PREVIEW： Chronicles #11 ｜ The Importance Of Being Earnest
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of Chronicles, we re talking all about the importance of being earnest by Oscar Wilde. We re joined by the Office Authority on the Choristers' Choirs' Harry Harrison to discuss the play, Dorian Gray, and the scandal surrounding it.
Transcript
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Hello, and welcome to this episode of Chronicles, where today we're going to be talking all
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about the importance of being earnest by Oscar Wilde. And kind enough to help me with this
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episode is the office authority on the choirs himself, Harry. Hello there. Did you know that
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Oscar Wilde was a frightful choir? A probable choir. No, definite choir. A certain choir.
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Yeah, definitely a choir. I heard it from the Marquess. Yes, Queensbury. Didn't like the choirs.
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No, didn't. Great disappointment. But that should be all the time that we actually have
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to dedicate to... Well, just very quickly. Okay, sure. One of the great tragedies of the
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Marquess of Queensbury is the fact that not only was his son, Alfred Douglas, having an affair with
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Oscar Wilde, but his other son was rumoured to be having an affair with the Prime Minister
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at the same time. And in fact, it's those rumours which some speculate was the reason the Prime
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Minister and the English government went so hard against Wilde, was to distract. Oh, really?
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Classic distraction technique. I did not know that about the other... Yeah. Wow. That's a rough
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life as a father, isn't it? And again, actually, another interesting fact. This is why I got him
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here. Another interesting factoid. I did lots of research into this, all right? And the video's
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nowhere near to being out yet. The script is done. It will be out sometime within this decade,
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I think. I have seen the script, by the way. It is real. It is real. Thank you. Thank you,
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you see. But the other thing was that Alfred Douglas later in life claimed that it was not a
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consensual relationship. Now, this might have been a tactic to try and divert from his culpability in
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the relationship. Or who knows? Perhaps he was groomed by Oscar Wilde unconsensually. That's one of those
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great mysteries. Yes. Yes. We'll never know. We'll never know. But... So let's start talking about...
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Well, actually, let's just... Before we even start talking about the play, let's just set the scene.
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So the play came out, first performance of Valentine's Day, 1895, a month before the famous
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libel case. Yes. I know that the Marquess was intending to disrupt the very first performance. He was.
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And throw rotten vegetables on the stage. And also stand up and tell the audience,
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did you know that this... Hey, right. Frightful choir. Sondamite. Sondamite.
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Yeah. So 1895. And this is, I must say, the first time I've actually read anything by Oscar Wilde,
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because I'm a philistine and I'm frightfully uncultured, you see. I know I have a copy of
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The Picture of Dorian Gray. My missus loves it. She thinks it's a wonderful book. Because it seems
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to have that sort of gothic quality to it of many Victorian and Edwardian novels. But I had not read
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that yet. And I had not read any of his plays prior to this. So that's my first experience.
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Well, so let's also just mention as well. So Dorian Gray, I believe, came out in about 1890.
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And then that whole period from 1893 until the importance being earnest, Wilde had no fewer
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than four smash hit plays on at the West End, right? So was it prior to Dorian Gray that he'd
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made his name as a very famous and popular playwright? Or was it after the success of that book that he
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He had written plays before Dorian Gray. However, these ones in this particular period of his life
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were by far the most successful. Before even Dorian Gray, he'd already been on lecture tours around
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America. And he was a very well-traveled man going to Paris and other such places, talking about his
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particular philosophy of aestheticism, which we'll talk about more in terms of the play and what it
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all means. But he was already very well-respected, a real titan of the age. Even the Prince of Wales
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had commented on the fact that, well, he hadn't personally met Wilde yet. And so he was really...
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He was somebody to meet. He was somebody to meet very much in his own time, which of course meant that
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Oh, yes. I mean, I remember it was after his conviction, which was completely self-inflicted.
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He didn't need to take a libel case. And he was clearly a very well-known socialite.
