The Importance of being Earnest by Oscar Wilde is a great play of identity and how it can mean everything to someone and yet nothing to someone else. This entire play revolves around two men that are both trying to be someone that they are not. One of the main characters is called Jack though out most of the play. However, he does not know who he really is at all. This is because he was actually lost when he was a baby so he never knew who his real parents were. Though out this show you find how small the world actually can be at times. When Jack was a baby he was actually left in a hand bag at the train station and found by a man named Thomas Cardew who then became his guardian and raised him to be the man he is known as. Although when Mr. Cardew passes away he leaves behind his granddaughter who he leaves to Jack.
Due to the stress of having to take care of a young girl he has created this imaginary brother who goes by the name of Earnest as a reason to go in to town whenever he pleases. While telling his ward Cecily all these stories about his brother Earnest he does not know the tangled web that he has managed to get himself into. As for the time that he spends in town he goes by the name of Earnest. Until he realizes he cannot have what he wants due to this very complicated lie. During the first act of this play we find that Jack is in love with a young woman name Gwendolen whom he wishes to marry. So he decides that he must kill off his “brother” Earnest in order to have what he really wants until she tells him that she could not love someone who’s name is not Earnest. Not to mention Gwendolen’s mother will not hear of such a marriage due to the fact he is not of a high social class and does not own the type of property of wealth that she would like for her daughter.
While Jack has created this mess for himself his friend Algernon decides to start a mess of his own and only makes matter worse. While Jack is still in town Algernon decides he is going to the country to pretend he is Earnest and to meet Jack’s ward Cecily. Only to fall in love with her and realize that she can only love someone names Earnest as well. The confusion only gets worse when everyone ends up at Jack’s country house with both of the women believing that they are in love with this man named Earnest. When really they are in love with two different men all together and at this point they have to find out how this has happened.
While sorting through all of the confusion and chaos of the web of lies that both of the men have created, they both decide to be christened with the name of earnest in order to have the women that they love in their lives. However like everything else in this story their plans get interrupted when Gwendolen’s mother comes into the scene. Only to realize who Jack really is, when she finds that she knows Cecily’s Governess, what a small world this is becoming. Come to find out Lady Bracknell knew Miss Prism many year before and they had some catching up to do. Though this we learn a lot about everyone in this family and more.
By the end of this play you learn so much about these characters and how they fit together that you really feel like a part of their story. This makes for a great play that can really pull you in and make you want to know more buy slowly learning everything there is to know about each of these characters. This is a play that is not only funny but also has a happy ending that will make everyone think “wow after everything they went though.” I would suggest this show to everyone of all different ages and backgrounds.
