The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (Questions with Answers)

Comedy of Manners.

      A comedy is a play with happy ending and aims at making people laugh at certain follies, vanities, hypocrisies and weaknesses of people for reforming society. Comedy of manners is a comedy that deals with the behavior of people. This kind of comedy was a dominant genre of drama during the restoration period. There is a satiric tone in such comedies. The use of witty language is meant to highlight the artificial values of the people concerned. Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest also belongs to this category of plays. Read More...

The Importance of Being Earnest as a comedy of Manners.

   The Importance of Being Earnest is an enlightening example of comedy of manners as it makes fun of the behavior of Victorian aristocracy which attaches great value to hypocrisy, frivolity, superficiality, artificiality and money mindedness. The Victorian upper class society judged things by appearance and the present play makes us laugh at those values by turning them upside-down through a language which is satirical, funny and witty. Different characters in the play embody those values and provide us insight into the upper-class society of the Victorian period. The play centers on the questions of identity, love, marriage and money. Read More...

    Sophocles: Oedipus Rex       Oedipus Rex vividly dramatizes the tension between individuals and their interdependences as well. As the city of Thebes has been paralyzed by a plague the people expect something from the king to end their suffering. Read More...

    Aristophenes: Lysistrata     Aristophanes takes up the issue of war in the cities of ancient Greece and satirizes war for the loss of life and property it has caused. Through a conflict between the sexes he exposes the futility of war and the devastation it has brought about. Read More...

    Lady Gregory: The Rising of the Moon     Lady Gregory’s The Rising of the Moon is an explicitly political play dealing with the relation between England and Ireland trying to fight for freedom from English rule. Read More...

    William Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream     Shakespeare explores the issues of inconsistency in human nature and relation by creating a world of dream where the characters behave in an irrational way by running after dreams, fantasies and romance that lead to anarchy, chaos, and confusion. Read More...

      William Shakespeare: Hamlet       Hamlet is a revenge tragedy written in the line of Roman senecan tragedy. It is the tragedy of reflection and moral sensitivity. The protagonist is very reflective and too sensitive thus unfit for taking revenge. Read More...

    William Shakespeare: The Tempest     The play’s major focus is on Prospero’s quest for perfection, knowledge and power. He devotes himself to learning even to the extent of neglecting his duties as a ruler. Read More...

    William Congreve: The Way of the World     Restoration drama had to depict the contemporary times. There was a moneyed class with a search for pleasure. Money became the main concern of the people. Read More...

    Anton Chekov: The Cherry Orchard    The history of the early twentieth century Russian society is the history of social transition, transformation. The late 19th century Russian society was struggling to be free from the shibboleth of the dying feudal aristocracy. Read More...

    Eugene O'Neill: Desire Under the Elms    O’Neill presents women as victims of male’s greed and cruelty and at the same time it is women who are driven by a desire for property. They are shown as lustful too. To bring out this image of women O’Neill resorts to myth, symbol and the technique of naturalism. Read More...

    Samuel Beckett: Endgame       Beckett’s play Endgame belongs to the theatre of the Absurd as it views life as meaningless and beyond human rationality to understand. It shows the influence of existentialist philosophy Read More...

    Arthur Fugrad: The Master Harold ::: and the boys     Athol Fugrad’s Master Harol…. and the boys is written in South African context and the issue of apartheid is central in the play. he title itself is hierarchy creating as it uses Master to refer to the white and boys to the blacks. Fugard explores the dehumanizing effect of apartheid and urges for racial reconciliation and co-existence. Read More...

    Marsha Norman: Night, Mother       Marsha Norman’s one act play Night Mother is basically about Jessie, who is preparing for suicide which may have been provoked by her relation with the other people and the failure of communication and lack of understanding in that relation. Read More...

   Beckett: Murphy   Murphy is Beckett's most important novel that expresses the sense of alienation in different level. Murphy's mental alienation, social alienation, physical alienation and contextual alienation are some major aspects of discussing the sense of alienation in Murphy. Read More...