101. benear - July 16, 1999 - 7:35 AM PT
(Settings cont.)
10. Foulgut (also translated as "Foulstrand")
In the background a beautiful, wooded shore with flags flying from jetties, to which white sailboats are moored; villas, pavilions, kiosks and marble statues discerned along the shore, between the tree tops. In the foreground, a hillside scorched by fire; with patches of red heather; smoky tree stubs; pigpens and outhouses; an open-air gymnasium with apparatuses resembling instruments of torture; the quarantine station with fireplaces, furnaces and piping conduits. Between the shore in the background and the landscape in the foreground, a narrow strait. A white, dragonlike boat glides into the strait.
11. Faircove (also translated as "Fairhaven")
The above scene reversed; scorched hillside in the background; shore with casino and school in the foreground.
12. A beach on the Mediterranean
13. Fingal's Cave---The waves roll into the cave; the wind grows into a storm. The shipwreck scene.
14. The alley way outside the Opera House
15. Outside the Growing Castle. The castle burns; it blossoms into a giant chrysanthemum.
102. benear - July 16, 1999 - 7:36 AM PT
Synopsis to follow. But currently, I am typed out and the F&^%*$G Slavedrivers are at it again.
103. cllrdr - July 16, 1999 - 7:44 AM PT
Asthetes of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your mind-crushing 9 to 5 jobs!
104. benear - July 16, 1999 - 8:12 AM PT
I would like to correct #87. Shaw, of course, won the Nobel Prize for literature, not peace. mea culpa
105. Ronski - July 16, 1999 - 9:30 AM PT
F.Y.I.:
The Swedenborgian Church, aka The New Church
106. benear - July 16, 1999 - 10:40 AM PT
Thanks, Ronski.
Prologue:
The background represents cloudbanks shaped like disintegrating cliffs, dotted with castles and fortified strongholds. The constellations Leo, Virgo and Libra can be discerned in the firmament. In their midst, the planet Jupiter is visible, shining with a bright light.
The Daughter of Indra stands on the topmost cloud. She has a conversation with her father, The Voice of Indra. She has lost her way and is falling to earth.
Daughter of Indra: You spoke of Earth.....Is that the dreary planet, whose darkness is lit up by Mother Moon?
Voice of Indra: It is the heaviest and densest of the spheres that sail in space.
As for the inhabitants below, "Their mother tongue is discontent!"
The cloud drags the D of I downward, downward.
V. of I.: No, it is not the best---yet not the worst; its name is Dust, it rotates like the rest of them---that's why the people there are prone to dizziness, a thing betwixt plain foolishness and madness...Take courage now, my child, for this is but a test, a trial.
107. benear - July 16, 1999 - 10:48 AM PT
(The wings, which remain unchanged throughout the play, are stylized frescoes: a blending of interior, architecture and landscape.)
The D of I and The Glazier discuss the growing castle.
D. of I.: Tell me, father, why is it that flowers rise up out of dirt?
Glazier: [with piety] Because they do not thrive in dirt. That is why they are anxious to reach the light, so that they may blossom and die.
They enter the castle (The Officer's Room). The Officer is there. He is young, handsome and is impecable in his uniform. He holds a bouquet of roses.
D. of I.: The castle is a stronghold---it has seven walls---but ....it will be done!---Do you wish to be free, or don't you?
Officer: (he addresses D of I as "Agnes") To tell the truth, I don't know. Whatever I choose, it will mean suffering . Every joy in life has to be paid for with double its worth of sorrow.
D. of I. and The Officer speak of "liberation" and release into the light (as in go to the light).
108. benear - July 16, 1999 - 10:54 AM PT
A screen is drawn (D of I and The Officer freeze in their actions) to reveal The Mother. She is sickly. The Mother and The Father converse.
The Father: Kristina! Forgive me---for all I have failed in!
The Mother: Forgive you? For what?....But forgive *me*, my dearest! We have both tormented each other---and why? That's something we cannot explain....
The Father leaves. The Officer becomes Alfred (one of The Mother's sons) He and The Mother discuss the fact that Agnes (D of I) is devine.
The Mother is dying. She knows the son/Alfred/Officer's brother was wrongly punished for tearing the pages out of "The Swiss Family Robinson", a crime that Alfred committed.
109. benear - July 16, 1999 - 10:58 AM PT
Lina enters. She tells The Mother she can't go to the Christening because she has nothing to wear. The Mother offers Lina her cape. The Father sticks his head in and asks why The Mother is giving away the cape he gave her...to a servant girl.
The Mother: Oh this life of ours! When you do something out of the goodness of your heart, there is always someone who finds it ugly or bad. And if you do something good for *one* person, then someone else feels hurt. Oh, this life!
110. benear - July 16, 1999 - 11:04 AM PT
Next scene: A gate in a dilapidated wall that is also a monk's hood of giant proportions. The Portress sits by the gate. On the other side of the gate, The Billposter is cleaning the billboard.
The Portress is sewing a blanket of stars. D of I discusses with The Billposter that The Portress has lost the lover who took her dancing feet with him (The Portress was formerly in the ballet at the Opera).
D of I and The Portress discuss the sad state of humanity.
The Singer (a human) enters and she is crying. She rapidly exits.
D. of I.: Man is to be pitied!
The Portress: But here---her you see what a happy human being looks like.
The Officer enters, joyful.
The Portress: He is engaged to be married to Miss Victoria.
111. benear - July 16, 1999 - 11:10 AM PT
A lot of stuff ensues involving The Glazier, The Officer and a door with a four-leaf clover window in it.
D. of I.: Who is Miss Victoria?
Portress: She is his sweetheart.
D. of I.: There is truth in your answer---What she is to us and to others, means nothing to him. Only what she is to *him* is what she *really* is!
Humans "confess to The Portress and she bears (sews) their sorrows into her blanket (shawl).
The Daughter of Indra takes over the duties of the Portress, the better to learn about humans. She puts on The Portress' shawl.
112. benear - July 16, 1999 - 11:42 AM PT
The season changes as evidenced by the leaves falling off a lime tree.
The Officer enters. His air and beard are now grey. His clothes are shabby. He holds a bouquet of roses that are now just forked stems, no leaves, no petals.
He states that autumn is like spring for him because that is when the opera season begins and he will see his beloved Victoria again.
The Officer again ponders the door with the clover leaf window and the mystery that lays behind it.
The stage is lighted in fits and starts.
The Officer: [He accentuates the words as the lights go on and off] Light and dark; dark and light.
D. of I.: [Imitates him] Day and night; night and day...A merciful Providence desires to shorten your waiting. That is why the days fly, ever pursuing the nights!
113. benear - July 16, 1999 - 11:46 AM PT
The Billposter enters. He is a fisherman with a green dip net. He and The Officer talk about the mystery behind the door with the clover leaf window.
The Billposter and D of I talk about his dip net.
D. of I.: Let me tell you then! You had expected it to be what it turned out *not* to be. You wanted it to be green, but *not*---the green you got!
Billposter: You put your finger on it, lady! You know everything! That's why they all come to you with their troubles....I wish you would listen to *me*, too, sometime....
D. of I.: I will be happy to. Come and tell me, pour out your heart.
114. benear - July 16, 1999 - 11:53 AM PT
It is again Spring, according to the lime tree.