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And within socialite circles, it's very difficult to keep secrets. Very, very difficult to keep
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secrets, especially when you're a man like Wilde who loved to talk.
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Yes. And it was not particularly discreet in any of his excursions, nor the fact that he often spent
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time with the street boys of London. So, you know, he was the one who brought the defamation case
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against the Marquess within a single day, realized this was a terrible idea, and then got charged for
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it afterwards because enough evidence had come out against him in his own case that the Scotland Yard
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decided, well, we've got a case here. And I believe it was after that, he basically, after his conviction,
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he basically lived in despondence for the next five years after he'd been released from prison.
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There's some, strangely, for some reason, I just feel like there's some strange parallels.
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Obviously, the actual circumstances are different, and the details are different. But there's something
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weird to me that sort of like, it feels almost like how Nietzsche died, right? Because Nietzsche
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goes crazy in the 1890s, spends the last 10 years of his life in despondence and without being able
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to look after himself, and then dies in 1900. Wild self-inflicts a massive own goal against himself,
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spends the last five years of his life in despondence and dies in 1900 as well. That's just a weird
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little connection my brain has made. Feel free to roast me in the comments over it.
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Wild versus Nietzsche, who would you rather still have?
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Well, they both feel rather different places in society, really.
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They do, they do at that. So, okay, so the play The Importance of Being Earnest was first performed
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at St. James's Theatre. And this is just something as well that I really wanted to talk about in terms
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of the Victorian theatre scene at that time as well. Because, of course, what we're dealing with
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here, in many ways, not that anyone would have, not that the common man would have been aware of it
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at the time. But really, you're dealing with theatre in that final turn of into the 20th century,
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that is kind of the unrivaled form of mass entertainment for the masses, since all of time,
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all the way back to ancient Greece. If you wanted to see live performance, if you wanted to go out
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and have entertainment, you would go and watch a show. And obviously, in the few decades to come,
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you had cinema and then television. And all of a sudden, that monopoly that just live performance
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had had, is all obviously going to be broken up. And now, theatre here in the, you know, sort of
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20, 21st century. In the heartland of fantastic theatrical performances, really.
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Yes. Yes. And so, with St. James's Theatre, but all of these different theatres around London,
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they all had some speciality that they were known for. So, you have these actor directors,
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actors, who were actor managers, who both managed their own particular theatre, and would act in the
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plays, and would decide what plays were put on, and were very much responsible for cultivating
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the image. So, when you went to a St. James Theatre, you knew exactly what type of play you were
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getting. You were going to get a society drama. You were going to get a comedy of manners, in the same
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way that if you were going to Covent Garden, you knew you were going to get an opera. And if you
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went to Drory Lane, you knew you were going to see a melodrama, right? So, they all had their own
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particular place. And the types of people who were going to the theatre, of course, around this
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time, were largely the rich, largely the middle classes, although it was becoming more accessible
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to the working class people as well. And in a few years' time, you'll see just
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the institution, the work of actors moving away from being those people who were the outcasts in
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society, and also the people who were just simply acting families, keeping it within the family,
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and more into a way where, because in the Victorian era, you had Henry Irving, most famous actor of his
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age, who was the first actor to receive a knighthood. And so, all of a sudden, you're looking at acting as
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something attractive. It's admirable. You're a celebrity.
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All of a sudden, it's been elevated. Which makes sense in the era, both in the Industrial
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Revolution, of the sudden explosion of the mass man, given the birth rate spikes that happened during
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the Industrial Revolution, the 19th century, and the fact that suddenly people were able to survive
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much more readily because of the development of new medication, meaning that childhood mortality rates
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just dropped off of a cliff and kept dropping until we reached the point that we're at now.
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And also mass media, where the newspaper becomes something that is regularly seen all across the
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country and is easily accessible to people. So, and within those newspapers, you get something like
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the theatre review columns and such. So, all of a sudden, you're reading about these people. They're elevated
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on this new form of media, which makes everything seem larger than life, and it expands everything.
