|
''The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People'' is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personæ to escape burdensome social obligations. Working within the social conventions of late Victorian London, the play's major themes are the triviality with which it treats institutions as serious as marriage, and the resulting satire of Victorian ways. Contemporary reviews all praised the play's humour, though some were cautious about its explicit lack of social messages, while others foresaw the modern consensus that it was the culmination of Wilde's artistic career so far. Its high farce and witty dialogue have helped make ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' Wilde's most enduringly popular play. The successful opening night marked the climax of Wilde's career but also heralded his downfall. The Marquess of Queensberry, whose son Lord Alfred Douglas was Wilde's lover, planned to present the writer with a bouquet of rotten vegetables and disrupt the show. Wilde was tipped off and Queensberry was refused admission. Soon afterwards their feud came to a climax in court, where Wilde's homosexual double life was revealed to the Victorian public and he was eventually sentenced to imprisonment. His notoriety caused the play, despite its early success, to be closed after 86 performances. After his release, he published the play from exile in Paris, but he wrote no further comic or dramatic work. ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' has been revived many times since its premiere. It has been adapted for the cinema on three occasions. In ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' (1952), Dame Edith Evans reprised her celebrated interpretation of Lady Bracknell; ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' (1992) by Kurt Baker used an all-black cast; and Oliver Parker's ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' (2002) incorporated some of Wilde's original material cut during the preparation of the original stage production. == Composition == After the success of Wilde's plays ''Lady Windermere's Fan'' and ''A Woman of No Importance'', Wilde's producers urged him to write further plays. In July 1894 he mooted his idea for ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' to George Alexander, the actor-manager of the St James's Theatre. Wilde spent the summer with his family at Worthing, where he wrote the play quickly in August.〔Ellmann (1988:397)〕 His fame now at its peak, he used the working title ''Lady Lancing'' to avoid pre-emptive speculation of its content.〔Raby (1988:120)〕 Many names and ideas in the play were borrowed from people or places the author had known; Lady Queensberry, Lord Alfred Douglas's mother, for example, lived at Bracknell.〔Ellmann (1988:363,399)〕 There is widespread agreement among Wilde scholars that the most important influence on the play was W. S. Gilbert's 1877 farce ''Engaged'';〔Denisoff (2001:66); Feingold, Michael, ("Engaging the Past" ); Hudson (1951:101–105); Jackson (1980:xxxvi); Koerble (1952:144); Pearson (1957:63); Raby (1995:28); Stedman (1996:151); Thompson (2006:255); and Williams (2012:156, 411)〕 Wilde borrowed from Gilbert not only several incidents but, in Russell Jackson's phrase "the gravity of tone demanded by Gilbert of his actors".〔Jackson (1980:xxxvi)〕 Wilde continually revised the text over the next months: no line was left untouched, and "in a play so economical with its language and effects, (revisions ) had serious consequences".〔Jackson (1997:163)〕 Sos Eltis describes Wilde's revisions as a refined art at work: the earliest, longest handwritten drafts of the play labour over farcical incidents, broad puns, nonsense dialogue and conventional comic turns. In revising as he did, "Wilde transformed standard nonsense into the more systemic and disconcerting illogicality which characterises ''Earnest's'' dialogue".〔Eltis (1996:177)〕 Richard Ellmann argues that Wilde had reached his artistic maturity and wrote this work more surely and rapidly than before.〔 Wilde hesitated about submitting the script to Alexander, worrying that it might be unsuitable for the St James's Theatre, whose typical repertoire was relatively serious, and explaining that it had been written in response to a request for a play "with no real serious interest".〔Jackson (1997:165)〕 When Henry James's ''Guy Domville'' failed, Alexander turned to Wilde and agreed to put on his play.〔 Alexander began his usual meticulous preparations, interrogating the author on each line and planning stage movements with a toy theatre. In the course of these rehearsals Alexander asked Wilde to shorten the play from four acts to three. Wilde agreed and combined elements of the second and third acts.〔Ellmann (1988:406)〕 The largest cut was the removal of the character of Mr. Gribsby, a solicitor who comes from London to arrest the profligate "Ernest" (i.e., Jack) for his unpaid dining bills. Algernon, who is posing as "Ernest", will be led away to Holloway Jail unless he settles his accounts immediately. Jack finally agrees to pay for Ernest, everyone thinking that it is Algernon's bill when in fact it is his own.〔 The four-act version was first played on the radio in a BBC production and is still sometimes performed. Peter Raby argues that the three-act structure is more effective, and that the shorter original text is more theatrically resonant than the expanded published edition.〔Raby (1988:121)〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Importance of Being Earnest」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|