The Officer enters. He is an old, white haired man, dressed in rags, shoes worn out, he carries the stems of roses. He is still waiting for Victoria. he has a conversation with The Ballet Girl.
Officer: Don't go away yet, and you'll see what is behind that door. I've just sent for a locksmith!
Ballet Girl: It will really be interesting to see that door opened. That door and the growing castle. Do you know the growing castle?
Officer: If I do!---Haven't I been a prisoner there!
Ballet Girl: You don't say? Was that you? But tell me---why did they have so many horses there?
Officer: Why---it was a stable castle---
115. benear - July 16, 1999 - 11:58 AM PT
Enter first The Chorist then The Prompter. The Officer quizzes both if Victoria is coming and tells them to wait because the door will soon be opened.
The Glazier enters. He is not the locksmith, but agrees he can open the door.
Chorists dressed as Mastersingers and ballet girls attired as the dancers from Aida enter and all gather around the door.
The Glazier prepares to open the door.
Policeman: [Enters] In the name of the law, I forbid you to open that door!
Officer: Oh, Heavens, what a fuss there is whenever anybody tries to do something great and new! But we shall take this matter to court! I'll see a lawyer! Then we'll find out what the law says! I'm going to the Attorney!
116. cllrdr - July 16, 1999 - 12:51 PM PT
You know, I find it rather surprsing that "A Dream Play" isn't staged more often. Especially these days in light of spectacle-dramas like "Angels in America" and Robert Wilson's theater pieces. It's a field day for amibitious "visionary" director types.
117. ChristinO - July 16, 1999 - 1:13 PM PT
CMBoyce,
I'm glad you liked Woyzeck. Yes I have seen it staged. I'm holding off on this until Benear decides where he'd like to place it in his scheduled readings. While it's fresh in your mind I recommend renting Jacob's Ladder.
If you're all fired up right now though feel free to e-mail me and I'd be more than happy to discuss this with you. I need a sounding board for my thoughts on this.
Cocuddehy@hotmail.com
118. benear - July 16, 1999 - 3:06 PM PT
Before I start slogging through my synopsis again:
Celler, I was thinking the same thing. Especially since the technology of the theater has advanced enough that something close to Strindberg's vision or dream is now possible. I would envision a multi-media sort of thing. I was also thinking how cinematic the play is. It is very visual. And the CGI available today would make the morphing of the various props and people a cinch. Of course, I can hear it now: "You want to make an expressionistic non-linear three hour film about love and death, marriage, illness, man's inhumanity to man and insanity where some of the characters are spirits?" Who would go to such a thing?
Christin: since cmboyce has already done a synopsis and it sounds positively surreal, if not a tad expressionistic, I say why not discuss it now. Also I think you promised us some insight to "Ghosts" and "Miss Julie".
119. benear - July 16, 1999 - 3:17 PM PT
The scene changes to The Attorney's office. The gate remains in its place functioning as the entrance wicket in the railing that runs accross the stage. The Portress' room is the Attorney's private room. In the office, the lime tree is now barren and functions as a hat rack. The door with the cloverleaf window now hides book shelves with documents piled on them.
The Attorney's face speaks of untold sufferings. He is ugly and his countenance reflects all the crimes and vices he has been forced to come in contact with.
His two clerks are both infirm. One has lost an arm, the other is minus an eye. Everyone who collected to view the opening of the door remains on stage, seeming to be waiting to see The Attorney. D of I still wearing The Portress' shawl and The Officer stand downstage.
Attorney: [Steps forward to D of I] Tell me, my sister, may I have that shawl? I'll hang it inside, until I can make a fire in the stove---then I'll burn it with all its sorrows and miseries...
D. of I.: Not yet, my brother! First I want to have it completely filled! And above all, I want it to absorb all your agonies---all the confidences about crime and vice, about revilement and slander, about things wrongly gained...
120. benear - July 16, 1999 - 3:25 PM PT
The Attorney has a long monologue. The shawl is not big enough for all his miseries and sorrows. The wallpaper in his office is soiled with sins, his papers are filled with stories of wrong, his hands are black with people's anger, envy and suspicions, his clothes stink of people's crimes, etc.
But the worst thing he has to do is separate a married couple... reams and reams scribbled with accusations. He says, "What is it that you really have against your husband?---or your wife, as the case may be---then he---or she---stands mute, can't find an answer, doesn't know the cause at all!" Further, "People marry on an income of two thousand a year----when they need four thousand..." They borrow, they live their miserable lives, they die, nothing is left but debts. Who pays?
The Officer asks for Victoria. The Attorney says she has not left yet. The Officer pokes at the door.
Church bells are heard ringing.
121. benear - July 16, 1999 - 3:35 PM PT
It is university graduation. The Attorney is to receive his doctor of laws degree.
The scene is darkened and the setting changes to the chancel of a church. The same props serve different functions. The same cast of chorists and ballet girls perform different roles.
The backdrop is raised, baring a representation of the pipes of a huge organ. On each side are representatives of the four faculties: philosophy, theology, medicine, and jurisprudence.
The Attorney steps forward to receive his laurel wreath. The girls bearing the wreaths turn away. All withdraw leaving The Attorney and D of I alone.
The Attorney has been found to be unworthy. He and D of I discuss how men mistreat their fellow man. She says she will enlighten them. She observes the world is upside down, a backwards copy of the original.
She says the government pays the salaries of all four of the faculties, but Theology is attacked and ridiculed by Philosophy. Medicine is forever at odds with Philosophy and contradicts Theology. It is insane. The Attorney agrees.
Further, Jurisprudence is the servant of all, except the toilers. The Attorney says that Justice (capitalized) makes a mockery of justice (small j).
The D of I gives The Attorney a "more appropriate" wreath of thorns.
She plays the organ. Children, then women, then men sing.
122. benear - July 16, 1999 - 3:39 PM PT
The scene grows dark. The organ is transformed into Fingal's Cave.
D of I has observed how miserable and pitiful is the state of man. She asks if there is not anything in life to rejoice over?
The Attorney replies that yes, there is something sweeter than anything yet more bitter than anything: love---a wife and a home.
D of I wants to try it. She proposes to unite her destiny to that of the Attorney. She professes love for him. He describes all the difficulties that lie ahead, particularly the lack of funds will make life hard. They agree to marry.
123. benear - July 16, 1999 - 3:50 PM PT
The scene changes to the starkly simple private room of The Attorney.
Kristin is busy sealing every crack in the room with paste and strips of paper.
The D of I is suffocating.
The Attorney asserts the cracks must be filled because they let the heat out, which wastes money.
Things are more wretched and squalid than D of I thought they would be.
Little things (D of I doesn't like cabbage, The Attorney doesn't like fish) escalate to bickering about his dirt and filth and her disorderliness which further escalates to a violent argument over his newspaper which she has burned. Finally, The Attorney is deliberately tormenting D of I with a squeaky doorknob.
The Officer enters. He asks D of I to go to Faircove with him.
The Attorney has a long monologue about a hairpin. It is one but it is also two. How it functions when parallel and when crossed. And finally it is two when he breaks it. (an eloquent speech about the nature of marriage.)
The Attorney withdraws (divorce)
Next stop, Foulgut.
