VI. Questions and topics for discussion.

III. Give the summary of the play (in writing).

IV. Expressions to be remembered:

invaluable p.20 confirmed p.21 sha1low p.22 shilly-shallying p.24 fascination p.26 to alter p.31 immateria1 p.33 o blurt things out p.36 to get smb. into a serious scrape p.40 to lay particular stress on smth. p.41 to deceive p.45 hypocrisy p.46

sensib1e p.48 to lead smb. astray p.48 to drive smb. frantic p.54 to do smb. great credit p.57 to inspire confidence p.61 to lift a load from smb's mind p.65 to entrap p.66 to venture p.72 agitated p.73 ordeal p.78 self-sacrifice p.78 to brand p.89 coincidence p.90 eccentric p.93

Reproduce the situations from the book where they are used.

V. Paraphrase the following:

Act 1: Algernon: I have always suspected you of being a confirmed and secret bunburyist

Jack: The late Mr. Thomas Cardew, an old gentleman of a very charitable and kind disposition.

Act 2: Chasuble: I myself am peculiarly susceptible to draughts.

Cecily: A gross deception has been practiced on both of us.

Act 3: Gwendolen: There are principles at stake that one cannot surrender.

Jack: It’s only fair to tell you that according to the terms of her grandfather’s will Miss Cardew does not come legally of age till she is thirty-five.

VI. Questions and topics for discussion.

Act 1. 1/ Describe the meaning of O. Wilde’s neologism “bunburyist” as you understand it. Is Jack a bunburyist? What makes Algernon and Jack invent an invalid and profligate brother?

2/ Comment on the manner in which Lady Bracknell interviews Jack Worthing. What seems most important to Lady Bracknell? Why is she displeased to learn Jack’s town address? What does she call minor matters? Is there anything dishonourable about Jack’s Background?

3/ Speak on the main features of the most typical representative of the London upper crust. What are her views on the marriage? How did she educate her daughter? What does she regard as an assured basis for a recognized position in society?

Act 2. 1/ Speak on the system of education as it is depicted in the play/ Is Cecily a diligent student? Does Miss Prism possess the necessary qualifications to be a tutor? Which part of her conversation with Dr. Chasuble points to her ignorance?

2/ Discuss O. Wilde’s attitude to religion. How does he make fun of Dr. Chasuble’s sermons?

3/ Analyse the structure of the act. How does the author achieve the effect of the perfect timing of the action? Why do the main characters often say the same thing in a different wording? What helps O. Wilde to produce a humorous effect upon the readers? What scenes seem the funniest to you?

Act 3. 1/ Draw a parallel between the contents of Cecily’s and Gwendolen’s lines. Do the girls show any originality in their manner of thinking? What are their dreams and ideals? How do they choose their future husbands? What seems to them most important in this respect?

2/ High society as depicted in the play. Prove that hypocrisy and tyranny of public opinion are the leading characteristics of life in high society.

O.Wilde

There are few English playwrights who enjoyed such a success with the public as Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), one of the wittiest people of his age as he was called in his day.

Nineteenth-century English drama can hardly be considered of any importance in the history of English drama. Foreign and especially French influence dominated on the English stage. It took several decades of varied effort, on the part of the more creative playwrights, such as B. Shaw, for instance, to free English drama from the guffawing farce and ranting melodrama. 0. Wilde was among the first to attempt this task.

O. Wilde gained popularity in the genre of the comedy of manners though with him its tone is of a satire which has lost its sting. It is only fair to say, as one of Wilde's critics aptly did, that "satire, whether in the comedy of manners or in any other genre of satirical literature, must be founded on more than a dandy's mere tastes and opin­ions; from some sounder moral philosophy, it must derive a necessary bitterness without which the satirist remains ineffectual while the manners of his comedies not yet structurally integrated, seem superimposed as mere ornament on an arbitrary plot of farce."

The aim of social comedy, Wilde wrote, is to mirror the manners, not to reform the morals, of its day. Art in general, according to Wilde, is in no way connected with the reality of life; real art incarnates neither social nor moral values. It is the artist's fantasy that produces the refined and the beautiful. So it is pointless to demand that there be any similarity between reality and its depiction in art. Thus he comes to preach the "art-for-art's sake" doctrine.

True enough, real art and the bourgeois way of life are incompatible, but that does not denote that art and life in general are to be disintegrated, as Wilde erroneous­ly thought drawing a wrong conclusion about the incompatibility of art and realism.

Wilde's ethics and aesthetics were an expression of the profound crisis of bourgeois art in general, and of bourgeois' aesthetics of the end of the nineteenth century in particular.

In his plays high society is not so much criticized as pulverized in Wilde's fun-machine of parody exaggeration. What his plays triumphantly demonstrate is the author's broad knowledge of the great drama of the past and a sound understan­ding of the problems of the modern theatre. This enabled him to write The Importance of Being Earnest, a box-office success, with the polished colloquialness and ease of speech, the perfect timing of the action and happy couples paired off in the last act. What is most striking about his style and manner of writing is the paradoxical form of expression. His paradoxes are based upon a sceptical altitude to the conventional ethical norms of the bourgeois way of life.

The play shows the author's revolt against the social conventions and the pet­tiness of high society for which he felt profound repugnance, since it was in this society that the tyranny of public opinion levelled individuality down to mediocrity. He repudiated the scale of values of his neighbours and his time attacking English habits and English institutions.

In his plays the author mainly deals with the life of educated people of refined tastes. Belonging to the privileged layer of society these people spent their time in entertainments but how absurd these entertainments were!

In The Importance of Being Earnest the author shows what desperately useless lives his characters are leading. Some of them are obviously caricatures, but their outlook and mode of behaviour are wholly characteristic of London's upper crust. Wilde rebels most earnestly against their limitedness and impregnable complacency. But though 0. Wilde strongly opposes hypocrisy, his opposition bears no effec­tive resistance, and he seeks no way out of the spiritual deadlock experienced by his generation.

O. Wilde, a bourgeois intelligent himself, was too closely connected with the society he made fun of; that is why the accusatory ring of his plays weakens from comedy to comedy, the strongest ring being expressed in An Ideal Husband.

Nonetheless by his irony O. Wilde objectively promoted the decline of society whose swaggering morals and ridiculous ideals he was repelled by.

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