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So, of course, you're going to get a new rise of celebrity, where, you know, before there were
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always like famous people and celebrities. Now, I would imagine it seemed much more attainable
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all of a sudden. And at the same time, with the development of technology, all the more glamorous.
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Absolutely. Absolutely. Which is definitely something I'll talk about in another chronicle.
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And then with something like the Oscar Wilde case, you also get the salacious looks on the inside
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lives of celebrities, which comes with its negatives, yes. Oh, definitely.
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But I would imagine it also came with a very similar tabloid mentality that we have now,
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where it's, look at how much fun you can have. Look at the excess and hedonism that comes with this.
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And especially to working class people struggling, that can look very attractive.
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It can. It can. It can certainly have its allure. So let's begin talking about the play.
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Well, the first thing to say is, one of the things that I really like about the importance of being
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earnest is that you can just watch it or read it as pure entertainment, right? It is one of those
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plays where you don't feel like you're constantly being bombarded with moral messaging. Even though
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there are very characters who constantly give their opinions on things, you never feel like
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these opinions are so firmly held, right? Like Algernon is just full of just pithy comments
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everywhere. And they overload you to the sense that you don't really care what any of them are.
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It's more about the fact that they sound witty. Well, yes, that's something that I noticed,
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that there's a sort of languid cynicism to everything in this play, where nobody can take
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anything seriously, except for the characters that are overtly caricatures of the stuffy matriarch
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archetype. Even towards the end of the play, the one priest who's depicted in it turns out to not be
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as stuffy as the old lady who wants nothing more than her daughter to, sorry, yeah, her daughter to
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be married off to only the most eligible of bachelors who needs to meet all of these very
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fine, detailed requirements, which almost seems incredibly unreasonable. And I can't help but feel
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that Oscar Wilde, given that he was a socialite who, you know, went around all of these different
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social circles and interacted with all of these people, had very particular people in mind when
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he was writing these characters. This felt almost like a personal attack on whoever it was that he
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was writing about and had in mind on this. Because I imagine there might have been a few people who may
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have seen this play and gone, hold up, hold up, old Oscar, me boy. They're doing the DiCaprio meme,
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just like pointing at them. Wait a moment. That's me. So there is that element of pure
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entertainment. And I will say that this play, even though I only read it, I didn't get a chance
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to watch an adaptation of it. It felt like the words were just jumping straight off of the page.
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Even reading it, it was snappy. It was fast paced. There were rapid fire quips and little pithy
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comments that made it feel very witty. And it was very witty. It was very entertaining
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and comedic. But again, there was something that I brought up yesterday to you, which is that due to
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the cynicism of it, the lack of seriousness and the fact that there was never a serious moment in
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the whole thing, everything constantly had to be, everything had to be undercut with a joke.
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It felt in its own strange way, don't crucify me for this, because this is the only play of his
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that I've read. And I'm sure with a literary novel like Dorian Gray under his belt, that he could
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write serious narratives. It felt almost like a precursor to Joss Whedon.
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I don't even understand the physics of how my toes hurt.
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And James Gunn and the modern MCU style writing, obviously a much higher quality than that.
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And a much more English character. It's not like something would happen and then the character
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was like stage director to look to the audience and go, well, that just happened.
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It was nothing like that. But everything was constantly being undercut. The characters' trials
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and the characters' emotional faults and the difficulties they were experiencing weren't
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But at the same time, this is very clearly a comedic satire.
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So the characters are, you are supposed to sort of have a somewhat scornful look at these
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No, I entirely agree with you. And I think part of the reason that the play gets away with
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that is because in the grand scheme of things, the stakes aren't exactly that high.
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Right. This is the thing. Like nothing really within the play.
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This could be happening in total isolation and the world would know nothing of it and
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it would be no consequence. This is just two men. So we've got Jack and we've got Algernon.