124. judithathome - July 17, 1999 - 9:51 AM PT
benear:
You are doing an outstanding job with this thread...I'm very impressed!
125. benear - July 17, 1999 - 10:21 AM PT
Thanks Judith. As I am in the middle of this, I keep questioning the wisdom of posting this long synopsis. I began to do it so that people who aren't familiar with the play or don't have time to read it, can still participate in the discussion.
I keep trying to find ways to shorten it, but the play is so dense with detail, irony and symbolism, I have great difficulty deciding what should be left out. I am beginning to feel like one of the characters, toiling in misery with no end in sight. But let it never be said that benear did not finish something he started....
126. benear - July 17, 1999 - 10:32 AM PT
Foulgut is as previously described in Message #101. The Quarantine Master, dressed as a blackamoor, walks along the shore. He and The Officer greet each other as old friends.
Foulgut is where sick people live. Healthy people live in Faircove. The Officer surmises that poor people live in Foulgut. The Quarantine Master enlightens him that rich people live in Foulgut. The rich gorge themselves on "goose liver and truffles and consumed so much burgundy.." that they have made themselves ill.
[An elderly dandy is pushed on the stage in a wheelchair. He is accompanied by a woman of sixty, an emaciated ugly old flirt, dressed in latest fashion. She is being attended by her lover, a man of about forty]
The QM and The Officer discuss how being in love with someone blinds us to their imperfections. The Elderly Dandy thinks The Old Flirt is beautiful.
The QM and Officer then discuss the fact the QM likes to disguise himself and go to masquerade balls as a way to forget cholera epidemics.
127. benear - July 17, 1999 - 10:38 AM PT
Enter The Poet for a mudbath.
Officer: In heaven's name! Why don't you give him a sun bath---or an air bath---instead?
Quarantine Master: Oh no---he is forever flitting about in the loftier regions---and so gets homesick for the mud occasionally....Wallowing about in the slime and dirt toughens the skin. Look at the pigs! And once he is toughened, he is immune to the stings of the horseflies.
Officer: This is a strange world! So full of contridictions!
The Poet: [Ecstatically] Out of clay the god Ptah created Man, on a potter's wheel, or lathe....[Skeptically] out of clay or something else---whatever it was!
he continues alternately ecstatic and skeptical.
128. benear - July 17, 1999 - 10:42 AM PT
Lina enters.
The Poet describes how she has aged and the effects on her beauty of bearing 5 children, drudgery, malnourishment and cruel treatment.
The QM covers the Poet's mouth and tells him to shut up.
The Poet says that that is what everyone wants but if he is silent, then everyone wants him to say something.
The D of I tries to find out who is so cruel to Lina, but Lina won't say.
129. benear - July 17, 1999 - 10:45 AM PT
The Poet and D of I discuss a party that is going on on the hillside. It is for Lina's sister who went astray, went to the city but now has seen the error of her ways and has come home.
Her parents "are killing the fatted calf for her---but Lina, who stayed at home---she has to carry the slops..."
The D of I and The Poet discuss the injustice of this.
130. benear - July 17, 1999 - 10:53 AM PT
The white dragonlike boat with sails of light blue enters. The scene grows light. The Officer is joyful for it must be his Victoria.
The passengers on the boat are He and She.
He and She are in love. They think they are going to Faircove but instead because of a cholera outbreak must spend 40 days in Foulgut.
The Poet reassures them that "Love conquers all."
The Officer, in a long monologue, talks about having received his degree, he will teach at a boys school. Having just finished school, he must spend the rest of his useful life in school asking the same questions over and over, "How much is two times two?" until he is pensioned off after which it will be even worse until he dies.
The scene ends with everyone talking about their own misery. They all lift their hands to the sky and cry out in anguish.
The D of I pleads, "Eternal One, hear their cry!"
131. benear - July 17, 1999 - 10:59 AM PT
The scene goes dark for a scene change. When the light comes back up, the scene is Faircove.
On the stage are three servant maids who stand on crates peering into the casino watching the dancers inside. Plainlooking Edith is seated on a bench on a terrace next to a piano. Also two children in summer dress play ball in front of a yellow house.
[The entire scene is in a winter dress, and both the ground and barren trees are covered with snow]
The D of I and The Officer enter.
D of I asserts that here is peace and happiness.
The Officer points out that the servant girls aren't allowed inside the dance because they are servants (class conflict) and that Edith is depressed because she has been sitting for three hours and no one has asked her to dance.
132. benear - July 17, 1999 - 11:01 AM PT
D of I observes what cruelty there is in pleasure.
Plainlooking Edith begins to play the piano: Bach's Toccata con Fuga, No. 10.
The music inside the dance increases in sound.
Edith becomes louder.
The dance stops.
133. benear - July 17, 1999 - 11:08 AM PT
The facade of the yellow house is removed to reveal a classroom. There are three rows of benches on which sit a number of boy pupils. Among them is The Officer.
The Teacher asks The Officer what is two times two?
He can't remember. The Teacher persists. The Officer struggles to find an answer.
The Officer then tries to prove that two times two is two by a demonstration in analogy, "---the highest form of reasoning that exists." One times one is one, therefore, two times two is two.
The Teacher says that although logical, the answer is wrong.
The Officer says that if it is logical, it can't be wrong.
The Officer continue to argue: 1/1=1, therefore, 2/2=2. If 1x3=3, but then 2x3=3, etc.
Then they discuss what is time?
134. benear - July 17, 1999 - 11:13 AM PT
Teacher: Time---let me see! While we are talking, time flies....therefore, it is something that flies....while I talk.
A Pupil: Now you are talking, teacher, and while you are talking, I fly......consequently, I am time! [He runs out]
The Teacher and The Officer discuss that The Pupil was correct according to logic but that it is impossible The Pupil is time. Therefore, logic is ridiculous. Therefore, the world is crazy.
The Quarantine Master announces that the quarantine is now in effect.
The QM, Teacher and Officer continue with an absurd conversation.
135. benear - July 17, 1999 - 11:21 AM PT
D of I: [To The Officer] Is there then not one person who is happy in paradise?
Officer: Yes---there is a couple that have just been married...."
Enter The Husband and The Wife. They discuss how happy they are but deside to kill themselves together because happiness consumes itself like fire and at the core of happiness is unhappiness.
The Blind Man enters. The Officer says the Blind Man is the most envied man in the community. The BM owns hundreds of villas, the beach, the cove and has thousands of tenants.
But he is unhappy because he can not see. But he can hear that the navy ship in the harbor is leaving. His only son is on it. In a monlogue, he talks about how sad he is that his son is leaving. Life is meetings and partings.
136. benear - July 17, 1999 - 11:26 AM PT
The Attorney enters.
He tells D of I that she has seen many things but not the worst which is "To go back, to go over again, to recapitulate! To have to learn the same lesson over again!"
They discuss that duty is odious. Duty is a pleasure only after it is done. Pleasure is a sin. Pleasure is something that must be punished. Success always turns into failure.
The Attorney tells D of I she must come back with him to their home. She says she would rather die. She longs to go back into the clouds but can't until the door is opened.
137. benear - July 17, 1999 - 11:31 AM PT
Cries of anguish and pain, louder than usual, are heard from Foulgut.
