The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar WildeMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
As my wife designs a logo for a community theater staging this soon, I thought I’d give it a quick reread.
Yikes!
Wilde specializes in one-liners and witticisms, and often has characters say absurd and contradictory things, which they mean quite “earnestly.” That’s the surface level silliness of the play.
The next level down, is the Shakespearean plot of mistaken identities and mixups – done quite well.
Here we also find the typical clash between social convention and personal romance.
I think the deepest level message is that one should not pretend to be someone or something other than who you are. It is important to discover and be earnest. This sounds good, but Wilde meant it - and the world has taken it – to very bad places. Sincerity OVER all else: external morality, sacrificial love, the fruit of the Spirit. None of that matters. Being true to yourself is everything. Disregard and hold in contempt anything else that one might seek to impose upon you. To not be and do what you feel is the ultimate blasphemy, for we have made our own feelings and opinions our idols.
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