Comic spirit- romance in comedies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Comic spirit- romance in comedies - Essay Example Behind the superficial nature of Wilde’s play is a serious implication of self-righteous morality and hypocritical aristocracy too characteristic of the Victorian culture that to some extent brought about an end to his career as a highly acclaimed playwright in London. Wilde got enmeshed with a legal suit against his homosexuality that eventually led to his downfall ~ detention, impoverishment, divorce, exile and sadly, his death. Seven decades after his death, detractors, viewers and readers still consider The Importance of Being Earnest as an enchanting yet absolutely playful and shallow comedy, an outlook fairly echoing the way of thinking of an era wherein homosexuality is regarded as a forbidden subject. England’s homosexuality decriminalization in 1967 and America’s awareness of the gay society and particular interest in the undisclosed homosexual The Importance of Being Earnest is probably the most brilliant theatrical exhibition of identity crisis since Shakespeares Twelfth Night and at the same time as comical. It is a story of two young men, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, both wanting to escape from their real dull lives and from the social expectations of the English upper class, thus inventing imaginary personalities that provide each of them a suitable alibi for their individual secret adventures. Jack creates a fictitious brother â€Å"Ernest† and Algernon invents a friend â€Å"Mr. Bunbury.† These deceptions in the last part, however, threatened to ruin their romantic happy-endings and shake the aristocratic fascination for origin, sophistication and fine breeding (Meineck). William Shakespeare’s works have risen above excellence and became very powerful that deeply influenced Western literature and culture. His works were collected, continually adopted and studied in the academe and published in a variety of editions after his death and earned him a reputation as the