D of I: We must set them free!
Attorney: You may try!---Once there was a man who sought to liberate....He was hanged on a cross....
D of I: Who hanged him?
Attorney: The self-righteous, the sanctimonious!...
D of I: Who are they?
Attorney: Don't you know who the self-righteous are? You will soon learn to know them!
D of I: Was it they who refused you your degree?
Attorney: Yes!
D of I: Then I know who they are....
138. benear - July 17, 1999 - 11:41 AM PT
The scene changes to a beach on the Mediterranean. On the right in the foreground is a white wall. Protruding above it are orange trees laden with fruit. In the background are villas and the casino. On the left, a big pile of coal. Two Coalheavers, naked to the waist with blackened bodies, faces and hands sit on wheelbarrows. The D of I and The Attorney are in the background.
The Coalheavers discuss how anything pleasurable they do is a crime--- bathing in the sea, picking an orange, quitting work.
D of I: [To The Attorney] You mean to say that every mortal, if given his just deserts, would----at some time or other----have been condemned to prison?
Attorney: Yes.
D of I and The Attorney discuss how the poor can not bathe in the sea. The entire beach is "owned" by someone else. The sea itself is "owned".
The D of I asks why "people do nothing to improve their lot?"
The Attorney replies that they do but ultimately the reformers are either put in prison or the madhouse.
D of I: Who has them put in prison?
Attorney: All the righteous, the respectable people...
D of I: And who sends them to the madhouse?
Attorney: Their own anguish...despair over the hoplessness of their struggle.
139. benear - July 17, 1999 - 11:44 AM PT
The Coalheavers discuss how they are the foundation of society. If they didn't deliver the coal, then even the rich would have no heat or light in their homes.
The Gentleman and The Lady walk past the Coalheavers. They talk about playing a game and taking a walk in order to have an appetite for dinner. The Coalheavers are amazed on hearing this.
140. benear - July 19, 1999 - 5:47 AM PT
The scene changes to Fingal's cave. There is a storm imminant as indicated by a red alarm buoy. The D of I and The Poet are visible.
The Poet asks where he is. The D of I tells him it is far from the laments of humanity, the farthest end of the seven seas, a grotto which is Indra's ear, the place where the Master of the Heavens listens to the complaints of the mortals.
The grotto is shaped like a sea shell just as the human ear is like a shell.
141. benear - July 19, 1999 - 5:53 AM PT
The Poet hears nothing but the wind. The D of I says she will interpret for him. She recites a long poem to soft music.
The poem is about how "We, the winds, the sons of Air" endure the foul smells of man and earth then clense themselves in the sea. The winds also disperse the wails of humans and finally, the waves cradle the winds to their sleep.
The D of I then surveys the debris of shipwrecks on the rocks in the cave. It consists of the name-boards of the ships, "Justice, Friendship, Golden Peace, and Hope", railings, rowlocks, bailers and a life-buoy "that saved *itself*, but let men in distress go down!"
The Poet notes the good ship Justice was the one that sailed from Faircove with the Blind Man's son aboard.
142. benear - July 19, 1999 - 6:00 AM PT
The D of I then wonders if she has dreamed everything---The Blind Man?, Faircove, ugly Edith, Foulgut, the quarantine, the university ceremony, The Attorney's office, the growing castle and The Officer.
The Poet says he has lived it all in his imagination.
They have a conversation about what imagination, poetry and dreams are. Poetry "is not reality. It is more than reality. It is not dreaming---but dreams come alive, envisioned...."
The D of I tells the Poet she has been on the earth too long. She is now earthbound. She pleads with her father to raise her up. [There is silence.]
The Poet gives her a prayer of all mankind to take with her when she ascends. She recites the prayer. The prayer asks why mankind must be born in pain, but being born in pain begins a pilgramage over stones and thorns and thistles.
The Poet asks the D of I to translate the prayer so that it will reach immortal ears. She says she will.
143. benear - July 19, 1999 - 6:07 AM PT
The Poet points to the red buoy and notes the seas are growing restless. Then he points to a ship, The Flying Dutchman, just outside close to the reef.
They discuss The Flying Dutchman and why those aboard are being punished. Then the Poet sees that the ship is just an ordinary ship in distress. The warning buoy sounds.
The ship's crew signal and wave and cry and shout.
They then see someone walking on the water. They discuss who it is, who crucified Him and why.
The crew becomes frantic with fear. They cry out and jump overboard.
Poet: They cry from fear of dying! They come into the world crying and they go out crying!
But then, the Poet sees not a ship, but a two story house with trees and a telephone tower. They discuss how mankind's thoughts are transmitted to the ends of the universe.
Then the Poet sees a snow covered parade ground with a company of soldiers marching accross it.
[While the preceding is occuring, the setting is being shifted: it shows again the alley outside the Opera.]
144. benear - July 19, 1999 - 6:11 AM PT
The D of I asks the Portress if the Lord Chancellor and Deans have arrived. The Portress says, no. The D of I tells her to call them, it is important. The people have become excited, "They have a notion that the solution to the riddle of the world is being hidden in there!" indicating the door.
People of the Opera enter from the right. The Officer enters from the rear. He is dressed in redingote and carries a bouquet of roses. He is radiantly happy.
The Poet and D of I are experiencing deja vu. They discuss poetry, imagination and dreams.
145. benear - July 19, 1999 - 6:18 AM PT
The Lord Chancellor and The Deans of the four faculties enter.
The Lord Chancellor says it is about the door, of course. He asks the Deans what they think about the matter. They begin petty bickering.
The LC asks the Dean of Theology to speak:
Dean of Theology: I believe that this door should not be opened for the reason that it has been placed there to conceal dangerous truths...
Dean of Philosophy: Truth is never dangerous!
Dean of Medicine: What is truth?
Dean of Jurisprudence: That which can be proved by two witnesses.
Dean of Theology: A shyster lawer can prove anything---with two false witnessess!
They fall back into bickering in a long discussion of what is truth and how their branches of inquiry is each respectively the only and best way to uncover the truth.
146. benear - July 19, 1999 - 6:22 AM PT
They begin calling each other names. "Dolt! Idiot!" and "Fool! Ass!"
The D. of I.: Shame on you, you teachers of the young!
The Dean of Jurisprudence wants to bring the D of I before the court for the crime of telling them they should be ashamed of themselves.
The Dean of J appeals to "all the righteous-minded".
All The Righteous-Minded agree, the Daughter of Indra should be prosecuted.
147. benear - July 19, 1999 - 6:27 AM PT
Then suddenly:
All The Righteous-Minded: Hurrah! The door has been opened!
Lord Chancellor: What was behind it?
The Glazier: I don't see anything....
Lord Chancellor: You can't see anything? No, of course, you can't. Deans! What was hidden behind the door?
Dean of Theology: Nothing! That is the solution of the riddle of the world....In the beginning, God created heaven and the earth out of nothing....
Dean of Philosophy: Out of nothing comes nothing!
Dean of Medicine: Nothing but nonsense---and that's nothing!
Dean of Jurisprudence: I doubt. It is a clear case of fraud. I appeal to the righteous-minded!
148. benear - July 19, 1999 - 6:29 AM PT
The D of I tells the poet she will answer the riddle but only to him and only in the wilderness away from the others.
