Importance of Importance

I loved Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Due to the high level of dishonesty and other nonsense of the play, I would sooner call it The Impotence of Any Attempt at Being Earnest, but I digress.   I loved it, first off, for the way in which we studied this book, in a stress-free environment of 50 minutes of pure entertainment.  What more could I have asked for, than to do a daily dramatic, but entirely hilarious, read-through? From the first time I laid eyes on Wilde’s work, “I knew I was destined to love [it]” (Wilde 10).  Not only that, but our Dover publication saved a total of 34 trees! This play offered the best English experience for a solid week, and all the while I felt as if I decreased my carbon footprint in some convoluted way.  I also especially enjoyed The Importance of Being Earnest because of the witty humor, with such odd characters and such perfect one-liners.  Lady Bracknell served as a particularly great source of that ridiculous humor, especially when she demands that Jack “produce … one parent, of either sex, before the season is quite over” (Wilde 15).  The whole play left me in stitches, with such enjoyment and laughter only rivaled by a day earlier this year when Team Toast and I inhabited a particularly slap-happy mood and Ms. Serensky asked, “Do I have to check your bags for alcohol?” (Serensky). Turning to a serious note, albeit hard to do in such a whimsical, fun play, this play also offered good quotes on life itself.  Few and far between, Algernon asserts “the truth is rarely pure and never simple” (Wilde 6).  How true, Algernon, thank you for the words of wisdom.  I liked that this play, while being fun and hilarious, still had a legitimate point to offer, there still existed truth in its pages. 


p.s. http://www.playbill.com/multimedia/video/4582.html
All of you should watch this video.  Please excuse what explicit content it contains. The actors who played Algernon and Jack in Broadway's recent cast of The Importance of Being Earnest dress in their costumes and don their witty, over-the-top personalities, as they read through transcripts from Jersey Shore.  Whether or not you like the show, you're sure to be entertained by the odd combination of high-class Victorian Era aristocrats and the wild lifestyle of those on MTV's Jersey Shore.