The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

 

Title:  The Importance of Being Earnest

Author:  Oscar Wilde

Narrated by:  Full Cast Audio Adaptation featuring Tim Brooke-Taylor

Publisher: Spiteful Puppet

Length: Approximately 1 hours and 56 minutes

Source: Checked out with Hoopla through the Kewaunee Public Library.  Thank-you!

Do you like to read plays?  If so, what are some of your favorite plays to read?

I had watched The Importance of Being Earnest movie back when it came out in 2002, but I had never read the actual play.  @Deesreads put together a read along for The Importance of Being Earnest in June.  I listened to this full cast production, and it was delightful and a fun audiobook.

The Importance of Being Earnest is a madcap comedy of mistaken identities.  Jack Worthing is a wealthy man.  He was adopted by his uncle Thomas Worthing after being found at a train station.  He goes by the name Ernest while in London.  He falls in love with a young woman named Gwendolen who only agrees to marry him as she wants to marry a man named Ernest. 

The play moves on to Jack’s country estate.  He has a young ward named Cecily.  His friend Algernon arrives and calls himself Jack’s long-lost brother, Ernest.  Cecily and Algernon fall in love. The story all comes to a head when Gwendolen and Cecily meet and realize they are both engaged to Ernest.  The play solves this problem neatly in the third act.

This was a clever comedy and it reminded me of a Shakespeare comedy updated to Victorian times.  I really liked that the audiobook was a full cast production.  The voice actors were entertaining, and it helped me to realize who was speaking since I couldn’t see the actors.  There were many great one-liners that were witty and made me laugh.  I also liked the look into Victorian Society and the foibles of the upper class.  I thought the theme of double identity was very interesting particularly with Oscar Wilde’s sad life story.

I hope to someday see this play performed live!

Favorite Quote:  “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”

Haunted Tales Edited by Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger

 

Do you have a favorite ghost story, book, movie, or character?  I used to love Caspar the friendly ghost when I was growing up.  We are currently watching the show Ghosts on Paramount Plus.  My favorite ghost story is probably the Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

I was happy to be able to review Haunted Tales, Edited by Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger.  It is a perfect book for the season.  It is a great collection of “classic stories of ghosts and the supernatural.”  The book starts with an interesting introduction by editors Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger.  It discusses how the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century also brought about mass murder.  The Napoleonic wars killed more than four million people.  Those left behind were looking for new ways to communicate with their loved ones.  Ghost stories became a popular genre.  They were found in popular magazines and were especially popular at Christmas time, for example the spirits in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. They were published all year round though and not just for holidays.

I loved how this anthology included stories from well-known authors such as Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, and Virginia Woolf, but I loved even more that it included stories from authors that were popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth century but aren’t as well read now.  At the start of each story, there was a biography of the author. I like the biographies as much as the stories.  There were great footnotes throughout the stories to fill in the historical references. 

I found the stories to be fascinating and spooky.  They gave gothic vibes which would thrill Catherine Morland from Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.  All of these stories were new to me, and I was happy to finally read “The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde”.  I have to admit, “The Canterville Ghost” was my absolute favorite story in this collection.  It was both hilarious and heartwarming.  It was also beautifully written.  The Canterville Ghost is pretty proud of all of his shenanigans through the years, but when an American Minister and his family move into the estate, he can’t seem to scare them.  Worse still, the young twin sons start to terrify the ghost.  It is the daughter of the family though who really figures out the mystery of the Canterville Ghost.  I thought “They” by Rudyard Kipling was a poignant story especially knowing from the bio at the start of the story that he had lost his own young child. 

I also enjoyed the Gothic splendor of “The Cold Embrace” by Mary Elizabeth Braddon.  “He was an artist – such things as happened to him happen sometimes to artists.  He was a German – such things as happened to him happen sometimes to Germans.  He was young, handsome, studious, enthusiastic, metaphysical, reckless, unbelieving, heartless.  And being young, handsome and eloquent, he was beloved.”  He loves his cousin Gertrude, and she loves him.  They promise to devote each other until death, but while his love strays, Gertrude’s remains even after death. 

One last story call out was “M. Anastasius” by Dinah Mulock.  Charles Dickens himself thought it was the best ghost story ever written.  I enjoyed it.  It was also Gothic and haunting about two young lovers that are haunted by the ghost of the young woman’s guardian who was lost at sea. 

I loved in the notes for “The Canterville Ghost” that it discussed that the phrase in this story “England and America are two countries divided a common language” was first seen in this story although it is commonly attributed to George Bernard Shaw.  I had just seen this elsewhere lately attributed to Shaw and I thought this was interesting information.

I highly recommend this collection for lovers of all spooky tales!

Review Copy from Pegasus Books.  Thank-you! I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

July Posts for the Victorian Challenge – Oscar Wilde

As I’m sure most of you have noticed I am constantly running behind on the Victorian Challenge 2012. It’s been a busy time with my new job, my sister’s bridal shower a couple of weeks ago, and her wedding this weekend. I thought I would get a quick post about Oscar Wilde up so that July reviews could be posted. I still have posts about George Eliot and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that I need to get posted hopefully next week.


On that note, there seems to be a lot of confusion on where to put your posts. The standard had previously been to put your posts on the current month, no matter the author. I’m going to change that to put it on the current month and/or on the month of the author you read. You are allowed to post twice.

On to a very brief biography of Oscar Wilde . . . Oscar Wilde was a late Victorian novelist and playwright. Born in Dublin Ireland, Wilde attended college first at Trinity and then at Oxford. He had a romance with Florence Balcomb, but she married Bram Stoker rather than Wilde. Wilde later married Constance Lloyd in 1884 and together they had two sons. Wilde started in literature by publishing poems and working as a journalist. He later became the editor of The Woman’s World magazine. He wrote The Picture of Dorian Grey in 1890 and his seminal play, The Importance of Being Earnest in 1894. Wilde was tried and convicted for being a homosexual in 1895 and imprisoned. Released in 1897 he left Britain forever for France, where he died of cerebral meningitis in 1900.

If you are interested in writing a guest blog about Oscar Wilde or his works, please send me an email at laarlt78(at)Hotmail(dot)com.

Post your July/Oscar Wilde reviews below in the following format (Laura’s Reviews (The Importance of Being Earnest).