The Attorney grabs the D of I by the arm. He tells her she can't leave. She has a duty to their child.
She responds that she also has a higher duty.
She feels guilt and remorse as the two duties conflict. She feels she is being cleaved in two.
149. benear - July 19, 1999 - 6:32 AM PT
The Poet and D of I discuss conscience. How one minute it tells you you are right in what you have done, but in the next minute you feel guilty for what you have done.
The D of I tells the Poet to come away with her.
The Attorney asks, "What about your child?"
She replies that they are all her children.
150. benear - July 19, 1999 - 6:37 AM PT
The final scene is outside the castle. The setting is the same as before in the early part of the play. Now, however, the ground is covered with blue flowers. Topmost on the roof is seen a chrysanthemum bud about to open. The castle windows are lighted with tapers.
The Daughter of Indra and The Poet appear.
She informs him the moment of her ascent is near.
They discuss why man doesn't listen to his prophets. They discuss the nature of certainty and doubt.
The Poet asks, "did not Indra once send His son down to Earth...?"
She responds that He did. The Poet asks how the Son of Indra fulfilled His mission.
The D of I asks, "Was not Man helped by His stay on Earth?"
The Poet replies yes, but very little.
151. benear - July 19, 1999 - 6:42 AM PT
The Poet asks her to answer the riddle.
D. of I.: .....In the early morning of Time---before the sun was born---Brahma, the divine force of all living things, allowed himself to be tempted by Maya, the Mother of the Universe, to propagate himself. This meeting of the divine primal force with the earth matter, constituted the fall of heaven into sin. Thus the universe, mankind, existence are merely a phantom, a dream, an illusion....
She continues that Brahma's offspring seek to free themselves from the earth matter through self denial and suffering. Thus, suffering is the liberator. However, the yearning for suffering is in conflict with the desire to find enjoyment.
Love is the mixture of greatest enjoyment and greatest suffering.
152. cllrdr - July 19, 1999 - 6:50 AM PT
"They begin calling each other names. "Dolt! Idiot!" and "Fool! Ass!"
Just like The Fray!
"Love is the mixture of greatest enjoyment and greatest suffering."
More of the latter than the the former for many of us.
153. benear - July 19, 1999 - 6:50 AM PT
D. of I.: Can you now understand what woman is? Woman----through whom sin and death came into being?....
The Poet asks where it will end. She replies the struggle between opposites produces energy.
The Poet continues to ask questions. The D of I tells him to hush. The alter is ready for the sacrifice.
He asks her to tell him, before she goes, "what you suffered most from down here!"
She replies, "From being---from living---"
154. benear - July 19, 1999 - 6:57 AM PT
The Daughter of Indra removes her shoes (the clay from her feet) and casts them into the fire.
The Portress enters. She places her shawl on the fire. [she leaves]
In the following, each character enters, makes a statement about what they are sacrificing, they place it in the fire then leave.
The Officer - his roses with nothing but the thorns left.
The Billposter - his posters, but his green dip net, "never".
The Glazier - the diamond that opened the door.
The Attorney - "the dossier containing the minutes of the great dispute concerning the pope's beard, or the diminishing water supply in the sources of the Ganges River."
The Quarantine Master - his mask.
Victoria - "my beauty---my sorrow!"
The Blind Man - his hand.
The Dean of Theology - has lost his faith because no one else has faith. In a rage, he flings a book into the fire.
The Poet retrieves the book. It is a calendar with a martyr for each day of the year.
155. benear - July 19, 1999 - 7:00 AM PT
The Daughter of Indra bids farewell to the Poet. In that moment, she feels the "utter pain of being", "One longs to leave, yet yearns to stay."
She enters the castle---One hears music---The background is illuminated by the flames from the burning castle and reveals a wall of human faces---faces that are searching and inquiring, sorrowful and grief-stricken, tortured by agony and anguish. As the castle burns, the flower bud on the roof-top opens into a chrysanthemum of giant proportions.
THE END
156. benear - July 19, 1999 - 7:04 AM PT
Well, I certainly never want to do that again.
This Friday, I will begin to discuss Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Ernest", a nice antidote to the strum and drang of the past few days.
157. benear - July 19, 1999 - 7:08 AM PT
"A Dream Play", as you can tell, was written by a crazy man. The play is a reflection of Strindberg's consciousness and is more than a little autobiographical.
He must have been immensely frustrated with the ability to visually dipict his vision with the theatrical technology of his day. In our own day, he probably would have made movies. Come to think of it, he may have been reincarnated as .....Stanley Kubrick.
Tom Cruise ends Eyes Wide Shut with the line, "A dream is never just a dream."
158. cmboyce - July 19, 1999 - 9:07 AM PT
Well, this Dream is certainly not a dream. It is too directed and tendentious for that. As you say, benear, it's a statement by a madman (though one who was an artist). As such it contains a good selection of the fears, and temptations, felt by the sane, and thus is (as good modern art often is) a sort of psychological template. In looking at it, as when we look at self-portraits by Gorky, or Picasso (or for that matter Rembrandt), we see aspects of ourselves rendered suddenly strange (perhaps only by exclusion) in the company of this other being.
159. benear - July 19, 1999 - 10:31 AM PT
What I find amazing is that the outlook of the play is so dismal, yet Strindberg injects a lot of humor. Satirical humor, but humor none-the-less.
I agree, cm, there is a lot of stuff in "A Dream Play" that jibes with my personal experience. Also, the play is very directed, as you point out. Although, Strindberg at this point in his life was paranoid and delusional, he was still capable of dead-on analysis of the world around him. My synopsis does not come close to doing the play justice, it is really a very tightly written work with no wasted words.
160. cmboyce - July 20, 1999 - 8:14 AM PT
It is that. A very good read (though it's one-sidedness about the dismal nature of human life gets a bit wearing).
BTW, I think your synopses are fine, but you should _spare yourself_! (g) At this rate you'll render yourself hors de combat long before Tennesses Williams arrives! A quick(er) survey of plot and theme will surely suffice for those who have not reread a play they once knew, and anyone who hasn't read the work at all is probably not going to have to much to say about it. After all, one can read a play in rather less time than it takes to watch one; there's no reason why posters to a discussion of one couldn't do it.
161. benear - July 23, 1999 - 4:46 AM PT
cmb: I have been seriously considering your suggestion. Although I don't mind slogging through "A Dream Play" in a probably vain attempt to make it understanable to those not inclined to read it themselves but may be lurking here on the off chance they might see something interesting, I am willing to try anything to generate more participation.
So this week I will try a compromise. And an easy compromise it is, as Oscar Wilde's actual words are so much better than a paraphrase of them. I will give a very, very short synopsis of each act followed by his actual words.
162. benear - July 23, 1999 - 5:35 AM PT
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Wilde was born in Dublin to a socially prominent family. He was precocious and revealed his talents at an early age. At Oxford, he became a distinguished student of the classics and won the Newdigate Prize for poetry. After traveling in Italy and Greece, he came to London where a book of his poetry and his melodrama "Vera, or the Nihilists" was published.
