The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

This play, for one so famous is remarkably thin on plot.  It relies exclusively on the wit of its word-play to get by (a wit that is even noticeable in the very title of the play).  It relies on contradiction, comedies of manners, and of course, puns.  The title itself is a paradox.  Serious people only become serious by avoiding trivial things, such as this comedy, for example.  Wilde knew this, and believed that it would be successful on its wit alone (it was).  The play as a whole mocks serious manners and is, as a whole, a satire about Victorian society, a play reminiscent of the Roman comedies of manners (see Horace's Satires).

The Importance of Being Earnest's biggest theme is one of triviality.  It is profoundly silly.  The lies of the two protagonists are not harmful to anyone, in fact, they really have no negative aims, they exist simply to avoid unwelcome or unpleasant social engagements, interestingly with the exact same goal, but with different methods (Jack leaves the country to go to town as Earnest, while Algernon seeks to escape the city by "Bunburying," both seek to escape social obligations by doing so).  In doing so, they each fall in love with a woman who loves their assumed name, but not themselves, with Cecily and Gwendolen.  It is playing on the words Earnest/Ernest as well as with the silliness of the women's views on names.  In fact, when the two protagonists are both revealed as frauds, simply on account of their names, both women break off their engagements.  The Importance of Being Earnest is simply about nothing at all; it has no grandiose ideas to impart morals into society, if anything, it is making fun of how serious society is.  In this way, Wilde is going against his contemporaries, who believed their work should have a greater meaning.  He refused to play the game.

It does, of course perform well as satire towards Victorian society, especially as it relates to marriage, and the lead up to marriage.  Cecily and Gwendolen both aspire to marry a man named Ernest, they both have this concept and pity any woman married to a man whose name is not Ernest.  The name makes the man, they seem to say (they would not agree that a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet, unless it's name was Ernest, then it would smell even sweeter).  Lady Bracknell places much of her faith into Jack's assumed name, stating that Ernest is the only truly "safe" name for a man.  This is dashed when Lady Bracknell discovers that Jack was found in Victoria Station (I found it particularly humorous when Jack defends himself by saying that he was found on the Brighton Line, the upscale train to Worthing, in contrast to the poorer Victoria Station, of which there were two).

But beyond any themes, the play truly only shines when its language is taken into account.  Often, the language fails to contribute to the plot in any meaningful way, but instead serves solely to provide humor and amusement to the viewers.  Wilde was a master of witticism, and The Importance of Being Earnest is the greatest example that he produced.

Insert Pithy Title Here

So.  How crazy was Hamlet exactly?  Given the fact that this is one of the more discussed topics encountered when analyzing Hamlet, I struggle to find a way to present my ideas in a way that is not simply a re-hash of a more intelligent person's ideas.  But here goes anyway.

The short version of all of this is that I think Hamlet is crazy, or at least he is by the end of the play (in the beginning I genuinely believe that he was simply faking it).  My thinking on this is primarily centered on Hamlet's treatment of Ophelia, especially when considered in connection to their previous relationship.  Hamlet and Ophelia had a 'thing' going on, to the extent which Polonius felt it was his fatherly duty to remind Ophelia to not stay with Hamlet in private overlong, it didn't look right.  And yet, if Hamlet was truly sane, his treatment of Ophelia makes no sense at all.  He states:

"Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;
but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
were better my mother had not borne me: I am very
proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at
my beck than I have thoughts to put them in"

He lashes out against Ophelia, the woman he once loved, perhaps too desperately, and says that she should not only remove herself from his presence, but get to a nunnery.  She ruins not just him, but all men by her presence, such that the world would be a better place.  This is unnecessarily damaging to his relationship with Ophelia, even if one assumes that he is only doing so to deceive Claudius and Polonius.  What's more, even if he did so with the intention of his actions going back to the king, it would have been extremely counterproductive.  Polonius already believes Hamlet to be mad as a result of his previous actions towards Ophelia (Hamlet barging into her room half-clothed and writing love-letters) and that this madness is the problem.  By being hostile to Ophelia, Polonius would be disinclined to believe that Hamlet is truly crazy.  Plus, he's pretty negative about himself, and that doesn't usually bode well.

Of course, his interactions with Ophelia are only the tip of the iceberg, though my favorite tip, as it happens.  One could also remark on the fact that Hamlet assumes Claudius is guilty when he runs out of the play about Gonzago Hamlet has put on.  That doesn't necessarily prove anything (even though it is true), for all Hamlet knew, Claudius could have simply had a bad case of indigestion and had to leave to, ah, relieve, himself.

He stabs a person unknown to him, just because they were hiding behind a curtain in his mother's room, though it did turn out to be Polonius, not the Claudius he was expecting.

I want to believe that Hamlet is sane throughout the novel, he speaks so well and wittily, but it isn't to be.  By the end, he's bat-crap crazy.

Oh Captain! My Captain!

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!	5
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
2 O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;	10
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,	15
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
3 My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;	20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Beyond bringing to mind images of Dead Poet's Society (which I admittedly, have not seen), "Oh Captain! My Captain! is profoundly sad, which it should be, given that it is a elegy.  

The poem was written by Walt Whitman as a response to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln shortly after the Union victory that ended the civil war.  Whitman was a profoundly patriotic man and had an interest in politics.  He supported the North during the war, not necessarily as a result of any particular feelings of animosity towards slavery, but because he supported the concept of an actually united United States.  As a side note, while Whitman had at times opposed slavery in his poetry, he often viewed abolition as an unnecessarily radical concept which had as its only goal the dissolution of the country and was potentially against democracy.  As to leading to dissolution, he may have been justified.  The assassination occurred five days after the Confederate Army surrendered to the Union, right after Lincoln had won the war.

The poem opens with this victory.  Despite all of the hardships, all of the unnecessary death and violence and war, it was finally over.  Best of all it ends not with a broken, fractured America, but with a whole United States, even if it has more corpses now.  But despite all of this, the man who is responsible for this great victory, who had led the Union through this disastrous period and had led it out whole, the so-called Captain, is dead on the floor.  At first the speaker fails to fully recognize this, even though his captain fails to answer him.  The ship is safe but its captain is not.  The speaker continues to exalt the victory despite the death of his captain, believing the death to be merely a dream.  

The poem is characterized by alternating feelings of exultation combined with the death of the captain that achieved this victory.  By this the victory seems all the more sweet and the death all the more final, though both taint each other, in addition to emphasizing each other's traits.

The speaker often speaks to his captain, before and after he realizes he is dead.  The poem even begins with a call to the captain.  It also utilizes apostrophe in addressing the shore and bells in the third stanza: "Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!"  Again a contrast with the captain's death.  The first stanza begins overwhelmingly happy, victory is won!  Stanza two is celebratory, though doesn't seem quite right, and by the time the third roles around, the captain is dead and the speaker knows this.  Of course, each stanza ends with the same words, the captain has fallen cold and dead.

The saddest element is that despite the captain's unflagging hard work, he is unable to enjoy the fruits of his labor, his victory was stolen from him, though his efforts are left to be enjoyed by everyone else.  Seems rather selfless, even if it was done so inadvertently.