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And that's what I was not expecting the name of the play to be a literal pun on the names
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that they're trying to use to win over these women in the play as well.
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Yes. So you've got these two characters and one of the first things that comes about is
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that Jack comes to the city, comes to London to visit his good friend Algernon, who is a
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total socialite, lives on his debts, lives very, very comfortably.
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And as Lady Bracknell says, he has nothing, but he looks everything.
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And so he is, you know, a very eligible bachelor.
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But Jack has left his cigarette case the time before.
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And so all of a sudden what you have is Algernon is questioning Jack about where do you actually
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It's because as well, he knows Jack is earnest.
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And he's wondering why the cigarette case that Ernest is claiming to be his is actually addressed
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to a Jack Worthing, which seems like it may be a relation of Ernest Worthing.
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And then Ernest says, well, actually, I'm Jack.
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What I do is I have a name for the town and a name for the countryside, at which point Algernon
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That sounds like a euphemism and a half, doesn't it?
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Algernon has, in the same way that Jack, when he's in the country, says, oh, I have to go
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I have to go to the city because my frightful friend, my poor friend Ernest, my brother
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And Jack constantly uses this as a way to get out of his moral obligations in the countryside
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And Algernon uses, has made up this fictitious friend of his, Bunbri, in order that he might
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So he doesn't have to be at the dinner table with his aunt, Lady Bracknell.
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It's such an English problem, really, isn't it?
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Oh, I don't want to see Aunt Augusta, goodness, no.
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And so, but what you have here, this is the lives that these two men have invented for
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themselves, are really the start of the play's exploration of Wilde's philosophy of
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That is, that art for art's sake, and art should not endeavour to be truthful, it should endeavour
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And this is not me putting a judgment on it, this is just me explaining Wilde's position.
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It's almost a philosophy of pure superficiality.
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But in a way, I can see the merit in that, because aesthetics for aesthetic's sake is still
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beautiful, and it still inspires something and connects to the human condition.
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There's a question of, is there a point to anything if it isn't beautiful?
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It doesn't matter, to begin with, that Jack is basically just living a lie, right?
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He's living a lie, and he's going to the city, and he's getting out of all these moral
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But when you get to the point where he's being interviewed by Lady Bracknell, just to skip
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forward a little bit, and you come to learn that, well, actually, he was, he doesn't know
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who his parents were, he was found in a handbag, but it was a Victoria line, so maybe he'll
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And then the fact that he was basically taken by Thomas Cardew, Thomas Cardew died, and now
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he is all of a sudden the ward out of obligation to Cardew for his granddaughter Cecily.
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Jack is someone who has just had all of this responsibility thrust on him, whether he likes
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So it's a responsibility that comes with a hell of a lot of privileges.
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If I could have that country manor, I'd be perfectly happy.
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He earns a very tidy salary of about £8,000 per year on his investments.
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I did the inflation calculator on the Bank of England going back all the way to 1895.
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Which, again, to come back to the earlier point, makes his struggle seem all the more trivial.
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This man can basically live any life that he wants.
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Which, again, the interesting thing with Wilde being an asceticist and believing that art doesn't have to have a moral message.
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There is an underlying moral tone to this, which is that through choosing to be dishonest, these two characters, Algernon and Jack, have both created all of these problems, which end up at their doorstep.
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And it's only through deciding to be honest with people that they end up getting what they want.
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So there is actually a nice, tidy moral message wrapped up at the end.
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But then it's topped off with a pun where the play literally ends with him saying, I have now learned the importance of being earnest.
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And it feels so neatly wrapped in a bow and ending with the pun, it feels, again, almost cynical, almost like, in reality, this is a joke and they've learned nothing and you've learned nothing because they lied their entire lives.
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And just in this one moment of honesty, they got what they wanted.
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But now that they've got what they've wanted, both of their future wives are saying, oh, I hope you don't start becoming more truthful with me in the future, dear Algie.
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It would be rather boring and unpleasant of you to be truthful to me.
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