More important than his artificial early verse and his novel "The Picture of dorian Gray" (1891) were the comedies which Wilde filled with witty conversation. His plays consist of another melodrama "The Duchess of Padua", a powerful, one-act drama "Salome" (1892), "Lady Windermere's Fan" (1892), "A Woman of No Importance" (1893), "An Ideal Husband" (1895) and "The Importance of Being Ernest" (1895).
163. benear - July 23, 1999 - 5:42 AM PT
Wilde's epigrams were more than polished gems. They were clever inversions of conventional wisdom and often barbed comments on British society. The play of repartee was supplemented by situations and portraits of society people. Wilde even fancied himself a writer of problem plays.
In substance, "Lady Windermere's Fan" treated the "fallen woman" with sympathy and directed considerable criticism at the self-righteous attitude of Victorian women of good society. In "A Woman of No Importance", Wilde castigated the social set. In "An Ideal Husband", he examined political reputations.
Wilde, who revealed a sharp intellect in his volume of criticism "Intentions" (1891) and in his essay "The Soul of Man Under Socialism", added some substance to drama. In "Lady Windermere's Fan" he spun out an intrigue and developed it with plot contrivances that playwrights had long found useful.
164. benear - July 23, 1999 - 5:48 AM PT
Lady Windermere suspects that her husband is carrying on with a woman of shady reputation, Mrs. Erlynne, who turns out to be her mother. Seeking revenge in the Victorian tradition, Lady Windermere goes to an admirer's apartment and leaves her fan there. In order to save her daughter's reputation, Mrs. Erlynne claims the fan to be hers and thereby, foregoes all chances of winning her way back into good society.
Sentiment is thus served, especially as Mrs. Erlynne never reveals her identity to her daughter. But in the course of the play, Wilde has also struck at the snobbish superiority of the daughter. Victorian prudery is satirized by means of the situation and of such coruscating epigrams as "Wicked women bother one. Good women bore one. That is the only difference between them."
165. benear - July 23, 1999 - 5:52 AM PT
In "A Woman of No Importance", Wilde satirized the American habit of knocking at the gates of the British aristocracy and took pains to show that British society was shallow, at best. It is doubtful that even Shaw could have delivered a better broadside against the gentry than, "the English country gentleman galloping after a fox----the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable."
A society of hollow and useless people where one can live down "anything except a good reputation" is what Wilde shows us. The society is made tolerable only by evidences o wit in the speakers. Mrs. Allonby tells her friends that her husband was a promissory note and that she was tired of meeting him.
166. benear - July 23, 1999 - 6:00 AM PT
In "An Ideal Husband", Wilde tried his hand at political drama. He contrived a story in which an important government official, who made his fortune by selling a state secret, is nearly blackmailed into promoting a wildcat scheme for building a worthless canal. This subject matter was an advance over the old-fashioned theater in England, particularly since it was free from Victorian sanctimoniousness. Wilde's ideas were shallow, but he evinced some respect for ideas as a force rather than as a conversational convenience. A character declares, "All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of anything, you will kill it. Nothing survives being thought of."
For "problem plays", Wilde's plots were too contrived and perfunctory. General opinion held that he was most successful in the pure farce, "The Importance of Being Ernest". Here he could give free rein to sprightly fantastication and his characterizations did not have to meet the requirements of credibility. Contrivance being a virtue rather than a vice in farce, Wilde succeeded in turning flippancy into a fine art.
167. benear - July 23, 1999 - 6:05 AM PT
The Importance of Being Ernest
Characters:
John Worthing, J.P. (a.k.a. Jack and Ernest)
Algernon Moncrieff
Rev. Canon Chasuble D.D.
Merriman (Butler)
Lane (Manservant to Algernon)
Lady Bracknell (Algernon's Aunt Augusta)
Hon. Gwendolen Fairfax (Lady Bracknell's daughter)
Cecily Cardew (Worthing's young ward)
Miss Prism (Governess)
The scenes of the Play:
Act I: Algernon's flat in Half Moon Street in London.
Act II: The garden at the Manor House (Woolton).
Act III: The drawing-room of the Manor House.
Time: The present
Place: London
168. benear - July 23, 1999 - 6:12 AM PT
Act I
Jack visits Algernon. Jack is in love with Gwendolen and intends to ask her to marry him. Algernon accuses Jack of "Bunburyism". Bunbury is an imaginary friend of Algernon that provides Algernon with a convenient excuse to get out of social obligations. Whenever Algernon needs to, he has to visit his ill friend, Bunbury.
Jack is indeed guilty of Bunburyism, but of a different sort. He is Jack in London, but goes by the name of Ernest in the country.
Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen visit. Algernon gets Lady Bracknell into another room. Jack asks Gwendolen to marry him. She accepts. Lady Bracknell and Algernon return and Lady Bracknell learns of her daughter's engagement. She sends Gwendolen out to wait in the carriage while she quizzes Jack on his suitability as a mate for Gwendolen. She determines that he is unsuitable.
The following are epigrams and dialogue from the play that illustrates Wilde's wit and opinions.
169. benear - July 23, 1999 - 6:15 AM PT
Algernon: Lane's views on marriage seem somewhat lax. Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility.
Jack: When one is in the town, one amuses oneself. When one is in the country, one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.
170. benear - July 23, 1999 - 6:19 AM PT
Jack: I am in love with Gwendolen. I have come to town expressly to propose to her.
Algernon: I thought you had come for pleasure?...I call that business.
Jack: How utterly unromantic you are!
Algernon: I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.
Algernon further states that, "Divorces are made in heaven."
171. benear - July 23, 1999 - 6:30 AM PT
Algernon: Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.
Algernon: The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!
Algernon: "...She will place me next to Mary Farquhar, who always flirts with her own husband accross the dinner table. That is not very pleasant. Indeed, it is not even decent....and that sort of thing is enormously on the increase. The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public.
172. benear - July 23, 1999 - 6:34 AM PT
Algernon: ...You don't seem to realize that in married life three is company and two is none.
Jack: That, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years.
Algernon: Yes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time.
173. benear - July 23, 1999 - 6:36 AM PT
Lady Bracknell: Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd. Nor do I in any way approve of the modern sympathy with invalids. I consider it morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. Health is the primary duty of life...
174. benear - July 23, 1999 - 6:42 AM PT
Jack: [Nervously] Miss Fairfax, ever since I met you I have admired you more than any girl...I have ever met since....I met you.
Gwendolen: ...Even before I met you I was far from indifferent to you. We live, as I hope you know, Mr. Worthing, in an age of ideals. The fact is constantly mentioned in the more expensive monthly magazines and has reached the provincial pulpits I am told: and my ideal has always been to love some one of the name Ernest.
Jack: But you don't really mean to say that you couldn't love me if my name wasn't Ernest?
Gwendolen: But your name is Ernest.
Jack: Yes, I know it is. But supposing it was something else? Do you mean to say you couldn't love me then?
Gwendolen: Ah! that is clearly a metaphysical speculation, and like most metaphysical speculations has very little reference at all to the actual facts of real life, as we know them.
175. benear - July 23, 1999 - 6:48 AM PT
Lady Bracknell: ...do you smoke?
Jack: Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.
Lady Bracknell: I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is.
Lady Bracknell: I have always been of the opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing. Which do you know?
Jack: I know nothing.
