Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde, Oliver Twist, Victorian Comedy

THE VICTORIAN COMEDY: after the Elizabeth’s times we haven’t great

authors that written plays. This because the rich middle calluses did not

consider drama as a form of art and actors were considered like vagabonds

with a little respectability. However a new theatre were built in London. The

new playhouses were small but comfortable and luxurious and the new painted

scenery with gas-lit stages producing realistic effects. We have some types of

theatrical performances: In the music hall dancers, singers and acrobats have

performed in turn; in the pantomime the narrator said a story with gestures;

with the farce actors provoke laugher; in the melodrama have a romantic plot.

Oscar Wild have some Victorian comedy’s features: brilliant dialogue, humor

for talk about upper classes hypocrisy, provocative form for talk about human

experience and social problems, detailed stage directions like description of

characters and their personality, music, gesture and actions

OLIVER TWIST, THE PLOT: he was born in a workhouse after his mother ‘s

death. For 9 years he lives in a parish orphanage but was brought into the

workhouse by Mr Bumble, a parish official. In the workhouse Oliver shocks

everyone because he asked for more food. The consequence was that he was

sold for 5ponds at an undertaker but Oliver run away to London. He meets

Dodger a pick-pocket boy that brought him in his house in the slums of

London, Fagin’s den. Fagin teaches boys how to steal for him helped by a

brutal burglar, Sikes, and his girlfriend Nancy, a prostitute. One night was order

to Oliver to steal a rich family but The lady of the house Mrs Maylie decides

to take care of him. She and his husband discovered Oliver’s identity but

adopted him. Nancy was murdered by Sikes for helping Oliver but also he died

and Fagin was captured by the police. Oliver’s innocents was saved and the

villains was all punished.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST: is a Wild’s famous play.

The story is about two young aristocratic men, Ernest and Algernon, who

fall in love with two young women. Ernest is now called Jack, the name

assigned him when he was adopted. He is the guardian to his grand-

daughter, Miss Cecily, who lives in the country. Jack has invented an

alter ego , a younger brother called Ernest who lives in the City because

he was in love with Algernon’s cousin, Gwendolen. Even Algernon

pretends to have a friend, called Bunbury, whose invalidity requires

frequent attention, so ensuring his departure to the country because he

was in love with Cecily. The story develops around the two young men’s

attempts to marry Gwendolen and Cecil.

They have to overcome a lot of obstacles but in the end both men, who

discover they are brothers, succeed in marrying their girls. They

discovered that The name of their father was Ernest. Neither man is

really "earnest" (honest), nor "Ernest" (in English the two words are

pronounced the same way). Wilde with this expedient brings to expose

the appearance of the high Victorian society.

The institution of marriage: The play presents an aristocratic society

whose members are typical Victorian snobs; they are often arrogant,

formal, and concerned with money.The story is based on the problems of

marriage. Wilde makes fun of the institution of marriage which he saw as

a practice surrounded by hypocrisy and absurdity. He shows that

aristocracy doesn’t see marriage as the result of love but rather as a tool

for achieving social stature.

Irony and Imagination: The whole play is built on witty dialogues ,

amusing puns, misunderstandings paradoxes. The title is a pun in itself:

the name Earnest (misspelling for Ernest) evokes the adjectives “earnest,

honest and sincere”, while none of the characters is truthful.

The characters are used to criticise the Victorian prudery and exaggerated

seriousness.

Irony is a dominant feature of the play.

OSCAR WILDE: he adopted “the aesthetic ideal”. He lived in the double role

of rebel and dandy. The dandy is a bourgeois artist, an aristocratic whose

elegance is a symbol of the superiority of his spirit; he uses his wit to shocking.

Life was meant pleasure with beautiful; beautiful clothes, beautiful talks,

delicious food and handsome boys ( that interests Wild).

Art for art’s sake: was a moral imperative. He believed that only “ Art as the

cult of Beauty” could prevent the murder of the soul. Wild perceive the artist as

an alien in a materialistic word, he wrote only to please himself.

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY AN THE THEME OF BEAUTY: this

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novel is set in London at the end of 19 century. The protagonist is Dorian

Grey, a young man that give his soul to devil to satisfy his desires: the eternal

youth. He decided to print his image in a picture. In fact the signs of age

appeared in the picture and not in him. When the printer sees the corruption

image, Dorian kills him. Later Dorian wants to be free himself to the picture

and stabs it, but he kills himself. When he died the picture returns pure.

Narrative technique: the story is told by a third narrator. He told with Dorian’s

sense of view in fact he allows the identification between the reader and the

character. The narrator use drama’s technique and the set is described with

words of character’s senses.

A timeless beauty: the story conform itself with the myth of Faust, the story of

a man who sells his soul to the devil to satisfy his desires. Dorian’s soul became

the picture that present the signs of age, corruption, horror but the mask-face of

Dorian is timeless (out of time). In this age beautiful people are also moral

people and ugly people are immoral people. The picture represent the dark side

of Dorian personality. The moral of the story is that every excess must be

punished, in fact Dorian died for his compromise with the devil. The horrible

picture is a symbol of the corruption of the middle class in the Victorian age and

the false purity of Dorian is a symbol of bourgeois hypocrisy. Finally the

picture return pure and expose Wild’s theory: “art is eternal”.

HARD TIMES: is setting in an imaginary undustrial town called “Coketown”.

The protagonist Thomas Gradgrind was a teacher that believes in facts and

statistics dates and he founded a school when children must repressing their

liberty and imagination and their feelings. Is divided i3 books and each book in