Starvard.Starvard.
Hello, my name is Finn, and I'm going to help you understand this book.
Here it is, explained like you are 10:
Two friends each invent a wicked alter ego named Ernest so they can escape their duties and misbehave in peace, and two young women are determined to marry a man named Ernest, specifically. Wilde's comedy runs on the most polished dialogue ever written, every line a little trapdoor. Underneath the jokes he is mocking every rule of Victorian respectability, beautifully.
Jack Worthing leads a double life: respectable in the country, and in London the brother of an imaginary sibling named Ernest, whose scrapes excuse Jack's trips to town. His friend Algernon does the same with an imaginary invalid, Bunbury. The trouble starts when both Gwendolen and Cecily fall for men they believe are named Ernest, since both dream of marrying an Ernest, and neither man is one.
Wilde's target is the whole Victorian performance of respectability: engagements treated as business deals, morality worn like fashion, and people caring far more about a name or a handbag's origin than about character. He attacks it with jokes, because jokes are the attack. Nearly every line inverts something: duty, love, death, even cucumber sandwiches.
It is still read and performed constantly because the dialogue has never been matched for polished nonsense; people quote it without knowing they are quoting it. Watch Lady Bracknell, who interrogates a suitor like customs inspecting luggage, and watch how the silliest revelations resolve everything in the final act.
Two young men each invent a wicked friend named Ernest so they can slip away and misbehave in peace, and two young women are determined to marry a man named Ernest and no one else. Wilde builds his glittering machine out of mistaken identity, cucumber sandwiches, and a baby once lost in a handbag. Nearly every line is a joke people still quote, and the wit has not aged a day since 1895. It is regularly called the funniest play in the English language.
The first chapter
Act I: Algernon Moncrieff’s Flat in Half-Moon Street, W.
Act II: The Garden at the Manor House, Woolton.
Act III: Drawing-Room at the Manor House, Woolton.
Time: The present.
John Worthing, J. P.
Algernon Moncrieff
Rev. Canon Chasuble, D.D.
Merriman, Butler
Lane, Manservant
Lady Bracknell
Hon. Gwendolen Fairfax
Cecily Cardew
Miss Prism, Governess
Source: Standard Ebooks. Published 1899 (first performed 1895). Author died 1900. Public domain worldwide. Share this book: WhatsApp