Lady Bracknell: I am pleased to hear it. I do not apporve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes.
Lady Bracknell: You have a town house, I hope? A girl with a simple, unspoiled nature, like Gwendolen, could hardly be expected to reside in the country.
176. benear - July 23, 1999 - 6:53 AM PT
Algernon: My dear boy, I love hearing my relatives abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't the remotest knowledge of how to live, or the smallest instinct about when to die.
Algernon: All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Algernon: By the way, did you tell Gwendolen the truth about your being Ernest in town and Jack in the country?
Jack: My dear fellow, the truth isn't quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman.
Algernon: The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain.
177. benear - July 23, 1999 - 6:57 AM PT
Jack: Cecily and Gwendolen are perfectly certain to be extremely great friends. I'll bet you anything you like that half an hour after they have met, they will be calling each other sister.
Algernon: Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first.
Jack: If you don't take care, your friend Bunbury will get you into a serious scrape some day.
Algernon: I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious.
Jack: Oh, that's nonsense, Algy. You never talk anything but nonsense.
Algernon: Nobody ever does.
178. cllrdr - July 23, 1999 - 7:17 AM PT
"Wilde's ideas were shallow, but he evinced some respect for ideas as a force rather than as a conversational convenience."
That depends on what you imagine his ideas to be. Wilde's characters state and speechify blatantly. But nothing they say can be taken at face value as asn constituting "Wilde's thought" in a literal way. Rather, I think his ideas proceed from manner in which his characters and the situations he sets them in have been contrived. It's not the epigrams in and of themselves that matter so much, as their juxtaposition with other epigrams. The point I'm trying to make here becomes clearer, I think, when you get around to dealing with Wilde's heir -- Joe Orton.
179. benear - July 23, 1999 - 7:31 AM PT
By shallow, I mean that Wilde rarely rises above satire in his comedies. Or maybe that should be, rarely sinks below satire, depending on your POV.
He is extremely critical of the upper classes, but does not advocate a reordering of society, as he was a member of those classes. His biting comentary about Lane is an inverse of Victorian convention and therefore a pointed poke at the upper classes.
In other words, he was not really serious about anything until he ended up in prison.
180. cmboyce - July 23, 1999 - 8:18 AM PT
Wow, benear! *Four* brief synopses!! Lookiiiin' GOOD.
However, that of "Importance" lacks a final sentence: "Complications ensue and are resolved in a happily preposterous manner". ;-)
181. benear - July 23, 1999 - 3:34 PM PT
Let me clarify a previous screw up. Jack goes by the name of John Worthing while in the country and by the name Ernest Worthing while in the city. He tells people in the country that he has a younger brother, Ernest, who lives in the city and is quite wicked. Jack must make frequent visits to the city to bail Ernest out of trouble and to do philanthropic work. In the city he pretends to be Ernest but makes no mention that he has a brother, Jack, in the country.
Shit, no wonder I got confused.
182. cllrdr - July 23, 1999 - 3:44 PM PT
I'm sure it hasn't escaped the notice of gay Fraysters that "Jack in the counry, Ernest in town," is a perfect paradigm for the closet.
183. benear - July 23, 1999 - 3:45 PM PT
Act II
Algernon shows up in the country and introduces himself to Cecily as Jack's younger brother, Ernest. Cecily and Algernon go into the house. Then Miss Prism and Chasuble return from a walk and Jack arrives from the city. He is in mourning and tells them his brother, Ernest, died while in Paris. Cecily enters and tells them that Ernest is, in fact, alive and in the house.
Algernon tells Jack he is staying for a week. Jack insists Algernon must be on the next train to London. Algernon keeps finding inventive ways to avoid leaving.
Algernon falls in love with Cecily and proposes to her. She tells him that they have been engaged for three months already. Since she and Miss Prism spoke of Ernest so much, she fell in love with him, bought a ring for herself from him and wrote three letters a week from him to herself.
Gwendolen arrives and she and Cecily discover they are both engaged to Earnest. They start out as friends, have the most civilized yet vicious cat fight in history then end up calling each other, sister.
Jack and Algernon enter and it is discovered that both have been pretending to be Ernest, however, Ernest does not exist. The women exit, angry at them both. Jack and Algernon have the famous Bunbury conversation. They have tea and muffins.
184. benear - July 23, 1999 - 3:52 PM PT
The following are highlights of Act II.
Cecily: But I don't like German. It isn't at all a becoming language. I know perfectly well that I look quite plain after my German lesson.
Miss Prism: Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days.
Cecily: Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily? I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.
Miss Prism: The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
Cecily: I suppose so. but it seems very unfair.
Miss Prism: Cecily, you will read your Political Economy in my absence. The chapter on the fall of the Rupee you may omit. It is somewhat too sensational. Even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side.
185. benear - July 23, 1999 - 3:59 PM PT
Cecily: I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like everyone else.
Algernon: the accounts I have received of Australia and the next world, are not particularly encouraging. This world is good enough for me, Cousin Cecily.
Cecily: Yes, but are you good enough for it?
Algernon: I'm afraid I'm not that. That is why I want you to reform me. You might make that your mission, if you don't mind Cousin Cecily.
Cecily: I'm afraid I've not time, this afternoon.
Algernon: Well, would you mind my reforming myself this afternoon?
Cecily: That is rather Quixotic of you. But I think you should try.
186. benear - July 23, 1999 - 4:01 PM PT
Cecily: Miss Prism says that all good looks are a snare.
Algernon: They are a snare that every sensible man would like to be caught in.
Cecily: Oh! I don't think I would care to catch a sensible man. I shouldn't know what to talk to him about.
187. benear - July 23, 1999 - 4:04 PM PT
Chasuble: Was the cause of death mentioned?
Jack: A severe chill, it seems.
Miss Prism: As a man sows, so shall he reap.
Chasuble: Charity, dear Miss Prism, charity! None of us are perfect. I myself am peculiarly susceptable to draughts.
188. benear - July 23, 1999 - 4:06 PM PT
Algernon: I never saw anybody take so long to dress, and with such little result.
Jack: Well, at any rate, that is better than being always over-dressed as you are.
Algernon: If I am occasionally a little over-dressed; I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.
189. benear - July 23, 1999 - 4:16 PM PT
Algernon: Do you really keep a diary? I'd give anything to look at it. May I?
Cecily: Oh, no. You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form, I hope you will order a copy. But pray, Ernest, don't stop. I delight in taking down from dictation. I have reached "absolute perfection". You can go on. I am quite ready for more.
Algernon: But was our engagement ever broken off?
Cecily: Of course it was. On the 22nd of last March. You can see the entry if you like. [Shows diary] "To-day I broke off my engagement with Ernest. I feel it is better to do so. The weather still continues charming."
Algernon: But why on earth did you break it off? What had I done? I had done nothing at all. Cecily, I am very much hurt indeed to hear you broke it off. Particularly when the weather was so charming.
Cecily: It would hardly have been a really serious engagement if it hadn't been broken off at least once. But I forgave you before the week was out.
Algernon: What a perfect angel you are, Cecily.
Cecily: You dear romantic boy. I hope your hair curls naturally. Does it?
Algernon: Yes, darling, with a little help from others.
