But some critics dissented from this widespread praise. Bernard Shaw, who had delighted in “An Ideal Husband”, found “The Importance of Being Earnest” amusing but insisted that “the general effect is that of a farcical comedy dating from the seventies”. Moreover, added Shaw, the play lacked humanity – a quality, presumably, which Shaw would associate with his own drama of social and political reform. But, curiously, Shaw seems to have overlooked the obvious and significant point that Wilde, like Shaw himself, had taken conventional dramatic form and infused it with the new vitality.

The journal “Punch” printed a fictitious interview with Wilde to suggest its own attitude towards his new play and a common attitude towards his wit:

Questioner: Why give a play such a title?

Author: Why not?

Q: Does the trivial comedy require a plot?

A: Nothing to speak of.

Q: Or characterisation?

A: No, for the same kind of dialogue will do for all the company – for London ladies, country girls, justices of the peace, doctors of divinity, maid – servants, and confidential butlers.

Q: What sort of dialogue?

A: Inverted proverbs and renovated paradoxes.

).

Despite Wilde’s arrest on April 5 the play ran until May 8 for a total of eighty-six performances.

Unlike the London production, the New-York production at The Empire Theatre, launched on April 22, 1895, two days before Wilde’s trial, was not well received by the critics. William Winter, the well-known critic for the “New-York Daily Tribune” who usually disapproved Wilde’s works, did not even review the play. Despite the generally unfavourable reception, from most of the critics, the play ran for a few weeks, but its closing marked the beginning of a period of oblivion for Wilde in America, that would last for ten years.

The reputation of Oscar Wilde as a writer and a critic was doubtful for many critics, but almost all of them considered him a brilliant dramatist of his time. Wilde’s fame rests chiefly on his comedies of fashionable life: “Lady Windermere’s Fan”, “An Ideal Husband”, “A Woman of No Importance” and “The Importance of Being Earnest”. The sparkling wit and vivacity, characteristic of these plays, helped them to keep the stage for more than half a century. In spite of their superficial drawing-room treatment of human problems, they are still attractive to numerous theatregoers because of their brilliancy of dialogue and entertaining plot.

The basis of the moral conflict is usually the idea that the past of his heroes has the greatest influence on their present and future, and, thus, it defines their actions and directs their soul development. In his play “An Ideal Husband” Wilde says: “One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged”. And this idea is very productive in his plays. Wilde shows that justice does not exist in the society of the upper class (Mrs. Arbuthnot – “A Woman of No Importance”, and Mrs. Erlynne - “Lady Windermere’s Fan”, are the real victims of this “moral justice” of the English society).

Oscar Wilde’s characters are the people of high society. He gives some typical features to his characters, but refuses the most famous way of that time to settle accounts with the enemies through the literary characters. Wilde’s heroes have no prototypes in real life. He named them by places’ titles where he worked writing these comedies. The moral conflict structure of Wilde’s plays is usually presented by means of action suspense. The first act of “Lady Windermere’s Fan” is almost all consisting of the saloon talks. But Wilde considers it to be the perfect act. These talks are full of witty fights with the help of wonderful epigrams. “The Importance of Being Earnest” – his masterpiece – was written without any pretension to the psychological depth. It is the light and merry farce – comedy. All its intrigues are based on the homonyms (for example: “Earnest” – adjective means “serious”; and the personal name - Ernest). The delicate humour and comical situation provide it for the longevity on the stage.

Oscar Wilde tried to create the fame of the great aesthete. His speech was full of paradoxical judgements. Here are some examples taken from different plays:

- “Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the trade name of the firm. That is all.”;

- “Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose”;

- “Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.”;

- “Life is far too important a thing to talk seriously about it.”;

- “A man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person”; and many others.

In 1895 Wilde was at the peak of his career and had three hit plays running at the same time. At the same year he found himself under the trial. As a result Wilde became involved in a hopeless legal dispute and was sentenced to two years in prison at hard labour. After his release in 1897, Wilde published “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”, a poem of considerable but unequal power. This poem gave the impression that he was again going to produce works worthy of his talents. But it was his swan song…

For the last three years he had lived abroad. Ruined in health, finances and creative energy, but with his characteristic wit, he died in France in 1990. But the voices of Wilde’s brilliant plays continue to be heard until well on in the present century. Indeed, they are still occasionally heard today. It was not the exaggeration that these plays were called the wittiest comedies of the nineteenth century. And it is true that they will have their great fame for many generations.

CHAPTER 2

Investigation Proper

1. Some notes on style and stylistics.

The word “style” is derived from the Latin word “stylus” which meant a short stick sharp at one end and flat at the other used by the Romans for writing on wax tablets. Now the word “style” has a very broad meaning. We speak of style in architecture, painting, clothes, behaviour, literature, speech, etc. The style of any period is the result of a variety of complex and shifting pressures and influences. The way we think and speak modifies the way we write, or the way other write, influences our thought and speech. There is the constant interaction between life and literature. Books reflect the shape of our experience, but our experience of life is also shaped by the books we read. In every age the major writers help to shape the thinking and feeling, and hence the style, of their contemporaries.

Raymond Chapman, the author of “A Short Way to Better English”, says that “A good style of writing has three qualities, which may be described as accuracy, ease and grace.” There are always three influences that will exert their pressure on a writer’s style. One is his own personality, his own way of thinking and feeling that determines his mode of expression. The second is the occasion on which he is writing, the particular purpose that directs his pen at the moment of writing, so that the same man may employ different styles on different occasions. The third is the influence of the age in which he lives. In other words, a writer’s style is his individual and creative choice of the resources of the language. The limitations upon the choice are superimposed by the writer’s period, his genre and his purpose. Since style is something ingrained in writing, it follows that a man’s way of writing will be an expression of his personality and his way of looking at life. This explains the famous and much-quoted definition of style given by Buffon, a French writer and naturalist of the eighteenth century. He wrote: “Le style, c’est l’homme meme.” (“Style, it is the man himself.”)

Stylistics, sometimes called linguo-stylistics, is a branch of general linguistics. It has now more or less definitely outlined. It deals mainly with two interdependent tasks: )