One of the very few plays that can stand with those of Shakespeare in terms of life, energy, language and the instigation of thought is Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, which despite its reputation as a frivoulous comedy, was a very serious play indeed and actually one of the most direct challenges to the power structure of its time ever written. It achieved this in an ingenious manner - a plot that seems so ridiculous and superficial that it well hides the serious comments that the characters make, in apparently casual asides, about the class system and so forth. Of course Wilde didn't fool everybody, unfortunately, and it seems quite obvious in retrospect that his open criticism of the powers of the day were the cause of his two-year sentence to hard labour (and the destruction of his health), which had nothing to do whatsoever with any alleged "crimes" committed in his personal life. It occurred to me while reading a most interesting essay on Twelfth Night ("Twelfth Night, Gender and Comedy", by R.W. Maslen, reprinted in the edition on the play from Harold Bloom's Shakespeare Through the Ages series), that Wilde probably took his cue at least partially from Shakespeare, who often hid commentary of a serious nature in comedic settings. One example in Twelfth Night is of course the role of the fool, Feste, which functions as a tonic to the madness of virtually every other character in the play (with the possible exception of Viola).

Maslen's essay made another point regarding the relation of Wilde to Twelfth Night, and to the sonnets, as well. Rather than try to summarize, I'll quote it (despite its length): "Oscar Wilde supposed that the boy addressed in Shakespeare's sonnets could have been an actor, and there's something profoundly satisfying about the supposition. Boy actors represented a way out of an artistic dilemma created by Elizabethan views on women. Since women were not allowed to perform on the public stage, boys took the female roles in plays. And in doing so they drew attention to the possibility that gender itself might be a matter of performance. As the antitheatrical polemicists pointed out, men could be, or could become, effeminate, and the boy actor's craft showed just how easy it was to accomplish this particular form of gender-bending. Shakespeare's 'master-mistress' in the sonnets, and Viola/Caesario in Twelfth Night, are bodies in transit through time, altering as they move and attracting men and women alike. In them fantasies of maleness and femaleness intersect and mingle, making possible all sorts of relationships - sexual and nonsexual - that were not officially sanctioned within Elizabethan culture. Hence the polemicists profound unease about the effect of comedy on its audiences."

Has any other art form had more transformative influence on human society than comedy? I think we can safely guess what Wilde and Shakespeare would answer.

Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, or What You Will, another of his one-of-a-kind creations, seems to be a comedy example of what Fintan O'Toole wrote about regarding the tragedies in his 2002 book called Shakespeare Is Hard, But So Is Life. Its central premise is that Shakespeare's tragedies get much of their power from the fact that neither the characters nor their stories can be contained by categories, and they are, in fact, about transition, in every way possible. Twelfth Night, although a comedy - and arguably his funniest - is also such a play. But I won't go into details just yet because I'm giving lectures on the subject over the next couple of days (to which you're invited, by the way - tomorrow, Tuesday, April 12 at 11 am or Wednesday, April 13 at 7 pm at the Atwater library).

On another note, I've really come to like the 1996 film version of the play. It's worth seeing for Ben Kingsley's performance alone. His Feste (according to Harold Bloom, the only sane character in the play) is both funny and thought-provoking. I find it touches on the nature of comedy itself, as the play itself does. Of course, Feste has the ability to see through the pretensions of the various characters, and one of the really enjoyable aspects found in re-reading the play is to be able to take the time needed to decipher his coded comments. More on that to come with the next post as well. For today, here's a link to Kingsley singing one of Feste's great songs, "Come Away Death": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1X7kfjvQ4o&NR=1.

Having just finished preparing for, and delivering, a lecture on The Merry Wives of Windsor, and finding myself now in the process of getting ready for one on Twelfth Night, I can see the truth in Auden's observation that it's easier to talk about the less popular plays than it is the acknowledged masterpieces (e.g. the former and latter above, respectively). His point was that it's fun to attempt to prove that the neglected ones shouldn't be, and that they in fact contain a great deal of content deserving serious consideration, whereas it's trickier to find original angles such as these when dealing with the iconic ones. This is a problem, no doubt, but knowing it can only be helpful, because it delineates the task in front of those who try to tackle plays such as King Lear or Twelfth Night. And of course the challenge itself can be a lot of fun, not to mention the astonishing material itself. I'll be writing more on Twelfth Night after my lectures on it, which take place on Tuesday, April 12 at 11 am and Wednesday, April 13 at 7 pm at the Atwater Library. (More information is available via the email address above.)

In Twelfth Night, the two identical twins, Viola and Sebastien, are shipwrecked and wash up separately onto the shore of Illyria. Viola assumes her brother must have drowned and wonders how she'll be able to survive in a strange place on her own. With the help of the ship's captain, she comes up with a plan: She will disguise herself as a boy and work as a servant/confidant of the Duke Orsino. The Duke is in love with a noblewoman named Olivia, who is mourning the death of her brother (unlike Viola's situation, this is a real death), and thus will accept no "entreaties" regarding love or marriage. So Orsino, impressed with the sensitivity and intelligence of his new worker Cesario (Viola's assumed male name), sends him/her to plead his case to Olivia. What ends up happening of course is that each person falls in love with the one they can't have: Olivia falls for Cesario, Viola for Orsina, and Orsino we already know about.

It's an extraordinary plot in every sense of the word. But to spend time considering its plausibility is an error, because its point is to allow the characters into worlds and ways of thinking that would not be possible otherwise. So Cesario/Viola engages in thoughtful discussions regarding the nature of love with both a male and a female. She herself is forced to consider it from fresh vantage points. And she takes the audience along.

In Shakespeare, the stories and so forth are always secondary to 1. the dramatic power of the scenes 2. the insights that can be found into human nature. With lesser literature, there is no larger payoff with which to mitigate hard-to-believe stories, but with this writer that's not the case. And even with unlikely plots like this one, the results of the exploration of thought and emotion are very easy to accept.

In my lecture yesterday, one of the issues that was raised was that some of the plots are hard to accept easily - how "suspension of disbelief" can be hard to attain, in other words. For example, plots with identical twins and shipwrecks are used in both The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night. In taking a close look at Twelfth Night, it occurred to me that the benefit of such a "fantastic" story line is that it allows characters (and the audience) to go to places they wouldn't be able to otherwise. I'll explain, with examples, tomorrow.