190. benear - July 23, 1999 - 4:19 PM PT
Gwendolen: Outside the family circle, papa, I am glad to say, is entirely unknown. I think that is quite as it should be. The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man. And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not? And I don't like that. It makes men so very attractive.
191. benear - July 23, 1999 - 4:27 PM PT
Gwendolen: Of course you are quite, quite sure that it is not Mr. Ernest Worthing who is your guardian?
Cecily: Quite sure. In fact, I am going to be his.
Gwendolen: I beg your pardon?
Cecily: Dearest Gwendolen, there is no reason why I should make a secret of it to you. Our little county newspaper is sure to chronicle the fact next week. Mr. Ernest Worthing and I are engaged to be married.
Gwendolen: My darling, Cecily, I think there must be some slight error. Mr. Ernest Worthing is engaged to me. The announcement will appear in the Morning Post on Saturday at the latest.
Cecily: I am afraid you must be under some misconception. Ernest proposed to me exactly ten minutes ago. [Shows diary]
Gwendolen: It is certainly very curious, for he asked me to be his wife yesterday afternoon at 5:30. If you would care to verify the incident, pray do so. [Produces diary of her own] I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train. I am so sorry, dear Cecily, if it is any disappointment to you, but I am afraid I have the prior claim.
192. benear - July 23, 1999 - 4:28 PM PT
Cecily: Bitch!
Gwendolen: Hag!!
Cecily: Whore!!!
Gwendolen: Cunt!!!!
193. benear - July 23, 1999 - 4:36 PM PT
Jack: This ghastly state of things is what you call Bunburying, I suppose?
Algernon: Yes, and a perfectly wonderful Bunbury it is. The most wonderful Bunbury I have ever had in my life.
Jack: Well, you've no right whatsoever to Bunbury here.
Algernon: that is absurd: One has a right to Bunbury anywhere one chooses. Every serious Bunburyist knows that.
Jack: Serious Bunburyist! Good heavens!
Algernon: Well, one must be serious about something, if one wants to have any amusement in life. I happen to be serious about Bunburying. What on earth you are serious about I haven't got the remotest idea. About everything, I should fancy. You have such an absolutely trivial nature.
Jack: Well, the only small satisfaction I have in the whole of this wretched business is that your friend Bunbury is quite exploded. You won't be able to run down to the country quite so often as you used to do, dear Algy. And a very good thing, too.
Algernon: Your brother is a little off color, isn't he dear Jack? You won't be able to disappear to London quite so frequently as your wicked custom was. And not a bad thing, either.
194. benear - July 25, 1999 - 7:24 AM PT
Act III:
Gwendolen and Cecily decide to forgive Jack and Algernon. The engagements are back on. Lady Bracknell enters. She refuses to let Gwendolen marry Jack. When she finds out that Cecily has 130 thousand pounds in Trust, she thinks it is a great idea for Algernon to marry Cecily. Jack refuses to let Cecily marry Algernon unless Lady Bracknell consents to allow him to marry Gwendolen.
Lady Bracknell holds fast. Prism enters. Lady Bracknell recognizes her. She was in the employ of the Bracknell's when she dissappeared 29 years earlier. She evidently got drunk, left a baby in a handbag in a cloakroom in Victoria Station, the Brighton Line. That baby it turns out is Jack. Jack is really Algernon's older brother, Ernest.
195. benear - July 25, 1999 - 7:27 AM PT
Some highlights:
Gwendolen: In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.
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.
Cecily: They have moments of physical courage of which we women know absolutely nothing.
196. benear - July 25, 1999 - 7:37 AM PT
And a second exchange on Bunbury.
Lady Bracknell: May I ask if it is in this house that your invalid friend Mr. Bunbury resides?
Algernon: Oh, no! Bunbury doesn't live here. Bunbury is somewhere else at present. In fact, Bunbury is dead.
Lady Bracknell: Dead! When did Mr. Bunbury die? His death must have been extremely sudden.
Algernon: Oh, I killed Bunbury this afternoon. I mean poor Bunbury died this afternoon.
Lady Bracknell: What did he die of?
Algernon: Bunbury? Oh, he was quite exploded.
Lady Bracknell: Exploded! Was he the victim of a revolutionary outrage? I was not aware that Mr. Bunbury was interested in social legislation. If so, he is well punished for his morbidity.
Algernon: My dear Aunt Agusta, I mean he was found out! The doctors found out that Bunbury could not live, that is what I mean----so Bunbury died.
Lady Bracknell: He seems to have had great confidence in the opinion of his physicians. I am glad, however, that he made up his mind at the last to some definite course of action, and acted under proper medical advice. And now that we have finally got rid of this Mr. Bunbury, may I ask, Mr. Worthing, who ....
197. benear - July 25, 1999 - 7:45 AM PT
Lady Bracknell: To speak frankly, I am not in favor of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.
Jack: I beg your pardon for interrupting you, Lady Bracknell, but this engagement is quite out of the question. I am Miss Cardew's guardian, and she cannot marry without my consent until she comes of age. That consent I absolutely decline to give.
Lady Bracknell: Upon what grounds, may I ask? Algernon is an extremely, I may almost say an ostentatiously, eligible young man. He has nothing, but he looks everything. What more can one desire?
Jack: It pains me very much to have to speak frankly to you, Lady Bracknell, about your nephew, but the fact is that I do not apporve at all of his moral character. I suspect him of being untruthful.
Lady Bracknell: Untruthful! My nephew Algernon? Impossible! He is an Oxonian.
198. benear - July 25, 1999 - 7:50 AM PT
Lady Bracknell: I dare not even suspect, Dr. Chasuble. I need hardly tell you that in families of high position strange coincidences are not supposed to occur. They are hardly considered the thing.
(while Jack is making noise in the next room rummaging about looking for the hand bag)
Lady Bracknell: This noise is extremely unpleasant. It sounds as if he was having an argument. I dislike argument of any kind. they are always vulgar, and often convincing.
199. benear - July 25, 1999 - 7:54 AM PT
Jack: Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?
Gwendolen: I can. For I feel that you are sure to change.
Lady Bracknell: My nephew, you seem to be displaying signs of triviality.
Jack: On the contrary, Aunt Augusta, I've now realized for the first time in my life the vital importance of being Ernest.
200. benear - July 25, 1999 - 8:05 AM PT
Farce is usually defined as low comedy, physical, situational, and characterized by exaggeration, improbability, and gross incongruity. The characters are cartoons.
Satire on the other hand, is high minded and a criticism of institutions. It often relies on the discrepency between the ideal and reality.
There is a spectrum in comedy from the physical to the thoughtful. Farce is at the one end followed by Low Comedy, then Pure Comedy, then High Comedy and finally Satire at the other end of the spectrum.
High Comedy appeals to the intellect. The inconsistency in human behavior is the source of the comedy. This is also referred to a comedy of manners.
Pure Comedy is best defined by Shakespeare. It consists of more sustained thought and the comedy is the result of the plot and dialogue. Some mechanical farce may also be involved.
Wilde blurred the line between farce and satire. "The Importance of Being Ernest" has an incongruity at the heart of it. Everything appears normal. There is no physical comedy. The dialogue is very incongruous with physical appearances.
Next Friday I shall talk about George Bernard Shaw and "Heartbreak House".