Earnest

=The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde.=

Below is the SAC and Assessment Grid for The Importance of Being Earnest. Task Due - Thursday Oct 15. We will be doing some more class activities on this text after the hols. Please ensure that you have read the text over the hols. See below for some info on Oscar Wilde. ==

Act 1 - Questions

Oscar Wilde was born on 16 October 1854, at No 21 Westland Row, Dublin. Oscar was one of the most celebrated playwrights of Victorian London and is considered by some to be one the most talented ever, second only to Shakespeare in English. He was a celebrity in his day and was well known for his barbed and clever wit. He suffered a very dramatic downfall after being convicted of ‘gross indecency’ following a vicious campaign and trial instigated by his lover’s father. Oscar was the most famous ‘aesthete’, and it is considered that the Aesthetic movement ended with the conclusion of his trial and subsequent imprisonment. The artists and writers of the Aesthetic movement, of the late Victorian period, tended to hold that the Arts should provide refined sensuous pleasure, rather than convey moral or sentimental messages. Proponents of the aesthetic movement dressed in velvet, lace and furs, adopted languishing poses and attitudes and decorated their homes in a opulent fashion. Oscar wrote poems, fairy tales and one novel, but was most talented as a playwright. Before he was famous as a writer, Oscar was famous as a speaker and he toured America on a lecture tour speaking on Aesthetic values. Although married and the father of two children, Wilde's personal life was open to rumours. His years of triumph ended dramatically, when his intimate association with Alfred Douglas led to his trial on charges of homosexuality (then illegal in Britain). He was sentenced to two years hard labour for the crime of sodomy. Wilde was first in Wandsworth prison, London, and then in Reading Gaol. During this time he wrote //De Profundis// (1905), a dramatic monologue and autobiography, which was addressed to Alfred Douglas. After his release in 1897 Wilde in Berneval, near Dieppe. He wrote "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", revealing his concern for inhumane prison conditions. Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900, penniless, in a cheap Paris hotel at the age of 46. The Literature Network [|www.online-literature.com] Wikipedia __www.en.wikipedia.org__

Apologia
Is it thy will that I should wax and wane, Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey, And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?

Is it thy will That my Soul's House should be a tortured spot Wherein, like evil paramours, must dwell The quenchless flame, the worm that dieth not?

Nay, if it be thy will I shall endure, And sell ambition at the common mart, And let dull failure be my vestiture, And sorrow dig its grave within my heart.

Perchance it may be better so I have not made my heart a heart of stone, Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast, Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown.

Many a man hath done so; sought to fence In straitened bonds the soul that should be free, Trodden the dusty road of common sense, While all the forest sang of liberty,

Not marking how the spotted hawk in flight Passed on wide pinion through the lofty air, To where the steep untrodden mountain height Caught the last tresses of the Sun God¹s hair.

Or how the little flower he trod upon, The daisy, that white-feathered shield of gold, Followed with wistful eyes the wandering sun Content if once its leaves were aureoled.

But surely it is something to have been The best belovèd for a little while, To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen His purple wings flit once across thy smile.

Ay! though the gorgèd asp of passion feed On my boy's heart, yet have I burst the bars, Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!