Comedy Flashcards
Seriousness and Triviality
-Wilde: ‘A Trivial Comedy for Serious People’.
-Serious and trivial are made equal and reversed.
-Many funny line simply reversal ‘ In matters of great importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.’ - Gwedolen.
-Perhaps reversal also mocks the great importance place on the usual, serious version.
Lady Bracknell - the comic villian.
- Stock Victorian dowager.
- absurd figure, one without compassion or tact.
- harridan full of pomposity and arrogance.
- ‘try and acquire some relations’ - to Jack.
-disapproval of ‘anything that tampers with natural ignorance’
-Wilde mocking snobbishness of upper echelons of society.
The Dandy
-Algernon - Wildean stereotype of the Dandy.
-doesn’t play the piano ‘accurately’ but that he ‘plays with wonderful expression’
-values placed on appearance and style.
-‘invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury’ - desire to escape responsibility and seek pleasure.
-Satirizes upperclass headonism and dismal of importance - invention of alter ego - common necessity in the masculine world of high society.
Miss prism - comical spinster.
-delight in ‘the three volume novel’
-disapproval of Ernest’s ‘shameful debts and
extravagance’
- more interested in her romantic novel than in the
baby for whom she was caring: the manuscript is safe in the pram; the baby is
left in a handbag.
How is Wildes comedy self-reflective?
-‘perfectly childish to be in deep mourning
for a man who is actually staying for a week in your house’ then when asked to leave ‘I certainly won’t leave you so long as you are in mourning’ - absurdity and inability to tell reality from fiction.
Draws attention to absurdity and plays artifice when jack says ‘I think it is
perfectly absurd’ and ‘The suspense is killing me’ - Gwendolen.
Settings and Social Commentary
Setting:
-This use of setting allows Wilde to comment on the excesses
and the idleness of the upper classes through a sharply ironic tone, perhaps best
exemplified by Lady Bracknell’s paradoxical belief that ‘a girl with a simple
unspoiled nature like Gwendolyn could hardly be expected to reside in the
country’.
countryside vs city life
-Cicely - time to call ‘a spade a spade’, Gwendolyn replies she has ‘never seen a spade’ and that it is obvious that their ‘social spheres have been widely different’.
-Shortly after - declare friendship - Wilde comments on fickle relationships in a time where everything is a matter of appearance.
Parodies of melodrama
‘Cannot repentance wipe out an act of folly? Mother I forgive you!’
-hyperbolic treatment of a serious subject creates comedy whilst
parodying attitudes of an outwardly pious society’s treatment of women.
Satire of modern society
‘where more than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read’
and attacks literary critics who ‘haven’t been to university’
- comic treatment
of censorship and criticism allows Wilde to satirise the attitudes that led to his
later imprisonment.
Complex Plotting
-Convention of farce
-Relative order of 1st Act
-Disorder of Jack killing off brother Ernest - unbeknown - Algy is posing as Cecily’s ‘Wicked cousin’.
-Cecily and Gwendolen - believe they are engaged to the same man - each finds the other ‘detestable’ - battle of wits - minutes later after discovering deception they become ‘sisters’.
-Comic tension of Jacks true identity and the identity of the owner of the handbag - climax of the play - true identities revealed.
Languge of seriousness and triviality
-Serious and nonsense - most common words in the play.
-Significant as all the seriousness is reduced to nonsense by the characters.
-Jack has ‘lost his parents’ - ‘To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both
looks like carelessness’ - homographic pun (spelled the same - but have double meaning) - pun on ‘lose’.
In what way is Wildes presentation of powerful women comical?
-Gwendolen - portrayed as very powerful woman - defies mother, has power of Jack both physically and in relationship.
-Idea of women with power could challenge Victorian coventions.
-Wilde creates humor in a contemporary context - showing a powerful woman having power over a weaker man.
-While some view this as challenging gender stereotypes - WIlde may actually just be using ‘Juxtaposition of the unexpected’ - the primary mechanism of effective comedy.
How was Wilde’s transgression of conventions comical rather than actually transgressive?
-Gwendolen still under control of her parents - they decide her engagement.
-‘an engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise’ - but it is a comic exaggeration, playing on the social convention (of girls not choosing who they marry) by taking it to an extreme.
-choice of language almost trivialises the idea of marriage and thus creates a comic effect to a contemporary audience, where marriage was seen to be of importance.
-perhaps it does point out issues with society, however does so with an eye to making the audience laugh (comic exaggeration) rather than to engender social reform.
Methods of Melodrama which are parodied?
-Clap-trap - hammy moralistic statement to button a scene while clearly seeking applauses (pretensious nonsesne -e.g. Algernon).
-coup de théàtre - sudden reversal of fortune that neatly resolves any conflict.
How does TIOBE conform to typical comedy of manners and how does it differ?
-Developed by Restoration dramatists.
Confroms:
-Fast moving verbal exchanges.
however
-pared with force of plots based on deception or cruelty turned these into aspects of farce.
Traditional comedy of manners - unscrupulous characters get there way - superior intelligince
-However IOBE - no one is intelligent, audience deprived of moral certainties - Lady Bracknell not presented as wicked woman.
-matter of preference rather than moral absoloutes.
-not required to care about characters or the outcome of the plot.
Slap Stick humour: Jack and Algy Scene 1
-Physical humor - more in tune with slapstick farce than the sophisticated verbal humor.
-Comedy arises from mismatch between slapstick school boyish humor and reasonably mature looking, well-spoken you men.
-Algy maintains physical superiority - holding onto cigarette case.
-Importance of physical humor - abundance of stage directions.
