While reading \u201cThe Importance of Being Earnest,\u201d I watched a play version of the text to follow along on YouTube. It is performed by Bethany Lutheran College (https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BWPftxsBPz0&t=4593s). It was only halfway through the play in Act II that I saw the divergence between both versions, which made me turn back to the introduction written by Vyvyan Holland. In the introduction, he writes, \u201cWilde originally wrote the play in four acts, as he had written his other three major plays. He submitted this form to George Alexander, who, with the object of making room for a \u2018curtain raiser,\u2019 as was usual in those days, asked Wilde to cut it to three acts… As Mr. Phillip Drake, who is responsible for this edition of Wilde\u2019s works, remarked, it seems a pity that George Alexander should have a permanent influence on the play\u201d (13). Vyvyan also notes how the three-act version is typically reprinted, published, and referred to. I became curious about the differences between both versions of the plays and their comparison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the four-act version of the play, Gribsby, a solicitor with many quips and amusing lines, issues a writ to Mr. Earnest Worthing, who is Algernon but actually Jack, for racking up an extravagant bill while dining. He would be incarcerated for twenty days if he could not pay his bill. Jack claims he has \u201cnever saw such reckless extravagance in all my life,\u201d ironic precisely because he is the cause of the extravagance and the bill when under his persona of Earnest (350). He ends up paying the bill when Algernon refuses to do so, praised for his \u201cgenerosity [which is] quite foolish,\u201d according to Miss Prism (352). As many have been saying in their blog posts, Wilde satirizes the aristocracy, but in the same subtle way as he did in \u201cAn Ideal Husband.\u201d Since this was the original play and Wilde intended for his audience of English high society members to experience this scene, it is a bold move because it shows how excess extravagance has legal implications, like being incarcerated. Although Jack can pay off the bill (a critique of aristocracy and how they can use money to get out of such situations), he was still under the threat of incarceration. I wonder what others think about this scene and how Wilde himself would view people reprinting the three-act-version, with the four acts primarily forgotten. It is also interesting considering this scene in the context of Wilde being incarcerated for gross indecency quickly after \u201cThe Importance of Being Earnest\u201d opened. How do incarceration and class status interact in this English society?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While reading \u201cThe Importance of Being Earnest,\u201d I watched a play version of the text to follow along on YouTube. It is performed by Bethany Lutheran College (https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=BWPftxsBPz0&t=4593s). It was only halfway through the play in Act II that I saw the divergence between both versions, which made me turn back to the introduction written … Continue reading The Four-Acts of “The Importance of Being Earnest”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4163,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4163"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":307,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions\/307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}