Reading Journal 2

• Quick Notes on The Importance of Being Earnest
• Algernon: fake friend (Bunbury), the ultimate Bunburyist, wants to marry Cecily
• Jack: fake identity (Ernest), wants to marry Gwendolen
• Quick Notes on John Bull's Other Island
• Broadbent: Englishman, fond of Ireland
• Doyle: Irishman who left home long ago. not found of Ireland
• Keegan: defrocked priest, loves Ireland
• Reading Journal
• Our fourth play of the semester is an absolute riot, and I do feel we have been building up to it with our first three plays. I know we have wanted to examine how these plays relate in the context of Irish history, but that is certainly not my main take away from these four plays. These two playwrights take two opposite views on the biggest theme in each play, truthfulness. In The Irish Heiress and The O'Dowd, Boucicault makes the argument that lying and deception are morally wrong. Stan, our Bunburyist in the first play, fails in his schemes and plots. Mike, our Bunburyist in the second play, completely reforms and redeems himself, in the image of his father, a true anti-Bunburyist. But Wilde takes the opposite position. In Lady Windermere's Fan, the role of the Bunburyist is really only played by Mrs. Erlynne. All the other characters play the role of the straight man. But it is Mrs. Erlynne who earns the esteem of Lady Windermere (and the reader) for her dishonesty.
• Which brings us to the climax of this four play anthology on truthfulness, The Importance of Being Earnest. From the start, the reader is meant to think there is a double meaning behind the title. There is the obvious meaning, and then there is this meaning we get from Gwendolen's hilarious confession that her "ideal has always been to love some one of the name of Ernest." Of course, we get the exact same scene get played out between Algernon and Cecily, and in each instance, the women remain committed to the name Ernest. But do the women care about the men being earnest? Absolutely not. We find the women, themselves, are Bunburyists at heart as well. Once Jack and Algernon's deception has been uncovered, Gwendolen pronounces, "In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing." And just like Algernon, the women remain committed to the bit, explaining together, "Your Christian names are still an insuperable barrier." They out Bunbury the Bunburyists, getting the men to commit to changing their names.
• Of course, the main joke of the play is that the title does not have a double meaning at all. The title has only one meaning, because being truthful is not important at all. The icing on the cake? Jack's name really is Ernest. All of his lies work out for him in the end.
• In John Bull's Other Island, we do get maybe our strongest defense of Irish independence of any of the plays, even beyond The O'Dowd. We have these three characters representing important constituencies in this struggle. We have Broadbent, an Englishman, who visions himself the savior of Ireland. He wants to marry Nora, this quintessential Irish woman, young, rural, and Catholic. He owns the land and envisions the wealth he will create for himself and his syndicate will be a great success for Ireland. We have Doyle, an Irishman, who moved away from Ireland a long time ago, and he looks down on his own country and people. And finally we have the defrocked priest Keegan, who represents the true Irish identity. He has traveled the world, but in doing so, he has found the beauty of his own land and people. In the final act, Keegan attacks both Broadbent and Doyle, viewing both the foolish Englishman and the traitorous Irishman as equally damned. The whole play, even from the beginning, leaves the reader questioning the same debate Keegan ponders here at the end, who is worse: Broadbent or Doyle?