Not So Sure It’s Ernest Essay Example for Free

Not So Sure It’s Ernest Essay In The Importance of Being Earnest (1985) by Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) and Sure Thing (1988) by David Ives (1950 ) we witness characters attempting to negotiate personal relationships under the heavy weight of contemporary perceptions. The Importance of Being Earnest takes place in Victorian England, roughly between 1850 and 1900, and Sure Thing is a contemporary play that debuted in 1988. In both plays we are forced over and over again to take an honest look at what is important in the lives of two people who hope to make a love connection. In the Oscar Wilde play in the end we discover that all was not, or rather that all was what it seemed, even if it was not really meant to be. In David Ives one act play we go through the rigors of what we all have come to believe is considered acceptable and end up being forced to look inside of ourselves as the play evolves. Both plays present a brilliant satire on pompousness and the expectations of society. Not So Sure It’s Ernest Although born and raised an entire century apart from one another, both Oscar Wilde and David Ives hit upon a similar note of social cynicism in their respective celebrated plays; The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), and Sure Thing (1988) Both deal with the heavy impact that social mores contemporary to their day seem to have upon the intimate union of man and woman. They both feature characters that seem to question the earnest nature of their own relationships. While Wilde’s London characters appear to be more deeply involved, and to have perhaps more at sake in their remotely settled Eighteenth Century Victorian lives, Ives on the other hand presents an almost transient view of contemporary Post Modern urban life in the mid 1980’s. Make no mistake about it, his is a view poised from the super-charged post-Future Shock-internet age. Yet, together they present a vision of society that is often rather similar in its critique. These are characters whose only options seem to be raw cynicism or stark narcissism, as if the weight of life leaves them with no other choice. Ultimately, both narratives involve a world where the characters try their best to reinterpret what is truly important in their own lives; in order to escape the neurosis that surrounds them. In each plot, comedy plays a fascinating role as if to help us adjust to the psychological dilemma that we witness unfolding before our eyes. As the characters on the stage embark upon a mission to reinvent themselves, triggered either by a startling revelation that all is not quite what it actually seems or simply by the ringing of a bell, we see that happiness is all about what you are willing to believe. These are plays about relationships, and the sometimes overwhelming influence that social and class perceptions have upon whether that ‘love connection’ actually happens or not. Both playwrights take direct satirical aim at male-female relationships and the often bogus nature of courtship and just what it may entail. It is as if love and marriage, or perhaps the respective contemporary mores governing love and marriage is viewed by both of these men with a fundamental contempt. The women appear for the most part strong and somewhat liberated. However, this is satire by the way, and the language involved helps to construct two moral universes with a vision of life that is actually deserving of mockery. In Sure Thing this is aided with the immediacy of a bell which interrupts and determines the success or failure of each exchange. For the cast of The Importance of Being Earnest, we are led to believe that there is actually much more at stake; simply because we are taken through a narrative that is about much more their lives. Wilde wrote during one of Great Britain’s celebrated golden ages. It was the Victorian Age, a time when England commanded the sea and had very few rivals in the world. It was a time of great economic consolidation for the UK, and a time of great expectation and upward mobility for a bourgeoning English middle class. The Germans were often considered crude, and the French were frequently called vulgar in their appetite for free expression. This was the dawn of the modern industrial age, and in Great Britain unlike the character in Wilde’s play, it was really deemed improper in polite company for a man to directly propose marriage to a young woman. Usually, her parents would be the first to know of a man’s intentions for their child, and for the young woman this was actually supposed to come as quite a surprise. Oscar Wilde was one to write narratives that poked fun at English culture and ran contrary to these notions of propriety. This is what much of his literature is all about. The short one-act play Sure Thing, takes place in a post-modern urban American setting. We are simply led into a coffee shop where a prototypical rendezvous takes place between a man and a woman. It is one generation after the sexual revolution, and the nature of boy meets girl is summed up for us in a series of one-liners or pick up lines from Bill to Betty. His success or failure is determined by a bell and also by his and our relative proximity to current perceptions of what is actually socially acceptable and perhaps politically correct. So it is that everything, from his knowledge of literature, to where he grew up, his grade point average, and where he went to school, all elicit relative scrutiny from the overly cynical bell ringer. This is done well within ear shod of an audience that is quickly fit to express its own cynicism as well. It is as if we become Betty’s parents as we look on, in the hopes that Bill will finally get it right and make a proper connection. In the end, Ives is cleverly allowing us to poke fun at ourselves.