Modern British Comedy: From Shaw to Ayckbourn
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950): Pygmalion (1913)
About George Bernard Shaw
- Born in Dublin, 26 July 1856. Died in 1950 in England.
- Arrived in London in 1876.
- Active socialist, brilliant platform speaker.
- Output: Music, art, theatre reviews, novels, plays.
- Wrote on social aspects.
- Awarded Nobel Prize in 1925.
- “Shavian” as a new adjective in English used to embody all his brilliant qualities.
The Pygmalion Myth
From Ovid’s Metamorphoses:
- Pygmalion is a sculptor and created a woman so beautiful that he fell in love with her.
- Wished for her to be alive.
- Aphrodite granted his wish.
- When he kissed the sculpture, it turned into life.
Comic Effects (Incongruity)
- Higgins is another type of egoist, a tyrant, a bully.
- But in the innocent unawareness of his own monstrosity, he is oddly charming.
- Brought alive for us by his small tastes and mannerisms, such as the chocolate and fruit that he munches and the keys and coins he fingers in his pocket.
- There is also the charm of the morally-free Doolittle.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900): The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
- Oscar Wilde’s achievement as a playwright, essayist, and aesthete was not to inaugurate censorship of the period but rather to fashion a new and highly effective form of social critique.
- His poems and plays are more than a rejection of mid-Victorian values in life and art in the name of aestheticism: they defiantly provoke a response to difference.
- Wilde does not focus on real people but on fictional characters who make further fiction of their identities. He always questions institutions, moral imperatives, and social clichés; he rarely suffers fools gladly.
- His major technique of creating laughter is (social and linguistic) incongruity.
- Wilde clearly parodied the formulaic and melodramatic fiction of the Victorian theatre.
- “The Importance of Being Earnest” is his most sprawling, witty, and lighthearted play of social follies and high society.
- It is lighter in tone than Wilde’s early comedies. It lacks the self-conscious decadence found in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and his drama “Salome”.
- The play was written in late 1894 and is now considered Wilde’s masterpiece.
- Wilde wrote: “It is exquisitely trivial, a delicate bubble of fancy, and it has its philosophy… that we should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.”
- Topic of switched identities: the play’s two protagonists engage in “bunburying”, that is, the maintenance of alternative personas in the town and country, which allows them to escape Victorian social codes.
John Worthing (who prefers to call himself Jack) and Algernon Moncrieff (Algy) are two fashionable young gentlemen. John tells everyone that he has a brother called Ernest, but in town, John himself is known as Ernest, and Algernon also pretends to be the profligate brother Ernest.
- Wilde questions just how much control the men have over their invented alternate (public and private) identities.
Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew are two ladies whom these snobbish characters court. Gwendolen declares that she never travels without her diary because “one should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
- All of the characters lie as readily as they tell the truth, and most of their lies tell truths.
- In the end, the play’s emphasis on and celebration of disguise falls prey to its plot of discovery; Jack’s true identity is gradually uncovered as he is revealed to be Ernest (if not earnest) and also, from time to time, the older brother of Algernon.
- Jack must admit the details of his orphan status, i.e., that he was found in a handbag in a cloakroom at Victoria Station. The mentally absent-minded Miss Prism put the manuscript of her three-volume novel in a perambulator and, by mistake, the baby (Jack) in the handbag.
A. Elements from Romantic Comedy
This work shows us a love story, two couples with a “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy recuperates girl” pattern. And also a humorous subplot with secondary characters: Miss Prism and Dr. Chasuble.
- Confusion about identities and double life (Bunburying). (Plot)
- Obstacles to the fulfillment of relationships.
In the work, Jack and Gwendolen, as well as Algernon and Cecily, have obstacles that prevent them from being together. In the case of Jack and Gwendolen, it is Lady Bracknell, and in the case of Algernon and Cecily, it is Jack, who is Cecily’s tutor and, without his consent, they can’t get married until Cecily is 35.
- Chaos resolved into order at the end.
It is another aspect we can see in this work. A series of misunderstandings emerge during the course of the work that end up solved. Jack turns out to be truly Algernon’s brother, as well as his real name being Ernest. Despite all the problems, Jack, Gwendolen, Algernon, and Cecily end up together at the end of the play.
B. Elements from Farce
- Improbable situations, stereotyped characters.
We can see the stereotype of Victorian values in Lady Bracknell, but also in the conversation between Gwendolen and Cecily, we can see the stereotype of a country woman in Cecily, who loves nature and peace, and the city woman in Gwendolen, who thinks that the country is a boring place.
- Physical humor, absurdity, nonsense.
- Eating, constant presence of food. The sandwiches at the beginning and in the end or the bread and butter.
- Evasion of moral responsibility, refusing to take anything seriously.
This point we can see in the personality of Algernon, who is always talking in a cold and carefree way.
C. Language and Humor
- Double meaning of words.
Like the “Ernest” and “earnest” game. And the words “exploded” or “lose”.
- Epigrams: Satirical words and phrases.
- Inversion of moral and social standards: Silly things said with total seriousness.
Salome
- Daughter of Herod and Herodias.
- Romantic focus on a prisoner.
- He does not want her, which irritates her.
- Her stepfather wants her.
- She performs the Dance of the Seven Veils to get everything she wants, against the wishes of her mother.
- She asks for the head of the prisoner.
- Herod executes the prisoner.
- Herod wants to get Salome killed after she kisses the head.
Alan Ayckbourn (Born 1939): The Norman Conquests (1973)
About Alan Ayckbourn
- Born on November 12, 1939.
- Prolific British playwright, actor, and director.
- Knighted in 1997.
- Written success “Relatively Speaking” opened at the Duke of York’s Theatre in 1969.
- His works are ingenious and highly amusing, also exploring attitudes to death and loneliness.
Outline
The small scale of the drama is typical of Ayckbourn. There are only six characters, namely Norman, his wife Ruth, her brother Reg and his wife Sarah, Ruth’s sister Annie, and Tom, Annie’s next-door neighbor. A seventh unseen and unheard character is in the house, upstairs: the bedridden mother of Reg, Ruth, and Annie.
- The plays are at times wildly comic, and at times poignant, in their portrayals of the relationships among the six characters.
- Each play is self-contained, and they may be watched in any order. Some of the scenes overlap, and on several occasions, a character’s exit from one play corresponds with an entrance in another. Similarly, noise and commotion in one room can sometimes be heard by characters in another.
- The plays were not written to be performed simultaneously, although Ayckbourn did achieve that some twenty-five years later in “House & Garden”.
- The premise is that Annie lives in a countryside house taking care of her demanding mother and has decided that she needs a weekend off. Reg and Sarah have agreed to come and take care of Annie and Reg’s mother for a weekend while Annie goes on a short trip. However, Annie is secretly planning to meet up with her sister Ruth’s charming, rakish husband Norman for an illicit weekend together (something Annie has never done before and is unsure about). However, things go wrong when Norman shows up at the house early to pick up Annie, contrary to plan, and everybody ends up at the house for the entire weekend, and various arguments ensue while the characters have differing degrees of understanding about what’s actually happening.
The Three Kinds of Comedies
Derision
- To keep people humbled, balanced, and human.
- A form of criticism.
- Targets of derision are excess, vanity, hypocrisy, and sanctimoniousness =) used in satire to prick the inflated reputation of entrenched authority.
- Physical degradation and insulting language are mostly confined to farce (comic dramatic work).
Automatism
: lose their human flexibility like puppets on a string. No longer in control of own action
INCONGLUITY: Gap between:
-The expected and unexpected
-The intention and the realization
-The normal and abnormal
-Result in comic discord
-Juxtaposition of objects