I just realised. All my life, I have just been waiting to read something good like Oscar Wilde.
I've found him.
Whoa! Just watched the movie adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest on Channel I and I absolutely love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wow... truly a wonderful piece of satire on society's trivalities and pretence. Bloody... I can't take all this wit and humor anymore.. the
play on being Earnest is just so classic! The play ends with Jack telling Lady Bracknell that he has realised for the first time in his life, the importance of being earnest. While he thought all along he was lying, he actually was telling an unknown truth and the importance of being ernest/earnest earned him a wife. It's ironic also how he had intended to "kill off" Ernest- a ficticious character he had invented that now it is important to be the "Ernest".
I know it's hard to follow what I am saying, I can't put it across well enough anyway.
I simply love the absurdity and trivality. Lady Bracknell insists that Jack's name be Ernest before she marries her daughter, Gwendolyn to him. Hmm... like for what!?!? Then finally, Gwendolyn and Cecily who wanted to marry "Ernest" cuz he was "Earnest" married their respective "Ernests"- Jack and Algy who took on the false name of Ernest and therefore were not Earnest at all! So confusing ah! Bet you don't know what I am talking about but this play has so many twists and turns and pun and fun you gotta read/watch it to really feel it in you!
Well to someone who is often engaged in the trivalities of life, this line is a perfect articulation of my mood for a long time.
JACK. I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting clever people.The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.
Whoa... this quote is simply timeless. Long live trivialities- the important things in my life that deserve a bloggin' mention. Have I ever displayed a wee sense of boredom in meeting clever people in my blog. Yes, meeting them makes me shut my petals up, whiters my blossoming and reduces me to a bud. I hate to say anything clever and feel sore not being able to say it when I need to. Yes my high sense of self esteem. That's why my preoccupation with trivalities. Losing the battle and running away from life.
xxx
I think Lady Bracknell is CLASSIC (comic).... Like the part she opposes Cecily (Jack's ward) and Algy (Lady Brack's nephew)'s union but changes her mind once she hears of her fortune. The play's take on marriage as a social tool to climb relations hmm.. not the first time we see that- in Pride & Prejudice it occurs once. Seems pretty prevalent in British Classics, and therefore the reality it reflects of British Victorian society.
I don't have anything else to say about this cuz I can't say it properly. If you've got the chance. Please get hold of the vcd with my fav British Actor of all time (not Hugh Grant) but
Colin Firth. Alternatively catch it in the theatre, if it ever comes out.
I'd like to try a dry martini cuz that would fit perfectly well with my obsession with dry, British wit.
I've been waiting for a Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray shall be next after I finish my Tess of D'ubervilles by Thomas Hardy.
Well, quote-worthy moments apart from the many others I have quoted on my blog before. Classic Quotes here goes:
ALGERNON. All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
JACK. Is that clever?
ALGERNON. It is perfectly phrased! and quite as true as any observation in civilised life should be.
JACK. I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting clever people.The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.
GWENDOLEN. ......... Cecily, mamma, whose views on education are remarkably strict, has brought me up to be extremely short-sighted; it is part of her system; so do you mind me looking at you with my glasses?
ALGERNON. If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.
ALGERNON. Well, one must be serious about something, if one wantsto have any amusement in life.
GWENDOLEN. The fact that they did not follow us at once into thehouse, as any one else would have done, seems to me to show thatthey have some sense of shame left.
CECILY. They have been eating muffins. That looks likerepentance.
GWENDOLEN. [After a pause.] They don't seem to notice us at all.Couldn't you cough?
CECILY. But I haven't got a cough.
GWENDOLEN. They're looking at us. What effrontery!
CECILY. They're approaching. That's very forward of them.
GWENDOLEN. Let us preserve a dignified silence.
GWENDOLEN. This dignified silence seems to produce an unpleasanteffect.
CECILY. A most distasteful one.
GWENDOLEN. But we will not be the first to speak.
CECILY. Certainly not.
GWENDOLEN. Mr. Worthing, I have something very particular to askyou. Much depends on your reply.
GWENDOLEN and CECILY [Speaking together.] Your Christian names are still an insuperable barrier. That is all!
JACK and ALGERNON [Speaking together.] Our Christian names! Is that all? But we are going to be christened this afternoon.
GWENDOLEN. [To JACK.] For my sake you are prepared to do this terrible thing?
JACK. I am!
CECILY. [To ALGERNON.] To please me you are ready to face this fearful ordeal?
ALGERNON. I am!
GWENDOLEN. How absurd to talk of the equality of the sexes! Where questions of self sacrifice are concerned, men are infinitely beyond us.
JACK. We are. [Clasps hands with ALGERNON.]
CECILY. They have moments of physical courage of which we women know absolutely nothing.
LADY BRACKNELL. ..... As a matter of form, Mr. Worthing, I had better ask you if Miss Cardew has any little fortune?
JACK. Oh! about a hundred and thirty thousand pounds in the Funds. That is all. Goodbye, Lady Bracknell. So pleased to have seen you.
LADY BRACKNELL. [Sitting down again.] A moment, Mr. Worthing. A hundred and thirty thousand pounds! And in the Funds! Miss Cardew seems to me a most attractive young lady, now that I look at her. Few girls of the present day have any really solid qualities, any of the qualities that last, and improve with time. We live, I regret to say, in an age of surfaces. [To CECILY.] Come over here, dear. [CECILY goes across.] Pretty child! your dress is sadly simple, and your hair seems almost as Nature might have left it. But we can soon alter all that......
LADY BRACKNELL. To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out eachother's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.
Life Goal
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